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Demand for mobile phones with touch-sensitive screens has increased a lot during the last year and all kinds of models appeared on the market. However, only a small number of them are intended for the common user, who is not looking for a lot of extras, such as an 8-megapixel camera and GPS, he’d rather want a reasonable price and a modern appearance. LG is trying to reach exactly this group of users with its budget model, which has been given the nice and 'tasty' name Cookie, also known as KP500. According to the company, it offers features inherent in the high-end models, but at an affordable price. In addition, in the package you will find a small box of milk to eat it with - we are just kidding. 
Design If you've seen the 8-megapixel LG Renoir you can find some similarities in the appearance, but Cookie is not as shiny and looks much more unpretentious. The phone is made of plastic, which feels like rubber and creates a pleasant sensation in your hand. A very good balance has been achieved in its size and weight so that the LG is comfortable to hold and very light - only 3.14 OZ. At first we even thought that we had forgotten to put the battery. The large 3-inch TFT display has a resolution of 240x400 pixels, 262k colors, which, just as many screens with such features, ensures a good image at artificial light. The situation is not as good at sunlight and just as in the case with Renoir, if you do not look directly at the KP500, the screen looks almost like a mirror. 
The manufacturer boasts that the touchscreen uses the latest technology, which improves sensitivity. After we’ve spent some time with the Cookie, we were convinced that this was really true. Furthermore, there is an option to play different sounds and vibrations when pressing the screen, which contributes to the tangibility. We are very pleased with the screen and can only say "Bravo!". Well, it can eventually become a fingerprint mess, but you’ll be able to use it for a decent period of time before you feel the need to clean it. 
Below the display there are three buttons, which are similar to those of the Renoir and are easy to feel and press and in the lower right corner there is a telescopic stylus. The latter is removed horizontally and at first this seemed strange to us, because in most phones it is pulled downwards or upwards, but you get used to this after you pull it out 2-3 times. What is interesting on the sides is the key for turning the volume down, because by holding it down the silent profile gets switched on and off. 
User interface
If you want to win the heart of the common user you should make sure the interface is nice and also convenient and intuitive to use, so that people can get used to it quickly. At least those are our impressions. This is not an easy task, but the LG Cookie definitely did very well on it. 
Compared to previous LG models, the home screen has went through a slight evolution here. It has 7 Widgets: calendar, notes, clock, world clock showing 2 cities; music player; FM radio; Slideshow with pictures. Unfortunately there is no option to add more Widgets. In addition, the ones displayed on the screen can be aligned by shaking the phone, which is due to the accelerometer. Besides this new feature, there is something much more interesting. With a horizontal slip of the finger from one end of the display to the other you can switch to a different home screen (figuratively speaking), as in the LG PRADA II. Instead of Widgets you can set up to 9 contacts for speed dial. We must admit that we like this novelty quite a lot because it saves time and is easy to use. By pressing the middle button below the display, the familiar menu with two tabs appears. In the first one you can put up to 9 shortcuts to functions of your choice and shift them, and the second tab shows the currently running programs and you can stop or start them without having to scroll through the menus. This is something like a partial multitasking, because not all applications can be left working in the background, such as games for example. 
There weren't any themes that completely change the looks of the inteface. There was only one for the main menu. However, it didn't change much and simply adds a different transition appearance of the four categories on the right of the screen. 
Phonebook and Organizer The phonebook can hold up to 1000 contacts with multiple numbers and you can set a picture/ photo, ringtone, date of birth, e-mail, address, etc. for each person. What is more interesting is that when typing text, you can rotate the phone horizontally and the numeric keypad will become a full QWERTY or you can start the handwriting recognition. You can look contacts up by first and last name, and by dialing a number. After entering the first three digits a box appears with a search result; just click the arrow on the right to get more results (if there are other matches). 
The organizer's functionality will fully satisfy the needs of a typical user who does not need specific business options. You will have a handy calendar which can be viewed by day, week or month, so that you can easily see the upcoming events and organize your time. Naturally, you have alarms, as each one can be set to be active on certain days of the week. However, some people need help in order to wake up on time and not be late for work. If you need to do calculations, even if they involve sine, cosine, tangent, cotangent, etc., you can rely on the calculator. Apart from it you will have handy an Unit Converter. Some people need to know, for example, what time it is at the other end of the world. In this case you can rely on the World Clock, which is actually quite nice and has a pleasant interface. 
Multimedia It was a nice surprise to find the multimedia performance of the Cookie a good match for the KC910 Renoir flagship. Except for the reduced internal memory (50MB, compared to 100MB on the Renoir) you will hardly find any difference between the two. And with up to 16GB memory cards supported no one will actually care about the miserly 50MB of inbuilt storage. 
File browsing is generally fast but when you have a memory card inserted, each time you open the file browser it needs to refresh the image thumbnails. Not much of a problem if you have a small picture gallery, but it could get annoying taking several seconds with a huge number of photos,. But that's a common issue for all current LG handsets. 
Another drawback is that no matter what file sorting you opt for (date, type, name), the files on the memory card always get listed first. While that might not be much of a problem to most users it doesn't make much sense, really. 
The LG KP500 Cookie file manager includes separate factory-preset folders for different file content. However, unlike some previous generation LG handsets (and those include even some pretty expensive ones) it has no problem handling user-created folders and the files in them. Boy, were we relieved to see that. 
LG have vastly improved their image gallery with the latest generation of touchscreen phones and now it offers a really nice touch experience. Flipping through images feels so natural and fluid that it is comparable to the best in the class - the Apple iPhone. And with the Cookie photos on board are of slightly higher resolution than 2 megapixels. 
You can check your photos straight in the file manager or you can start the dedicated gallery where larger thumbnails are available. Still, the viewer for single images is one and the same for both methods. You can browse images in portrait or landscape mode just by changing the orientation of the handset. Unfortunately, zooming on an image is a bit slow and works in quite small steps. 
LG KP500 also features the same image editor as the KC910 Renoir with its wide range of options. First off, you get a creative part that allows finger drawing on images, text typing, clipart watermarking, face morphing, selective colorization, and selective color boosting. 
Then you have tools for basic image treatment such as rotate, resize and mirror, as well as more advanced photo editing options such as levels, brightness, contrast, color, hue and saturation, sharpness, blur. Red-eye removal is also available. And finally, you can add color effects such as black & white, sepia, negative, glow, etc. 
Overall, despite the rich features of the editor, we think it scores low on usability. The different options are inconsistently spread across various menus. Nevertheless, we highly doubt that most users will edit photos on their mobiles anyway. Music player The LG KP500 Cookie has a really nice music player and if you wonder what nice really means, we guess better than the Renoir pretty much says it all. The layout is intact and the looks aren't too different but some nice functionality has been added. In fact you will get the same updated music player in the LG Prada 2, which we just reviewed this week. The new stuff is basically the seriously enhanced Album Art visualization and the equalizer presets, which LG touch phones lacked up until now. 
With the LG Cookie music player you can filter tracks as with any other modern music player - by artist, album, genre, and recently played. User-created playlists are also an option. Naturally, the music player can run in the background. You can control the music straight on the home screen with the dedicated mini player widget. Now that equalizers are available, you can opt for one of five presets or you can turn it off to enjoy the track's original sound. A rating system has also been added, which allows you to give a score of 1 to 5 stars to each track. 3 megapixel camera Given the phone's distinct youth appeal, the LG KP500 Cookie camera surely becomes an important feature. The handset sports a 3 megapixel fixed focus snapper with a maximum image resolution of 2048 x 1536 pixels. It has no flash of any kind, so night photography is not really an option. Placing the camera lens in the very top corner at the back is somewhat unpractical since your support finger often gets in the way when shooting. And with a handset this slim and a shutter key so small taking a photo with one hand is virtually not an option. The camera interface is almost identical to the one of the LG KC910 Renoir. Even if not the most user friendly we've seen, it is nothing you can't get used to. It offers a moderate amount of user-configurable settings including white balance, effects and quality settings. 
The image quality is one of the best parts about the camera. Now, since there is no autofocus we are obviously not talking macros here but the rest of the photos turn out pretty good. The images produced by the LG Cookie have more than enough detail and noise levels are easily tolerable. Sometimes the colors are off however they are not too bad so this is not much of an issue. The only noticeable problem with the image processing routine is the evident oversharpening on most of the photos. This has been an issue with almost all recent LG phones (LG Renoir and LG Secret included). As far as video recording is concerned the handset captures video in up to QVGA resolution. With enough cameraphones around shooting WVGA@30fps this is hardly a commendable achievement by today's standards. Still, if you only watch your videos on the phone's screen things might not be too bad, and we shouldn't forget the price tag after all. Conclusion It's not exactly scientific but the LG Cookie simply makes sense. Smart and confident, though never self-important, it doesn't seek to impress but is straightforward, credible and convincing. Great handling, attitude and a distinct identity are not guaranteed even in the high end, and that's something the LG KP500 Cookie should be proud of. The price tag seems the all too convenient excuse for the middling spec sheet. We'll just go ahead and say the decent feature set could've been near impossible to resist with 3G data speeds. Wi-Fi is probably way beyond reasonable expectation in this price range. The interface may have its quirks here and there but the user experience is compelling enough. Easily the most popular LG handset in our database recently, the KP500 Cookie is off to a flying start and looks fit to keep it up for quite a while. And with so little competition in the touchscreen mid-end things look good for LG, who don't need to fear too many hands in the jar. |
