TechCast Reviews

10th November 2009

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When I first saw the promotional videos for the BL40, LG’s latest addition to the Chocolate range, I was taken aback by the design. Depending on how you look at it, it’s either got a really tall profile or a super-wide aspect ratio. The design of the BL40 is defined by the 4-inch WVGA touchscreen which has an unheard of 21:9 aspect ratio.

Internally, there’s 1GB of memory which can be expanded to 32GB with a microSD card. Wireless connectivity comes courtesy of a Quad-band GSM antennae that is 3G capable for up to 7.2Mbps. There’s also built-in 802.11b/g Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP. A little bonus feature that rarely gets a mention is the FM transmitter. These are typically used in the car to stream your music collection to your stereo system via FM.

At the back you’ll find a 5-megapixel Schneider-Kreuznach camera with LED flash and supports VGA video-recording at 30fps.

You can hook up the BL40 to your computer and transfer files to it as a standard mass-storage device for cross-platform compatibility via the micro-USB connector which doubles up as its charging port.

In keeping with the minimalist design ethos of the Black Label series, the BL40 accentuates the already unusual profile with its all-black glossy finish. When the screen goes into standby mode and blanks out, the display blends into the rest of the phone, making for a seamless design. Luckily, the top and bottom ends of the phone are in a high-contrast red because there were a few times when the phone just seemed to disappear when I’ve got it sitting in the cup holder of the car – it just blends into the dashboard, making it invisible to the naked eye.

There’s a distinctly solid feel to the overall design. The combination of glass and plastic work well together, ensuring that there aren’t any creaks or flexing when the device is put under pressure. To hold the BL40, the soft rounded edges allow it to sit quite comfortably. It’s not so polished that it feels like it’s going to slip out of your hand.

At the side, you’ll find that the shortcut keys follow the minimalist design. The keys are slightly raised so you can get a feel for them when you run your finger around the edges, but they’re designed to blend in with the rest of the chrome trim. Likewise for the micro-USB port. A small tab lets you slide the latch open. It’s not one of those loose tabs that are attached with a bit of rubber. It’s been designed into the phone so it actually opens on a minuscule latch.

Turn the phone around and you’ll see that the minimalism continues, with nothing more than just the camera breaking the all-black finish. The lens has a slight bump and is encased in chrome to match the rest of the trim.

At the top of the BL40, you’ll be happy to see the inclusion of a standard 3.5mm audio jack. It’s surprising how many phones that get this wrong – the 3.5mm audio jack is the only audio jack that ever needs to be considered for a mobile device if you want people to use it to listen to music.

I first came across the S-Class user interface in the LG Arena that was reviewed a few months ago. It was on a pre-production model so I didn’t get to experience what the finished product was like, but it was a promising effort. The BL40 takes it further with full integration with touch as the primary input method. There are hints here and there of iPhone-inspiration, but there are a few unique surprises of its own. Ever since the iPhone came out with its ‘slide to unlock’ feature, there have been various iterations on similar touch-screen devices. LG have gone for a similar approach with a slide up to unlock feature. In practice this works fine, but I did find it fiddly at times when I wasn’t looking at the screen. Sometimes I would release the slide a little too early.

One area where the BL40 differentiates itself is the ability to use gestures to jump straight to an application from the lock screen. There are 12 gestures that you can attach to a range of applications for instant access from the home screen – a feature I loved using to jump straight to my messages.

One of the criticisms I have spoken quite loudly about for phones featuring large screens and fancy UI is how sluggish some of the animations seem to be. This is usually a result of poorly optimised code or under-powered hardware. With the expectation of this trend to continue, I thought the BL40 would be the same. Whilst there are parts of the S-Class interface that aren’t quite as polished as I would like to see, the BL40 gets it mostly right. For example, using the accelerometer to perform the cube transition in the main menu demonstrates the refinements that have been made to the S-Class interface to improve transitions and animations to the user interface.

I have mixed feelings about messaging on the BL40. The widescreen display gives you a full QWERTY keyboard with a feedback response from each tap. In portrait mode, you get the number keypad with T9 predictive text. I actually preferred using the numbered keypad for typing on. Whilst T9 predictive text is far from being perfect, it makes far fewer mistakes than I do when trying to tap out a message on the QWERTY keyboard. I often it found it was much quicker and easier to use the conventional T9 keypad as opposed to the landscape keyboard where I can type without too much thinking involved. When using the keyboard, I would often have to go back and correct the wrong letter I just tapped. This is in part down to accuracy of my taps but also a contributing factor is the size and spacing between each key as well as the way you have to hold the BL40. Because of its wide form factor, there are only two ways you can use the QWERTY keyboard.

You can hold it with both hands at either end and attempt to stretch your thumbs to hit the right key, which in my experience rarely worked out. The alternative is to have the BL40 resting on a flat surface so you can do a bit of touch typing on the virtual keyboard – this method works out to be easier, but it’s too easy to make a mistake. What’s missing is the iPhone’s predictive typing – in that it’s not guessing what you’re trying to write by looking at the letters you’ve typed already – but looking at the keys in the area you tapped on the screen and figuring out which one you wanted. Without this key feature, I don’t see the QWERTY keyboard being an all-too friendly user experience.

Pop the back cover off and you’ll find space for a microSD card that supports up to 32GB. A few years ago this would have been prohibitively expensive, but the price of flash memory has dropped significantly, making it feasible for owners to boost storage capacity. With this kind of storage available, a whole variety of media and entertainment can be taken around with you.

The music player app lists tracks in alphabetical order and allows you to filter by metadata such as album and artist info. Album art work is also shown when available. In landscape mode, the interface changes to reveal spinning discs and track information. In an attempt to not be just another iPhone-clone, the S-Class interface, this is an area where it would have benefited if it had swiped the cover flow idea. That extra wide display would have been beautiful for flicking through album art and perhaps even have room for track info and playback controls for the song that is playing. The design they have gone for does work nicely with the cover art embedded on a spinning disc and allows you to choose tracks that come before and after it.

The 5 megapixel camera delivers exceptional pictures – much better than what my Nokia produces even though they are both rated at 5 megapixels. This is proof in the pudding that it’s not the number of megapixels you have which makes the difference, it’s the quality of the lens. And with the Schneider lens, the quality is definitely evident in some of the snaps I took. Take a look at the video tour above (2:13) where I show the multi-touch zoom capability when viewing photos for an example of the clarity achieved by the camera.

With so many positive things to say about the LG BL40, there has to be some compromise. Unfortunately, the BL40 fails in an area that is critical to every mobile device. Battery life. The review unit I had couldn’t get through a whole day. And that’s with the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth turned off. For such a feature-packed device offering so much functionality, a power-user will easily be reaching for the charger by the end of the day which isn’t good news.

To summarise, the LG BL40 is an absolute stunner in the looks department. It looks, feels and works great. It’s a quality piece of kit and the software that comes on it is nearly on par with the current king of touchscreen mobile devices. LG have come up with an exciting blend of sophisticated design and innovative features. It takes some of the best elements found on devices like the iPhone and puts its own unique spin on things to bring together a unique mobile experience.