The LG Arena KM900 is an eagerly anticipated mobile phone; the company claims that this particular model will be LG’s flagship device, meaning that the phone will be quite the powerhouse of features. 

The device was first seen at the Mobile World Congress ’09 in Barcelona, and was subsequently released with T-Mobile. 

Strangely familiar yet loads of features

The most striking first impression the LG Arena makes is the striking similarity it bears to the Apple iPhone. The design is almost identical, with a large screen, dominating most of the front, 3 buttons along the bottom edge and approximately the same thickness as well. The casing is shiny, possibly to avoid fingerprints, and it has a silvery metal back panel. 

The phone is the latest in line of the KM series of LG, which were initially music phones. However, while its predecessors lacked connectivity options, the Arena KM900 definitely does not. The mobile phone has Bluetooth, WiFi and A-GPS, which is used for geo-tagging photographs. The camera comes with an LED flash and an autofocus feature. The phone also has Dolby Mobile sound to boot, while packing in Bluetooth radio and a standard 3.5mm headphone jack.

Memory should not be a problem, as along with 8GB flash memory, there is also a Micro SD card slot. 

What’s on the inside?

The phone’s features are what make it entirely extraordinary.

It is unclear as of now which operating system forms the foundation for the user interface. LG is thrilled about their new interface, which is called the 3-D S-Class User Interface. The design of the new interface is reminiscent of the iPhone’s home screen but isn’t exactly the same. First of all, the home screen is a cube. Each side of the cube represents a home screen, allowing the user to have multiple home screens on the device. The cube is made up of four sides: one for widgets, one for multimedia, another for contacts and lastly one for a shortcut menu. Once zoomed out, the entire cube is visible at a glance. 

Each screen is completely customizable; for instance, it is possible to program the contacts home screen to reflect either all the contacts in a vertical carousel, or just the ones used on a regular basis. Multimedia icons can be arranged in vertical carousels too, running from the top of the screen to the bottom, or in a grid pattern. 

The Shortcut menu is divided into four different categories, each stretching like a horizontal band across the screen. Each band can be scrolled to the left and right for more icons. 

The device uses multitouch, like pinching and scrolling. The device recognizes orientation as well, and will switch from portrait to landscape view depending on the way it is held.

Apart from these features, it is rumoured that the Arena KM900 will have some sort of mobile TV support.

The handling of the phone is rather sluggish; there is a definite lag before the phone responds, making it slightly irritating to use. 

Check the handset on the LG website, here.