Review: LG’s Arena – coulda-beener or iPhone-creamer?

LG’s most sophisticated smartphone yet takes on the iPhone in more ways than one – but is it truly an iPhone killer?

Smartphones have morphed from basic phones able to make phone calls and store an address book, into fully fledged handheld computers that connect to the Internet at superfast wireless speeds.

Although serious smartphone development was around long before the iPhone was launched, the iPhone has set off an incredibly fevered round of development and innovation in large touch screen devices that has each manufacturer trying to outdo the other – and the “dreaded” iPhone.

LG has been on the touch screen smartphone path since the introduction of the LG Prada around the time of the iPhone’s original launch, and its latest model, the LG Arena, is the current pinnacle of that design line.

Following on from designs such as the LG Viewty and the 8 megapixel Renoir, the LG Arena takes LG’s smartphone interface to new heights of graphical goodness, packing slick and clever animations into every nook and cranny to make people go “wow!”.

And yes, as noted, it is LG’s best looking smartphone yet, offering a myriad features as standard while matching the iPhone in the multi-touch and accelerometer stakes.

Want to pinch and zoom your photos and web pages? No problem – LG’s Arena lets you do that, and is the first touch-screen phone (beyond horrible Chinese iPhone clone-fakes) to offer this feature aside from the iPhone, a pretty amazing feat in itself.

But for all the amazingly visual eye candy, which does make for a compelling user experience, the LG Arena does have one limitation compared with the iPhone, and that’s no “app store”.

Sure, the LG Arena can run a range of already available Java software, from Gmail to a wealth of games and plenty more. But none of these programs run on the Arena’s native operating system, and programmers aren’t given any SDK (software development kit) from LG to do so. One of the Java games I tried, “Need for Speed”, simply presented me with on-screen buttons in-lieu of the regular keypad on normal phones, and didn’t take use of any accelerometer features whatsoever. I’d expect games companies to take advantage in the future, but right now they’re all busy creating games for the iPhone itself.

Given the clear popularity of the iPhone’s app store, with over 25,000 programs now available and hundreds of millions of downloads, it seems a clear oversight in LG’s plans for smartphone domination, and I hope it’s one they rectify in the future.

That out of the way, the Arena thankfully packs plenty of inbuilt features, from GPS and Google Maps to your usual array of calculator, note taking, games and other apps, right down to including a built-in FM transmitter, so you can send your tunes wirelessly to any FM radio.

The Arena’s screen resolution is 800×480, far greater than the iPhone 480×320, lending a crispness and “high def” quality to the screen over competitors, while the audio from the mp3 and video player (which includes DiVX playback) is enhanced using Dolby technology, and the included headphones (with 3.5mm plug) are of the sound-isolating in-ear variety, as opposed to the standard earbuds included with most other phones.

A 5 megapixel camera with autofocus, face tracking and other features blows away that of the iPhone, as does the ability to record 640×480 video at 30fps or a “super-slow-mo” 120fps, delivering a great visual effect on playback.

Other features like a removable, replaceable battery and microSD card slot (so you can augment the inbuilt 8GB of memory when you want) are also to be expected on any non-iPhone device, and naturally are present.

Buy the optional video-out cable, and not only can you play your videos on any TV, but display the entire interface too – just like Nokia and some Windows Mobile phones can, but the iPhone itself still officially (for consumers) cannot.

There’s no question that LG have worked hard to deliver a snazzy interface that puts your contacts, your music and video collection, all the LG’s software capabilities and more at your fingertips in an easy-to-use manner that you’ll be able to master very, very quickly.

If you want a touch-screen smartphone that’s smaller than the iPhone, has better picture quality, better sound quality, and don’t care about third party programs you might download once and rarely if ever use again, the LG Arena is a high-end model with plenty of appeal. Is it an iPhone killer? In short, no. But it is LG’s best phone yet, and I’d wager that most people that end up buying it will be more than happy with all the Arena lets them do.

There is, of course, the threat of an iPhone 3.0 phone model to come in the middle of the year, but until then, and no doubt beyond, LG will be pushing its flagship model as hard as it can.

Available on a monthly plan from Vodafone retailers at first, it will also be available from Telstra and Optus in Australia “soon”. The outright purchase price is AUD $799.

• Review: HTC Touch HD – the most touching "Windows Mobile" yet?
• Review: Nokia’s XpressMusic 5800 – expressly what the touch-screen doctor ordered?
• LG Arena in March: ready to fight
• Review: Google’s HTC Dream G1 smartphone, a nightmare for Apple, Nokia and Microsoft?
• Nokia 5800 XpressMusic review – a touch screen phone for music lovers