LG Arena KM900

Strange, a smartphone that claims to be better than the one all the comptetition measures itself against. "The Arena goes further than the iPhone'' the people at LG are telling us. Maybe, but at first sight, how they resemble one another! Its tech spec is enough to make the Apple phone go green: 5 megapixels, MMS, micro SD card support, video capture, an SAR score 30% down on the Apple… What does it offer in practice? Where is its originality hidden?

A tastful metal finish



With a minimalist casing then, the Arena will certainly please the purists. Nothing to be said in terms of its finish or ergonomics. In contrast to the HGC Magic, which mixes a touch screen with physical buttons, the Arena goes for the total touch screen experience. Two physical buttons only are on the device, one for the volume setting and one for the camera: the memory card is hidden behind the bezel. In terms of handling, it’ll be noted for its lightness and well-proportioned line, although it would have been nice to have a few milimeters off the girth.

The Arena has a nice sensitive screen (the lightest touch is enough to enter your command) "only" 3 inches in size. It is very bright – brighter than the iPhone Edge – with a zoom similar to that on the iPhone (but slower and capricious!), and with nice contrast. Some will appreciate the compact format while others will regret the lack of surface area. Note however that the excellent definition (480 x 800 pixels) makes reading easier.

The Arena in practice

Like the competition, the Arena leads with its interface at the prow. In 3D and named the S-Class, it is supposed to give optimum navigation comfort.


Intuitive is the word and all manufacturers like to claim it. In this case it’s more or less true. Navigation is easy, it’s pretty fluid overall and with a nice design, which is no bad thing. You won’t need long to start embracing this new universe and it wont take you long to work out the menus: four virtual desktops (contacts, phot/music/video, widget, operator services) allow you rapid access to content. You can customise the parameters to a certain degree, but you’ll have to make do with the overly flashy colours (for our taste). But take a look at the video for a proper look round.

The famous 3D cube can’t be personalised

The menu in landscape

Although fluid, we did note several sluggish features on the device. When searching for a contact, there’s a slight latency when you have a full contacts list. These latencies mean that the Arena is a notch down on the HTC Magic or the iPhone in terms of fluidity. That said, the Arena does make the old interface look outdated. It also outdoes the Samsung Player Addict.

More compact than the iPhone or the Player Addict	The three phones in profile

The Arena has an accelerometer. Pretty responsive, but with a few latency problems all the same. Moreover, landscape mode is not available for all functions (eg. the audio player!).

As for the virtual keyboard, it is not the most precise and if you’re going to be using it a lot, you risk getting quickly irritated. The precision of the keys is really only so-so, and there’s some latency between keying a character and its appearance on-screen. There is a cut and paste function but it isn’t very practically set up: sometimes the cursor takes on a life of its own. As you can see, the Arena is far from being on a par with the Blackberry. But of course, the Arena is mostly targetted at the general consumer who’s looking for a little multimedia swiss army knife and not a super-comunicator smartphone.

Multimedia a gogo

Camera, video and audio player, an FM receiver and transmitter, GPS, dictaphone, MMS, the Arena is not short of functions and overall it does pretty well. Overall.


The photo quality is just about ok. In full daylight, it's fine but coarsens in darker conditions. And the miniflash is less than convincing - LED and not Xeno as specified on the box. The images are also better focussed in fuller light, although the focus is not particularly responsive. Photo customisation aficionados will be delighted to learn that there are many applications available allowing you, for example, to create a nice slideshow, or even touch up your photos. The zoom is also a good feature though we advise you not to push it too far as the images do get a bit noisy.

The video capture function is effective and gives good quality video. There’s a nice accelerate/decelerate function for the creation of original effects. Still on the video function, but as a player, the Arena supports DivX format. Unfortunately, LG has gone into reverse here: while the Renoir didn’t need a conversion tool, the Arena does. Real shame.

For the audio player, the usual remarks: you should replace the headphones if possible (there’s a jack socket, thanks LG!), and the sound itself is ok, pretty much what you get in the rest of this segment.

Multipoint, web and GPS...

The web experience is only so-so. The pages take time to upload and the display is not completely right. Of course, we tried the touch zoom feature allowed by the multipoint screen: we weren’t convinced; both slow and imprecise. As an LG executive told us, "this is not the same solution as with the iPhone". We can confirm it.

The Arena does have a GPS chip but not all mobile providers have this on tap yet. Of course it is possible to download a navigation system from the net. And if you were counting on Google Maps to help you out, then you should make sure your provider hasn’t taken the google pack out. Some providers do throttle the original LG installations…

The Arena is not as autonomous as it could be. It’s about average for this type of device with such a number of functions. It will last the day, just about.

The LG proprietary system: a lack of openness…

While the trend is towards the online boutique capable of supplying thousands of applicatons to customise your phone according to your needs, the Arena is confined to its own closed proprietary system. No one will welcome this lack of flexibility as only a few Java applications to be found here and there on the web can be downloaded onto the phone.

At a time when good open systems such as Android are appearing, the Arena could well suffer from this rigid OS. This is a real shame, especially as no "AppStore" has been planned, at least for quite a few months.