the technologist

Is it just me, or has Korean cell phone (and consumer electronics) manufacturer LG quietly crept into the market and stole a bit of thunder from the Nokias, Apples, and Motorolas of the world?

With the release of the Chocolate and enV series of phones recently, LG has managed to deliver cell-phones with the right balance of features, form factor, and sex appeal to strike a chord with American consumers. The Chocolate has been a fashionable hit among those looking for style with a decent amount of substance to boot while the enV has proven a worthwhile alternative to Blackberries, iPhones, and other devices that generally require at least an extra $40/month in data plan fees on top of the bare minimum $40/month you already pay just to have a working cell-phone these days, whereas the enV does not.

(Disclaimer: I just bought the enV and think it’s pretty slick).

But, when discussing iPhone alternatives in terms of features that are glaring omissions in Apple’s uberphone yet present (and even refined) in many of its competitors, it always comes back to the ogle factor, and nothing has touched the iPhone in that department in the 8 months the marketplace has had time to concoct a worthy adversary. The Chocolate and enV are nice, but the iPhone is still in another league in terms of the marriage of design and functionality, despite its primitive flaws (no cut and paste??).

I believe all of that changes, however, when LG releases this bad boy, the KU990, just recently reported on Engadget:

Those are soft-key numbers on a screen…the only dedicated buttons are the end, home, and send (not shown above). An excerpt from the Engadget report:

The German IFA show at the end of the month will mark its coming out party seeing the KU990 dressed up in a 5.1 megapixel shooter with Schneider-Kreuznach lens, image stabilization (likely digital), auto focus, 120fps video, and ISO 800 sensitivity. Sure, the camera is nice and all, but this pup is packing a 3-inch, 240 x 400 touchscreen riding on 3G HSDPA data.

Apple has appeared a tad vulnerable lately. Grumblings around the blogosphere can be heard, calling the iMac update pedestrian and the latest build of the upcoming Leopard OS still buggy as hell (too many to make their once-revised October release date with their usual robust claims of stability? only time will tell…).

UPDATE:  This August 20th AppleInsider report of a new seed of Leopard just released to developers offers hope to those disheartened by the survey released last week that served as the impetus for negative speculation surrounding Leopard’s stability and speed.

Couple that with a steeper-than-expected decay on the initial iPhone hype and one could even say Apple (gasp!) has stumbled slightly.

“Slightly” being the operative word as they are still eating marketshare on the Mac side like it’s…uhhh…their job.

Yet it still seems that they bought a bit too much into their own mystique in designing the iPhone, not realizing that some of the sacrifices to be made to allow for the all touch-screen interface were actually features that many consider must-haves on cell phones today, such as the ability to send SMS messages to multiple recipients or to input directly from the home-screen.

LG has swiped a bit of the sheer elegance of the iPhone, but added a few much needed dedicated buttons that solve the menu-navigation maladies many cite when trying to adjust volume or change songs on their iPhone when on a call or browsing the web. They have a touch-screen of comparable specs to the iPhone’s and have dramatically upped the ante with both the 3G data network support and the 5MP camera.

The camera might be the most noteworthy inclusion as it contains a real lens with image stabilization, auto focus, and sensitivity up to ISO 800 - all features that could add up to viable point-and-shoot replacement, even in nighttime scenarios (where cell-phone cameras fail universally).

In the face of all other scrunity, though, the one advantage that Apple continually (and legitimately) touts regarding the iPhone is the superior software they have designed. It’s like that the LG still will not match the iPhone in the ease of use or sheer prettiness factors, but at the end of the day, if I have to deal with a slightly inferior menu system to gain a superior product with all of the basic features I come to expect as well as the up-to-the-second list of extras…that’s a trade-off I’m willing to make.

It’s only coming to Germany and the UK initially, so it may actually hit the markets there in time to steal a bit of the iPhone’s thunder before Apple can even release the iPhone in Europe. No word yet on plans for a stateside release for the KU990, but if this lives up to the spec sheet, it may very well be the first legitimate challenger to the iPhone we have seen so far - in all respects.

Stumble it!

~ by Kent Francisco on August 21, 2007.