LG Officially Outs Arena, Sticks Out Tongue at iPhone

During LG’s Q&A session at Mobile World Congress, one gutsy press member fully called out the officially-launched Arena as an iPhone clone, as insinuated when some pictures leaked earlier this month. While it’s not a far shot, the Arena does have a few tricks that set it apart from Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s popular handset. For one, home screen icons slide left and right, allowing you access to larger groups of applications without having to change pages. The new 3D S-Class UI makes for some other interesting additions, like Rolodex-style contact browsing, and a cube layout for quick shortcut access. This OS will be making the rounds to other high-end LG handsets, but as stated earlier, LG is entirely comfortable supporting a multitude operating systems. Specs for the Arena include:

• 3″ WVGA touchscreen
• 3.5mm headphone jack
• 8 GB of internal storage, plus microSD slot
• DivX, Xvid support
• Wi-Fi, GPS
• HSDPA 7.2
• 105.9 x 55.3 x 11.95mm

Call it a knock-off if you must, but from what we saw, LG managed to pull together a fluid, interesting and different user interface while still tapping something folks are already familiar with.