In an attempt to make touch screen mobile devices accessible to more people and create an , LG has introduced a number of mid-range touch phones that provide a set of useful features at a budget price. Among these new offerings is the LG KM570 Cookie Gig, known by different names such as the LG KM 570 Cookie Music, LG Surf 4GB, and LG Arena II depending on the country. Announced in April of this year, and released in May, the Cookie Gig Based on the popular LG KM900 Arena, the Cookie Gig is the latest in LG’s Cookie series of phones and features some of LG’s most popular features scaled down and combined with a few compromises in hardware to bring the phone to a more affordable price range. Leave your views on the new Cookie on the LG Cookie Gig reviews page.
Some of the compromises are immediately apparent from the outward appearance of the phone itself; though it sports the same looks of the KM900 Arena, the body of the phone is made out of a glossy plastic with a brushed metal finish rather than the metal housing found in the KM900. Though it still seems very robust and durable, the smoothness of the plastic can be a problem as there is no real friction between the phone and your hand. However, the Cookie Gig weighs a mere 87g and the 10.6 x 5.3 x 1.9 cm body fits nicely in the hand and sports a sleek rounded design that adds to comfort as well as style. The stylish design of the Cookie Gig is complemented by the bold colours available: vivid Prism Violet, and rich Blue, or classic Silver Black. The Cookie Gig also has a three touch-sensitive buttons with haptic feedback for menu, call, and end as well as a dedicated camera shutter button. A micro USB port also allows you to both charge the phone and connect the phone to your computer to sync your data.
Along with the smaller price comes a smaller screen: the Cookie Gig’s screen is a fairly small 3” 240 x400 WQVGA TFT LCD with resistive touch screen technology rather than the more responsive capacitive touch screen found in the KM900 Arena, but it still picks up fairly light touches. Though the screen is smaller, it is still capable of displaying up to 256,000 colours and features an accelerometer sensor that allows the user interface to automatically rotate from portrait to landscape when the user turns the phone on its side. The accelerometer also permits the user to turn the phone to mute it during calls, and a proximity sensor to automatically lock and unlock the phone when your hand gets close to the device.
The Cookie Gig utilises the same LG Touch interface found in the LG GD510 and other mid-class LG touch screen phones with a bit of design and detailing borrowed from the popular S-class to add some new life to it. The interface features three separate home screen pages for widgets, a list of your favourite contacts, and LG’s Livesquare home screen. Livesquare displays your most recent communications and contacts in the form of animated avatars, allowing you to tap them and have easy access to your latest text messages, emails, and phone calls with that particular person—even if they aren’t in your contacts list. However, the home screens are not separate; rather, they are different types of home screens arranged on a “cube” that turns when you swipe your finger across the screen. The widget screen allows you to drag and rearrange your widgets around the screen, or into a tray of unused widgets to let you customise your screen. However, you cannot add new widgets to the screen, which limits the functionality a bit. The interface also features an on-screen landscape QWERTY keyboard when writing messages and emails to help you compose your messages quickly, as well as T9 predictive text input to insert frequently-used words. Four on-screen keys that are present from every view allow you to pull up digits to dial, open up your contacts, take you to messaging, or bring up the main menu.
Additionally, the Cookie Gig has a few multimedia features that add to its appeal. It features a 5-megapixel camera with autofocus, image stabilisation, face detection, and an interface that allows you customise some options before you take a picture. Unfortunately, the camera has no flash, though it is capable of capturing 720×480 (D1) video with time-lapse and slow-motion. As well as video recording, the Cookie Gig supports video playback of MPEG-4 videos with H.263 encoding.
Along with the camera and video playback, the Cookie Gig features music playback capabilities with a few helpful features. You can listen to music in most popular formats (MP3, WMP, AAC) in Dolby Mobile quality sound, using either the 3.5mm headphone jack or A2DP Bluetooth stereo, or set your favourite songs as MP3 ringtones Additionally, the Cookie Gig features FM radio support and a simple equalizer/filtering to allow you to tweak the audio settings to fit your preferences. With 4GB of internal storage and support for up to an additional 16GB of external storage via the microSD expansion slot. The 900 mAh battery allows for a decent length of playback
The Cookie Gig lacks Wi-Fi unfortunately, but it does have 3G HSDPA support for high-speed internet access. Utilising the 3G connection and the Cookie Gig’s prepackaged browser, you can surf the web on the go; Flash Lite support allows you to access your favourite sites and features from your mobile device. Social networking integration allows you keep in touch with your friends and get the latest updates from Facebook and Twitter, and SMS text messaging, MMS, EMS, and email support let you send messages to your friends and family while you’re out and about. Corporate users might appreciate the Microsoft Exchange support, allowing you to access your business emails and contacts from home or on the road. You can also utilise the document viewed to view Microsoft Office and PDF files attached to your emails, and save them to your phone’s internal/external storage. If this new Cookie phone takes your fancy check out some of the deals on the LG Cookie Gig deals page.
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