LG Cookie: A touchscreen handset at a budget price

Touchscreen handsets have been around for quite some time. We have seen smartphones that can be operated using a stylus or our fingertips. However, the likes of iPhones, Nokia 5800, Nokia N97 (launched during last year's Nokia World) and Sony-Ericsson Xperia introduced a different kind of touchscreen experience.

In the past, LG had brought a couple of touchscreen cell phones, such as the KE850 Prada and KU990 Viewty. However, these are cellphones with virtual buttons. The buttons are placed in fixed location and we can rarely move them around, add them or hide them. By today's definition, touchscreen means that our cell phones can be customized to match our preference using the so-called widgets.

Widgets are part of the user interface. It can be a dialogue box, a button, a pop-up window, a pull-down menu, a window, a list of options, an icon, a menu bar or a form. It allows the user to interact with certain application or the operating system. These are not the static icons of the past. Widgets can also refer to the programs themselves.

Widget-based touchscreen cell phones still cost a lot. Sony-Ericsson Xperia, for example, still sells for almost Rp 8 million, while Nokia 5800 can be had for more than Rp 4 million.
LG tries to fill the space below these much touted touchscreen phones with its LG KP500 Cookie. LG has a reason to give its handset models names such as Chocolate and Cookie.
"Our research has shown that users feel closer to their handsets if the name is something that is related to what they enjoy consuming," said John Halim, Product Manager, LG Mobile Indonesia.

What is special about Cookie? At a glance, it looks like most other LG handsets. However, this has a widget-based touchscreen. It is smaller than Viewty but larger than LG Prada. It feels lightweight, too, because a lot of the casing is made of lighter material. Like LG Prada, it has only three hardware buttons below the screen - one for making the call, one for invoking the main menu and one for ending the call. The last one also serves as the power button.

The screen size is 3 inches, which provides plenty of space. The internal memory is 48 MB, but Cookie has an external slot for a MicroSD card. We can boost the memory up to 8 GB, which I think highly unnecessary. Like many of the more expensive cell phones, the LG Cookie has an accelerometer, too. If the screen is cluttered after you move the widgets around, just shake the device and everything will be neatly aligned. The stylus can be used for handwriting, too.

I was unable to test the handwriting capability because my handwriting is one of the least illegible in the world - my wife will tell you that. I especially like the virtual QWERTY keyboard for sending text messages. We need to hold the device in the landscape position to make it appear on the screen. The accelerometer can be used to play the games, too.

Because of the emphasis on affordability, LG Mobile had to cut some corners. First, although this is a quad-band GSM and 2.5G cellphone, it does not support 3G, let alone 3.5G. It does not have Wi-Fi capability, either. The 3.2 MP camera does not have autofocus or a flash, so there is not much to talk about in this area.

But if you want a cell phone that will keep you occupied for a long time trying out to customize the screens, the LG Cookie is a decent cell phone that you can buy without having to skip your lunches for one year.