[Review] LG KF750 Secret

The Secret is a slimline HSDPA slider with a palm-pleasing heft under the Black Label Series from LG.

LG is keener on bringing out high-end devices. The cat is out of the bag! And up next in the high-end gadget from LG is the latest KF750 Secret. The phone is named “Secret,” presumably because its slide-out conventional keyboard seems to be a well-kept secret. Made from glass-and-carbon fibre, the ultra thin handset has a 5-megapixel camera and special software to create one’s own music videos. At 11.9mm in thickness the Secret will be the slimmest 5-megapixel camera phone on the market.

The handset itself is constructed using carbon fibre, tempered glass, an accelerometer and ‘Neon Touch Panel’ featuring a ‘mystifying blue navigation light’.

Pros: Sturdy yet slim construction; solid build quality; 3G with HSDPA; video-recording features; supports DivX up to VGA resolution; fun preloaded motion games.

Cons: Limited touchscreen functionality; Poor sunlight legibility; glossy surfaces attract fingerprints; below-average performance for a non-smart phone.

Peripheral Design

On the front, it hosts the earpiece, the ambient light sensor and the video call camera. Below the earpiece is the LG KF750 Secret’s 2.4″ display of QVGA resolution with 240×320-pixel.

On the left side of the handset we find the universal USB port and the lanyard eyelet.

There are four keys on the right side of the handset. They include a volume rocker, the touch media key, the shortcut menu key and the camera button.

The back side of LG KF750 Secret features the 5 megapixel camera, the LED flash and the AF assist light. The AF assist light is really of help when shooting in dark environments. The battery cover is made of carbon fiber and it looks really well (at least to some of us). By the looks of it, you might expect some rough surface, but it actually feels like glass to touch. That way touching it harmonizes nicely with the front panel which is entirely covered by glass.

Under the carbon fiber back cover of LG KF750 Secret lies the 800 mAh Li-ion battery quoted at 260 hours of stand-by time and 4 hours of talk-time.

LG Secret’s coolest part – The Touch media

A really cool part of the LG KF750 Secret interface is the Touch media menu. It is enabled by pressing the dedicated key on the right side of the handset. It is the only menu where you actually get to use the touch screen capabilities of the KF750.

The Touch media grants you instant access to the music player, picture gallery, document viewer, FM radio and the M-toy application. Those are all features that can be launched via the regular menu but when accessed with Touch media they have different interface. It is optimized for easier touch operation. We have to note that the touch screen only reacts to finger-touch so it’s fool-proof against accidental presses in your pocket.

In this Touch media menu, you can listen to music, browse photos, play games, read documents and tune in to FM radio.

5 MP Camera & Video capabilities

LG KF750 Secret flaunts a 5 megapixel camera with auto focus. It also sports face detection, AF assist light and LED flash. The camera user interface uses the same black and white color scheme. There are 7 different scene modes for shooting with the LG KF750 Secret: Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Night, Beach, Sports, and Party.

The LG KF750 Secret has borrowed several intriguing features form the LG Viewty such as the DivX playback and 120 fps QVGA video recording. The camera is capable of recording videos up to 120 frames per second for shooting slow-motion videos. There’s now even an option to shoot QVGA “fast videos”. The end result is a fancy clip that plays back faster than the usual speed.

As a camera-phone with video recording capabilities, the Secret is actually quite entertaining to use. There’s also a host of post-editing features for those who like to tinkle around with their works. Regrettably, there’s no Xenon flash and you can shoot only QVGA resolution motion images at the maximum 120fps (or VGA videos at 30fps). The Secret also supports DivX playback in VGA quality. So you can upload AVI format clips directly to the phone without any conversion.

Themes and Gallery

There are two pre-installed themes – the simple and classy black and a more playful white. The black theme offers the traditional grid menu style and a 3D rotation. That second one might be a bit more eye-pleasing but the first definitely wins on usability. The white theme has the grid and list view modes to pick from.

The gallery of LG KF750 Secret excels in both functionality and user-friendliness. In fact there are two gallery applications – one accessible through the My stuff icon in the main menu and another via the Touch media menu. The first offers two view modes: thumbnail with 9 thumbs on screen, and list view with only 7 file names with tiny thumbs displayed.

Some Notable Features

Picsel File Viewer scores a point for the LG KF750 Secret. Built-in Picsel document reader is capable of handling all popular document formats – .xls, .doc and .pdf – and once again can be accessed from two different menus. When you launch it from the Touch media menu, it is touch operated and we find this much more convenient, especially when browsing larger documents. In addition, it has nice interface and good functionality

Auto Rotating Display

Features

* Motion sensor driver screen adjustor
* Vertical or horizontal screen change for better view

LG Secret’s display technology offers easy screen size adjustment and horizontal or vertical rotation of the screen depending on hand movement. Using the motion sensor, the phone automatically adjusts to whether you are viewing video clips or documents.

Preloaded LG Games with Pretty Interesting Accelerometer Games

There are three games preinstalled on LG KF750 Secret: GrandGolf, SudokuPuzzle and M-Toy.

The GrandGolf is a Java interpretation of the popular game. It is comparatively easy to play and if you like such games it just might be worth your time. There isn’t much to tell about the SudokuPuzzle game either. There are three difficulty levels, which should be enough for different types of users.

Finally the M-toy game is a set of 6 mini-games, which put the built-in accelerometer to use. We found them entertaining enough and the accelerometer response really precise.

The six games that are part of the M-Toy application are Dart, Homerun Derby, Magic Ball, Hammer, Maze, and Fishing. Dart is a darts game where you send your darts flying by swinging the handset itself. The Homerun Derby is a baseball batting game where you play as the batter unleashing your bat again by swinging the handset.

Then there’s the Hammer, where you play a hammer thrower – swinging the handset around builds up power before you finally release the hammer with the D-pad. The Maze game includes navigating a ball around an increasingly complex maze.

Then there’s the Fishing game, where you play as the angler controlling your fishing rod – you are responsible of swinging your rod to the right place and then reeling back the fishing line once you have a fish on your hook.

And finally, the Magic Ball is pretty self explanatory – the Magic 8-Ball is a well-known yes/no fortune telling game.

Miscellany

* With Haptic Feedback , The touch keys look mesmerizing with electric blue concentric circles radiating outward whenever they are touched and the haptic feedback lets you know when it registers your finger taps.
* File manager of the Secret handles user-created folders. There are even built-in clients for uploading pictures straight to your blog at blogger.com and videos to YouTube.
* As far as network connectivity is concerned, the phone features GPRS and EDGE, topped with 3G. HSDPA comes as a welcome bonus to make sure the Secret is well geared in terms of fast data transfers. Finally we’ve got the hot-swap memory card slot.
* LG KF750 Secret’s web browser is pleasing. It offers good page rendering and even the most elaborate web pages have little trouble fitting on the screen. Plus, with the optimized rendering mode text is even easier to read. The downside is that the page no longer looks as if browsed on PC.
* An interesting but questionably useful organizer application is the Date finder. It can instantly tell you what day of the week any given date will be. It can also tell you the date after a given number of days. So if you are wondering what date it will be 90 days after today you can check that out at the expense of only a few clicks with the Secret.

On a closing note…

Not more, not less! Sophisticated looks and exclusive bodywork have unfailingly implied a no-thrills performance. That may as well be the Secret about LG KF750. The connectivity options of LG KF750 Secret are enough to suit almost any taste. On almost every occasion its performance lives up to the promise of the specs sheet.

With a solid overall performance, it provides optimal features you would look out in a high end device.

LG Secret is priced at Rs. 18990/-