Hands on Demo of LG Arena at CTIA 2009

We got our hands on the Arena KM900 phone in the LG booth at CTIA and had a chance to play with it for a while. We must say we're pretty impressed. It's definitely not an iPhone killer by any stretch of the imagination, but it looks like a solid addition to the LG line of touchscreen phones. More impressions and video below.



The LG Arena is one of LG's flagship phones for the year, and it was recently launched in Europe. It's obvious that LG was trying to make the Arena look similar to the iPhone, with the black background home screen and square icons for programs and settings. The phone feels a little smaller than the iPhone, and certainly doesn't enjoy the same functionality that the iPhone does, but it's a nice little media phone. See for yourself:



Check the specs:

• 3-inch WVGA touchscreen


• 5 megapixel camera


• Dolby Mobile for Music


• WiFi


• GPS


• FM transmitter


• 8GB of storage


• TV-out connection

As you can see there are a lot of great features there to let you handle all the media you want and surf the web right on your phone. The 5MP camera is especially nice, too. However the thing that's most striking about the Arena is the new S-Class UI the phone is sporting. It's so responsive and fluid that it's quite a bit of fun to use. The navigation is extremely simple, with a 3D cube design that allows you to flit back and forth between menus.

The S-Class interface also has a small similarity to what we've seen of the Palm Pre UI because one of the cube screens includes a lot of little widgets that can be moved around and rearranged at your whim.

These simple UI changes that are reminiscent of both the iPhone and Palm Pre show that LG is trying to piggyback on the success of some of the big smartphones. But it has also resulted in an exceptionally easy-to-use phone with a fun interface and a ton of media capability. It's no iPhone, but it should please a lot of people out there.

For more on touchscreen phones, see the touchscreen phone review site. For more CTIA coverage and tech news, check the blogs:

AT&T to Offer Netbooks with Data Package

HTC Snap - Email's New Inner Circle

Opera in New Places

Nuvifone (finally) Spotted in the Wild (sort of)

Palm WebOS Early Access Extended to More Developers