Cell Review: LG BL40

The delectable BL40 is one sweet “chocolate bar” for you to look at but luxury always has its price.

THERE is a new flavour in LG’s Chocolate series phones and it comes in the form of the BL40.

The BL40 comes in an elongated, smooth and glossy black housing with silver lining running around the body that makes it simply delicious (pun intended) just to look at.

You could probably put it side-by-side with an actual 150g chocolate bar and somebody will probably pick up the wrong dark “chocolate” to eat :-)

The phone does not bank on its looks alone as it also boasts a 4in capacitive touch screen with 21:9 aspect ratio, multi-touch capability, TV out and DivX/XviD support, along with Dolby mobile plus an FM transmitter.

The main benefit of the 21:9 screen ratio is the absence of the black bars at the top and bottom of the screen when viewing content in this format.

Black and red

The BL40’s housing comprises glossy plastic and tempered scratch-resistant surface glass.

Its touchscreen dominates the phone’s front with no access button at all.

When it is on, the display is bright and vibrant, with colours that seem to pop right off the screen. However, under bright sunlight all that turns almost invisible.

Also both the display and glossy body are prone to fingerprint smudges. Our advice is to keep that wiping cloth nearby.

Both ends sport an identical bright red plastic cover — sort of a mirror image of each other. When you look from afar — with the display switched off — you will not be able to tell which side is up and which is the bottom if not for the headphone jack and power key located at the top end.

SPOT THE DIFFERENCE: Both ends sport an identical bright
red plastic cover — sort of mirror image of each other. The
top part has the power button and 3.5mm headphone jack.

The right side is where the volume and camera keys are located.

While on the left resides a dedicated music key that takes users straight to their tunes stored in the phone.

There is also a built-in microUSB port, which is for transferring data and charging the phone. It is protected by a plastic latch that doubles as the lock for the battery cover.

This means you need to unlock the USB port latch before you can open the battery cover. The microSD card slot is hidden under the battery cover but the good news is you don’t have to remove the battery to slot in or swap the card.

Fast but...

The BL40 ships with the updated S-Class user interface and it feels fast with the Qualcomm processor onboard.

It also offers plenty of eye-candy in the form of slick transition animations, which are nice to see at first but they get pretty old after awhile.

As mentioned above, the screen supports multi-touch so you can pinch to zoom when viewing images or webpages.

The homescreens are divided into Contacts, Widgets, Multimedia and Shortcut for users to fill up with their favourite shortcuts and widgets.

It also supports gesture commands so while the screen is locked users can simply draw a shape on it to open up an application — for instance “M” for messaging; a circle for the browser and so on.

For data input, users can use the virtual alphanumeric keypad in portrait mode or the Qwerty version in landscape mode. Despite the latter being slightly bigger, the keyboard still feels cramped to use especially if you have big index fingers.

We also noticed the predictive text system doesn’t seem to be that accurate when providing alternative words.

Plus, be prepared to delve deep into a different menu when you need to add a symbol into your message.

Having said that, although the virtual keyboard is not really top-notch, it still good enough to register even with a light tap.

Also in the landscape mode — thanks to its wide-screen display — you will get a split screen when viewing received SMSes or e-mail. It similar to what you would find on the Microsoft Outlook app.

This enables you to flick through the inbox in a window while reading a message or an e-mail in the other.

However we noticed that the orientation tends to get stuck in the landscape mode more often than not. We found that we had to give the phone a vigourous shake whenever that happened.

Fun stuff

The BL40 comes with a decent multimedia player which supports MP3, WAV and eAAC+ audio as well as MPEG4, DivX, XviD and H.263 video formats. We were able to view most of our DivX videos on the phone but XviD playback tended to be more selective.

As it also supports the TV-out feature, you can connect the phone to a HDTV for a bigger viewing experience. The cable is optional.

CAPTURE THIS: The BL40 boasts a 5-megapixel shooter with
Schneider-Kreuznach lens, autofocus, a LED flash and
built-in shooting modes to help users take good photos.

The 5-megapixel camera comes with autofocus and a LED flash. It shoots still photos at up to 2,560 x 1,920-pixel resolution and has plenty of built-in assistance to take better photos, including image stabilisation, face tracking as well as blink- and smile-detection.

Overall, we found the camera user interface to be quite intuitive and easy to use. If you go into the settings, a digital dial (like on top of a DSLR camera) will appear for you to turn around to select more options. This includes several shooting modes, self-timer and colour effects.

Colour reproduction in the photos looks pleasant and almost natural with decent levels of detail especially under bright sunlight.

The phone also records video in VGA mode at up to 30 frames per second. But we were let down by the final product as the quality turned out to be rather disappointing.

Also available are plenty of fun games that make use of the phone’s accelerometer as well as the microphone.

The phone has 1.1GB of internal memory, which can be further extended via the external microSD slot that supports up to 32GB cards.

The battery on the BL40 lasted about two days with regular use.

A final bite

The BL40 looks great but we found it to be too glossy for its own good as it is one big fingerprint and smudge magnet.

The phone does have plenty of interesting features, including a nice screen, enhanced multimedia playback, good camera and dual-screen capabilties when in landscape mode.

Having said that, the problems with the virtual keyboard, being stuck in landscape mode and complicated UI are some of the annoyances that a user needs to get used to.

The high price tag also sours the deal somewhat but if you don’t mind shelling out RM2,199, the LG BL40 sure is an attractive conversation piece.

Pros: Trendy design; 21:9 aspect ratio screen; DivX and XviD playback; dual-screen in landscape mode.

Cons: Smudge nightmare; problematic virtual keyboard; frequently gets stuck in landscape modeends.

LG BL40
HSDPA touchscreen phone
CAMERA: 5-megapixels with LED flash
DISPLAY: 4in TFT capacitive touchscreen with 21:9 aspect ratio and 800 x 345-pixels resolution, multitouch support, scratch resistant glass
MESSAGING: MMS, SMS, E-mail
CONNECTIVITY: Bluetooth, HSDPA, WiFi
PHONE MEMORY: 1.1GB
EXPANSION SLOT: microSD
BATTERY TYPE: 1,000mAh
STANDBY/TALK TIME: 15 days/5 hours
OTHER FEATURES: S-Class UI, A-GPS, geotagging, image stabilisation, VGA recording, accelerometer, proximity sensor, FM radio with RDS, FM transmitter, DivX/XviD support, Dolby mobile, TV out, multi-touch input and office document viewer
DIMENSIONS (W x H x D): 128 x 51 x 10.9mm
WEIGHT: 129g