LG Cookie

Full Review

The LG Cookie (also known as the KP 500) is a phone with a noble purpose. It attempts to give users a full-touch interface at an affordable price. It succeeds to an extent by being a light-weight phone with a well-designed interface but also manages to fall short on certain fronts.

Design & Usability

Although, the Cookie does not sport an extra-flashy design, it fits the part of a slim, smart-looking phone. The model we received had a brown plastic body with a red band running on all sides.  The phone is very light and in fact is one of the lightest phones that we have reviewed for a long time. A large 3.0 inch display and three buttons are set in the front. We especially liked the screen since not only was it able to display 256K colors but was also easy to clean off fingerprints from. However, under sunlight, the screen looked dull. The phone comes packaged with a data cable, a charger, a pair of earphones that plug into the Cookie’s proprietary port, a manual and a CD that contains the LG PC Suite.

The (LG Cookie) is very light and in fact is one of the lightest phones that we have reviewed for a long time.

Okay, now since the Cookie is a fully touch-based device, the most important thing it would have to pull off is an intuitive and efficient control system. At first glance, things are good; the main menu sports large icons which can be used to open applications with just a slight touch. You can further choose among two welcome screens- one that displays a number of widgets including ones for global time, a calendar, sticky notes, a shortcut for the music player, a picture slideshow and finally an FM radio. The other screen lets you display shortcuts for nine contacts that you can call or message or edit details of with just a few touches. Switching between the two screens requires a swipe.  The problem arises when you go beyond the welcome screen and especially into certain apps. For example, for messaging the phone lets you choose either between a normal alpha-numeric keypad and a full QWERTY one (if you tilt the phone to the side). First of all, the phone takes a few seconds too many to switch between the different input methods. Also, in this case, the accelerometer isn’t very sensitive and at times we had to tilt the phone again and again to get the QWERTY keypad to come up. Plus, the keys in this mode aren’t very conducive for typing with thumbs since they are really small. As a result we were often pressing keys we didn’t want to.

Multimedia

The Cookie has an integrated 3MP camera which is also able to shoot videos. The photos that came out were quite average and appeared muted with respect to colors. The good was that for a 3MP camera, the images had relatively little noise and there are a number of settings you can mess around with. Strangely all images that we took came out hazy either under tube lights or in natural light. The camera does not have auto-focus or a flash so shooting in macro mode or in low-light was pointless. The videos we recorded with the phone cam were also just about passable. Music playback is quite good but you are forced to use the packaged earphones thanks to the proprietary port that LG phones utilize.

Bottom Line

The LG Cookie is priced at Rs. 5,200 and at that price, a fully touch based device is a good buy. However, the Cookie is hampered by an erratic touch based system and below average imaging capabilities.