The five-minute fiddle: LG BL40 ('New Chocolate')

Those of you that have been reading my mini-mini-reviews of devices (the ‘five-minute fiddle’ series), will I’m sure be pleased to know that I’ve had a little hands-on time now with the LG BL40m – aka the ‘New Chocolate’.

So what’s the New Choc like then? Well,

Screen – hey, we gotta take that first – it’s enormous – well, wide anyway. It’s the screen that gives the device it’s distinctive (read: long) form-factor, and for the most part it’s good, display-wise. Colours are bright and sharp – important from a device that is being touted as widescreen for use with movies

Touch-sensitivity – it’s a capacitance screen (which I like), but the sensitivity isn’t quite as good as the iPhone – practically that translates in to occasional missed button presses on-screen. It’s not a serious problem, just irritating, especially for things like typing

Build quality – seems very good overall – can’t fault it

Speed of O/S – Yurgh – it’s a a little dopey, and surprisingly, not 100% smoothly animated. If you are going to animate the whole screen by rolling icons around, or putting multiple homescreens on a 3D cube, you’d better animate well! Disappointing…

O/S ease of use – it’s pretty self-explanatory after you get used to the structure of the homescreens and menu icon. Quirks are that each individual row of icons can be spun along/round, rather than the whole screen. Usable, but there are a LOT of icons!

Auto-screen-rotate – works OK. Not amazing

Media-handling – the pre-loaded film trailers were REALLY badly encoded, and whilst the picture was great, the sound was terrible. However, this shouldn’t reflect badly on the device, and my impression is that doing what the device was primarily designed for, which is watching movies, it will be pretty good. The widescreen really stands out for proper movie formatting…

Conclusion: I might have it as a second device if I were a movie buff that wanted to carry a lot of films with me, and do some occasional texting/calls. Not outstanding, but not terrible – looking forward to a follow-up device to see what they do with that!

Overall rating: Ambivalent

Grade: C (if not a movie buff) / B (if you watch a lot of movies)

lg-bl40

So what’s the BL40 like then? Well:

Screen – hey, we gotta take that first – it’s enormous – well, wide anyway. It’s the screen that gives the device it’s distinctive (read: long) form-factor, and for the most part it’s good, display-wise. Colours are bright and sharp – important from a device that is being touted as widescreen for use with movies
Touch-sensitivity – it’s a capacitance screen (which I like), but the sensitivity isn’t quite as good as the iPhone – practically that translates in to occasional missed button presses on-screen. It’s not a serious problem, just irritating, especially for things like typing
Build quality – seems very good overall – can’t fault it
Speed of UI – Yurgh – it’s a a little dopey, and surprisingly, not 100% smoothly animated. If you are going to animate the whole screen by rolling icons around, or putting multiple homescreens on a 3D cube, you’d better animate well! Disappointing…
UI ease of use – it’s pretty self-explanatory after you get used to the structure of the homescreens and menu icon. Quirks are that each individual row of icons can be spun along/round, rather than the whole screen. Usable, but there are a LOT of icons!
Auto-screen-rotate – works OK. Not amazing
Media-handling – the pre-loaded film trailers were REALLY badly encoded, and whilst the picture was great, the sound was terrible. However, this shouldn’t reflect badly on the device, and my impression is that doing what the device was primarily designed for, which is watching movies, it will be pretty good. The widescreen really stands out for proper movie formatting…

Overall rating: Ambivalent

Grade: C (if not a movie buff) / B (if you watch a lot of movies)

[Image via: LG]

About The Author

Ben Robinson

Ben is a 10+ year veteran of the Mobile industry – starting his career when SMS was a still a relatively new concept for most people (!), he has now consulted on everything from bleeding-edge Mobile content, to the next-gen accessories you might view it on. As a result he has a broad and deep knowledge in numerous areas of Mobile – from network operators to device vendors, to infrastructure and middleware vendors (not to mention content delivery) – and has worked for companies in all of these areas! He is based in the UK, a hotbed of activity for mobile, and recently became a father for the second time – as oppose to in his younger years when he was happy spend time tweaking all manner of mobile devices to 'nth' degree, he now looks for services and hardware that provide the most efficient, compact, and reliable improvements to his already manic life! It’s his opinion that Mobile solutions should be there to help to make your life better – if a particular solution (be it service or device) isn’t doing this, he believes you need to ask the very important question of why you continue to use it... His focus at IntoMobile is mainly on Mobile content, services, and infrastructure, particularly as regards the UK market – and with the occasional look at devices. Additionally, using his extensive experience in the industry, he will provide commentary on the industry at large, with regular (and hopefully thought-provoking) articles.