hovers.org » Mobile http://www.hovers.org Independent reviews Thu, 11 Feb 2010 09:12:45 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.0.1 LG BL40 New Chocolate http://www.hovers.org/lg-bl40-new-chocolate/ http://www.hovers.org/lg-bl40-new-chocolate/#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 14:27:12 +0000 admin http://www.hovers.org/?p=358 LG BL40 New Chocolate is a touchscreen cell phone with excellent photography features, unique design and DivX/XviD support right out of the box. Moreover, the phone has accelerometer for screen auto rotation and motion based games. The list of LG BL40 New Chocolate’s features is really really long, so read on.

LG BL40 New Chocolate pros:

+ 4.01″ 16M-color capacitive touchscreen of 21:9 aspect ratioLG BL40 New Chocolate thumb
+ Quad-band GSM support and UMTS with HSDPA 7.2 Mbps
+ S-Class Touch UI with pinch zooming and gesture controls
+ Office document viewer
+ VGA@30fps video recording
+ 1.1GB of internal memory, microSD expansion
+ GPS receiver with A-GPS support and WisePilot satnav app
+ Bluetooth v2.1 with A2DP, microUSB port, TV out
+ Standard 3.5mm audio jack
+ 5-megapixel autofocus camera, Schneider-Kreuznach certified optics, LED flash,

LG BL40 New Chocolate cons:

- Hard to use single-handedly
- Video recording output is very poor
- Piano black surface is a fingerprint magnet
- Web browser with no Flash support


The design:
LG BL40 New Chocolate measures 128 x 51 x 10.9 mm and weighs 129 grams which is quite reasonable. The phone is made of black and shiny plastic (hence the name). The front of the phone is dominated by the 4.01-inch display. Above the display you can find the video-call camera and the earpiece/loudspeaker along with Th.e proximity and ambient light sensors. The right side do the LG BL40 New Chocolate houses the volume rocker and the shutter release button. The left side of the LG phone features dedicated music player button and the microUSB port. The top of the LG BL40 New Chocolate houses the standard 3.5 mm audio jack and power/lock key. The back hosts the 5-megapixel camera lens, microphone for video recording and a LED flash unit. The lens has no protection so you have to be extra careful not to scratch it. The overall build quality is commendable and although the phone might seem a bit too heavy it handles nicely as it is very well balanced.

LG BL40 New Chocolate

Performance:
The LG BL40 New Chocolate has quite a powerful battery which according to LG will last for about 400 hours of standby and 6 hours of talking. The user interface on the latest LG phone is seamless and full of pretty transitions, animations and colorful icons. Additionally, thanks to the built-in accelerometer the screen auto rotates and you can also make use of the touchscreen gestures to run applications or unlock the screen. The interface still looks like a cube with one side responsible for all the widgets, one serving as multimedia home-screen, one for contacts and the last one for shortcuts. Everything’s touch optimized and since the LG BL40 New Chocolate supports multitasking you can organize your work pretty efficiently.



Multimedia:
The LG BL40 New Chocolate has a built-in 1 GB memory further expandable via the microSD memory cards (up to 32GB). Getting to your files is smooth even you you have a few hundred photos, or songs. The image gallery has nice transitions and you can zoom in on the photos with pinching. The music player supports plenty of file formats, visualizations, equalizers so you get all you might require for a music player. The audio quality is very good, both using the built-in loudspeaker and headphones. The video player is really surprising. It manages to play full resolution DivX and Xvid videos (even 720p) without any effort. Thanks to the 4-inch screen the videos look great, but if that’s not enough the LG BL40 New Chocolate has the TV-out functionality. The LG BL40 New Chocolate’s digital camera is capable of shooting 2560×1920 photos. With features such as smile detection, geo-tagging, image stabilization, autofocus and panorama there is really little more you might expect. The image quality is good, with accurate color reproduction, little noise and sharp images.

Selected LG BL40 New Chocolate features and specifications:

  • General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 1900/2100 MHz, EDGE class 10, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps

Touchscreen bar

  • Platform: Latest S-Class UI
  • Memory: 1GB internal memory

microSD card slot

  • Camera: 5-megapixels auto-focus camera with Schneider-Kreuznach lens,

LED flash,
geo-tagging,
image stabilization,
face detection,
Smile Shot,
Blink detection,
Intelligent shot,
Beauty and Art shot,
VGA video recording at 30 fps

  • Connectivity: Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP,

standard microUSB port,
GPS receiver with A-GPS,

  • Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate,

Proximity sensor for screen auto-turn-off,
FM radio with RDS,
FM transmitter,
Dolby mobile,
TV out,
multi-touch input,
office document viewer

Other recently reviewed mobile phones:

HTC Magic, LG GD900 Crystal, Nokia 3720 classic, Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, Sony Ericsson C901, Nokia 6600i slide, Acer beTouch E200, HTC Touch2, Nokia 6760 slide, Sony Ericsson Satio

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