LG BL20 review

LG's Chocolate range of devices has been a great success for the Korean manufacturer and the recent LG BL20 handset launched in India is a budget friendly device priced at Rs. 13,990 to target the younger generation.

The LG BL20 slider phone is comparatively smaller in size than that of LG BL40; however, it takes elements of its styling from the original LG Chocolate, the KG800. Although it has a much more refined, glossy finish.

The front panel of this device comprises an average-sized, but crystal clear 240x320 pixels, 2.4-inch screen. You can find a series of touch sensitive keys below the screen. Each key gives haptic feedback, ensuring you know when a button has responded.

Then you can find two menu keys at the top, four directional keys below with a central select key and shortcuts to the alarm clock and menu at the bottom of the front panel. These keys are also all well spaced, although some were more responsive to our touch than others.

You can slide the screen up to expose the panel of number keys. These are arranged in four rows, with a metal band separating each row. The whole keypad is constructed from one piece of flexible plastic, meaning as you press each key, the surrounding keys move too.

Like any super-shiny devices on the market, the LG BL20 is a fingerprint magnet. Thanks to its high-gloss rear plate and seamless front panel, you only need to hover your finger over any of the keys to magically watch an exact imprint of your digit appear.

A cleaning cloth would be welcomed if it was bundled in the box, although a less glossy, or fingerprint repelling casing would be a much better option.

Away from the hardware, the interface on the LG BL20 is bright and clear. Large icons make up the menu grid, and each of these expand in size when highlighted, hiding part of the description text for the icon above.

Although you won't find a huge range of preinstalled applications, Yahoo Search has been included by LG. Multimedia is the LG BL20's forte. For a mid-priced handset (Rs. 13,990), a 5 megapixel camera is something quite surprising.

Although the pictures aren't as impressive as on a specialised camera phone such as the Sony Ericsson Satio, the Schneider Kreuznach lens does a good job when it comes to taking photos in bright environments.

Autofocus and a flash are also welcome additions, but don't expect to get a whole lot of detail in photos that are forced to use the flash.

Connectivity-wise, the LG BL20 is well specced too. Although there's no Wi-Fi, HSDPA does make an appearance, but only up to 3.6Mbps. Plus, there's 60MB of internal memory, and it'll take microSD cards up to 16GB.

The LG BL20 supports Flash Lite, which is another pleasing sight to see. What isn't so appealing is that the refresh rates of many of the preinstalled flash-based wallpapers are so slow, it's jerky.

The LG BL20 is clearly a device designed for its looks rather than functionality. Although this is the case for the whole Chocolate series, the LG BL40 was a lot better specced than this, despite its size issues.

There's nothing that blows us away with the LG BL20 and the greasy fingerprinting is just too annoying even for a good-looking device.