LG Chocolate BL40 – Mini Review

I attended the press event for the LG BL40 Chocolate phone this evening and had a chance to have a quick play with the phone to see what it’s all about. The key feature of the BL40 is the 21:9 aspect ratio screen that measures 4″. This makes the phone longer than your average phone, yet after seeing the phone and holding it, it isn’t as long as expected and the dimensions work well. The phone is quite thin measuring just 10.9mm while the width of the phone is 51mm and length 128mm. The screen is covered in tempered glass to give it a nice sleek look.

The phone is capable of speeds up to 7.2Mbps and functions on GSM and HSDPA networks. The BL40 has a 1000mAh battery that allows about 5 hours of calls to be made on a 3G network with up to 360 hours of standby time.

Back to the screen for a moment we see that due to the wide aspect ratio it can display 345 x 800 pixels and thanks to the wide screen it allows the messaging and task sections of the phone to use a split screen set-up like you would see in Outlook for example. On the left you can see messages as they come in while on the right you can see the text of the message that is currently selected. Also it allows for films to be watched in their full width. The screen is a capacitive touch screen that does allow multi touch. The web browser is also fantastic as it allows for full width web browsing by default.

The camera on the device is 5 mega pixels and although it obviously isn’t a DSLR in terms of quality you can still capture some fairly decent images on to it. A rather cool panoramic option is included with the BL40 chocolate that allows you to just move the phone around and the camera automatically stitches the images together. When a review sample of the phone comes I’ll make a video to better describe how that feature works. Needless to say, it is quite cool for capturing wide panoramic images. The BL40 also has a built in photo editor that allows features such as morphing images as well as blowing in to the mic which frosts over the image letting you wipe out the steam with your finger on the screen.

Back to connectivity the phone uses wireless LAN at b/g speeds and bluetooth connectivity is also included.

The LG BL40 uses the S-Class operating system that was first seen on the LG Arena we reviewed a while back. A few enhancements have been made to work with the wide screen such as what looks to be a new web browser, new messaging system and more customisable menu’s. From what I saw it functioned quite well and was responsive to touch. A gesture system is also included that allows you to draw on the screen certain shapes to activate certain features on the phone.

Overall I am more impressed than I expected to be. Before seeing the phone it seemed odd due to the size of it, but after having a play with the phone it works very well, fits in your pocket comfortably and is spot on in design.

A full review will be done when we get our hands on a review unit. Also some pictures will be uploaded of the event as soon as I can connect up my camera to upload them.