LG BL40 Chocolate review

LG has launched its latest high-end smartphone into the Indian market: the luxurious LG BL40 Chocolate.

The LG BL40's tall design means two things; a lot of information stacked up in portrait mode, or an incredibly wide screen in landscape mode - that is ideal for web browsing or video playback (in true movie 2.35:1 widescreen, as against normal 16:9).

LG has adapted the S-Class user interface and certain applications offer split-screen views for certain tasks, like messaging, allowing you to view threaded conversations and see contacts at the same time.

The phone also looks incredibly slick, which is why it is a member of the Black Label range LG uses whenever it comes up with something that, let's be honest, is traditionally used for models that put style over substance. Those good looks come at a price, though: the LG BL40 Chocolate's ticket price is a whopping Rs 30,000.

The last Black Label model was the Secret, which turned out to be a letdown when you looked beyond its funky mix of carbon fibre and scratch-proof display. One of the key disappointments with the Secret was its camera, and the Chocolate includes the same 5-megapixel resolution, so has it improved? We'll talk about that later on.

Everything about the phone is minimalist, excluding its height, with few buttons on the side and a nice mix of red at the top and bottom. It certainly does look more like a bar of chocolate than the first Chocolate phone, but do you want something that looks like a bar of Dairy Milk, or a phone?

Using the phone highlights the first real problem, which is having to navigate the tall display. If you're holding the phone in one hand, intending to use your thumb to control things, you simply won't be able to do it. In landscape mode, you have no choice but to use both hands to hold it firmly.

Landscape mode probably isn't going to be used that often, and a menu with 32 on-screen icons showing at once is, frankly, ludicrous. With no text description for each icon, you'll need to spend a while to recognise them all and when you change the theme, the designs change so you'll need to start over. The upside is that you can place widgets, contacts and other media on a range of panels - and the large screen does at least make this look better than other S-Class models, like the Crystal or Arena.

Unless you're watching films or surfing the net, portrait will do just fine. It isn't that great at playing movies anyway, dropping frames on high-bitrate content. Considering the potential to show films in a true cinema widescreen format, it's another disappointment. Play lower-resolution videos and everything will be fine, but compared to the media player on the iPhone, there's a long way to go.

Incidentally the LG BL40 comes bundled with stcks of exclusive content from James Cameron's new blockbuster Avatar - if you like looking at state-of-the-art 3D motion pictures on a mobile phone.

The web browser fares a little better, with pages looking good in landscape mode - if you don't mind the need to scroll up and down, but there are many rendering issues. Overlapping columns and a failure to scroll properly means the browser has just as far to go as the media player to compete with Safari or the Android Chrome browser.

So, what of the camera? Can this save the Chocolate from being another phone for the fashion set only? Well, as a 5-megapixel camera (which is starting to look quite dated, compared to the many 8-megapixel and now 12-megapixel handsets on sale now, or very soon) there were no nasty surprises, and the photos are pretty decent. It's a definite improvement on the disappointing Secret, with the tiny LED flash now doing a surprisingly decent job. This probably makes a lot of the difference for all-round performance, maintaining a good colour balance and reduced noise in low-light situations.

The phone can also capture video, but there are two important points to make; firstly, it doesn't record widescreen video, which is an odd move by LG considering the screen shape, and secondly, it is limited to VGA resolution, so forget about it taking on Samsung's i8910 HD and capturing 1280x720 pixel high-definition video.

Sadly, the phone is a series of ups and downs, but there has to be something good in everything and we suppose that will be the fact that it works well enough as a bog-standard phone, helped along by a very responsive capacitive touchscreen that is bright and extremely colourful. As such, if you're not worried about all the bells and whistles but want something that looks fashionable and unique, this phone could be for you. For all of its software faults, it isn't likely to break down - and it also comes with a 1,000mAh battery that should keep it going for a reasonable time between charges.

The problem with anything in fashion is that it goes out of fashion quickly. If you're buying this and intending to sell it on after a few months for something else, fine, but sign up for 18 or 24 months and you may soon regret your decision. Like the LG GD910 Watch, the novelty is likely to wear off long before your contract is up.