I found three things common in Arena from LG, XpressMusic 5800 from Nokia and finally Sony Ericsson?s Walkman W995. (a) all three are very sleek, stylish and trendy phones,(b) all have 3.5mm audio connectors for a change and (c) all are pitched by their manufacturers not as phones but as extreme multimedia devices and photo shooters.
*Arena (KM900) from the stable of LG touch phones is some-what an iPhone look-alike, though a bit smaller measuring 105.9 x 55.3 x 12mm. In matt-finish aluminum exterior with chrome-polished front bezel and a dominating 3inch TFT display screen, Arena looks rather trendy. The touch screen is bright, crisp and responsive, but falls short of iPhone in fluidity. But the superbly designed menu-icons are eye-candy. Arena boasts not only an array of connectivity options, but also a music player with Dolby mobile, FM radio and a FM transmitter to hook it to your car stereo system wirelessly and play music. With a Schneider lens on a 5mega pixel camera, it can shoot both stills at 2,592 x 1,944 pixels and video at 720 x 480-pixel resolution at 30 frames per second. The picture quality is excellent in bright daylight and looks crisp on the display screen. But in low light it tends to get a bit murky and grainy. It has a whopping 8GB of internal memory to store all your music and visuals. MRP Rs 24,990.
*Not to be left behind, Nokia too jumped in the touch screen race with its XpressMusic 5800. The well-conceived and slightly elongated design gives you a handful of a phone in true Nokia style. It has a huge (3.2inch) screen that takes up the whole facia of the phone leaving just enough space for the menu and accept and reject buttons. The back has a rubberised feel. A metallic red trimming running along the side gives it a rich classy touch. With very slim profile (111 x 51.7 x 15.5 mm) and weighing mere 109 grams, the 5800 is packed with features and connectivity options and good build quality.
The resistive touch interface with tactile feedback is good, and works smoothly while performing mundane tasks. The display screen is very bright and crisp especially while watching videos on its 16:9 aspect ratio. The XpressMusic 5800 transforms in to a music player by a single touch on the xpress music button on the top right of the facia. Audio quality is surprisingly good but the inbuilt speakers lack lungpower. The 3.2 mega pixel, camera with Carl Zeiss auto focus lens is as good as it comes and can take pictures and video (at 30 FPS) in vivid colours and clarity. MRP Rs 21,839 (street price may vary).
* Buy an 8.1 mega pixel camera and a pedigreed Walkman, the cell phone comes free. True? At least in case of Sony Ericsson W995 its true! The W995 is a solidly build slider phone with an array of buttons all around it. The brush finished black aluminum body with shiny steel buttons makes it looks like a deadly Harley Davidson, specially so with that kick-stand on the rear to park it on it?s side to watch music videos.
The integrated Walkman 4.0 player with shake control and SensMe features makes it the numero uno music-phone. The built-in speakers are loud enough and pumps out music in true stereo without any distortions. You can watch videos on the rather small (2.6inch) TFT display screen at native resolution without flicker. The external stereo speakers sound sweet and loud enough for a small gathering. The 8.1 mega pixel camera backed by Sony Cyber-Shot technology and features like face-recognition is again the best I have seen on the phone. You canshoot images and videos in most of the light conditions with exhilarating colours and sharpness and also automatically organise and transfer them to your computer.
It has most of the features the present-day smart phones come with, including Bluetooth, WiFi, GPRS/EDGE, 850/900/1800/ 1900, UMTS/HSPA, 900/2100 as connectivity options. The sliding hardware keypad, though small but is well designed with nicely spaced keys and decent tactile feedback. MRP Rs 26,786.