It is quite obvious that sleek looks and youthful appeal are very high on the LG list of priorities recently. Just as we gave you the flamboyant LG KF600, LG KF510 makes us wonder how much sweeter Chocolate can get. Undoubtedly of the same bloodline, the two handsets take a different approach to full touch navigation with InteractPad and Touch Lighting. The rest of the ammo is basically the same. The really sleek metallic finish and bigger 2.2" display (no InteractPad to shrink the screen) are the LG KF510 major assets. The ultra slim slider has the looks and handling to get us exited, so let's get rolling.

Great design and slim body

Touchpad navigation

2.2" 262K-color TFT display of QVGA resolution

3 megapixel camera with autofocus

microSD card slot with hot-swap

USB v2.0 and Bluetooth v2.0 with A2DP

FM radio

Good web browser

No 3G support

Tri-band only

Poor file management

Video recording maxes out at QVGA resolution

Inadequate display legibility in direct sunlight

Touchpad navigation just for the sake of having it runs a serious risk of failure. LG sure did know that and they seem to have a good enough background to step on. Plus, the steady improvements of user interface are a more than welcome effort. Nice and easy handling is notably gaining momentum with LG devices and the KF510 is surely another small step forward.

Once again we reminisce of the Samsung E950 and comparison is not in its favor. Of course, it offers a touch-sensitive mini display, along the lines of the InteractPad, but is still a good enough reference point. The smallish navigation display of the Samsung is not capable of offering much more options than the touchpad of LG KF510. In addition, the KF510 touchpad has some interesting animations and interactions with the interface, which partially make up for the lack of a full color navigation display. It's fair to say that in terms of navigation, LG KF510 comes within reach of Samsung U900 Soul. And that's a downright compliment. The Soul is a high ball with HSDPA and a 5 megapixel shooter.

LG KF600 should also be considered here as a touch-based navigation peer. Save for the InteractPad, which is much more "interactive" than the touchpad, all the rest of their specs are very similar (if not the same). Both handsets seem to cater to a similar audience.

LG KF510 is one of the sexiest phones we have recently reviewed. We really like its design and the generous use of metal on its body make it even better. The glossy surface and the bold red color of our unit also make a great first impression. The bad thing is that it gets covered in fingerprints a bit too easily, the display being undoubtedly the most vulnerable part.

The earpiece of LG KF510 is centrally located, right below the upper edge of the front panel. Right next to it is the ambient light sensor.

The 2.2" display follows down the KF510 front panel. The rest of the front is taken by the touch-sensitive pad that is in charge of all navigation.

The left side of LG KF510 hosts the volume rocker. It is large enough and conveniently placed, and you won't have to reach too far for it. On the upper end of the left side there's the neck/wrist strap eyelet.

The right side of the handset is more crowded. Starting from the top we have the USB port, hidden under a small cap to keep the looks intact. Under the USB port is the microSD card slot. LG have made a smart move placing it on the upper (sliding) part of the handset so it is only visible when the handset is open. It looks better and usability isn't harmed at all.

The next thing on this side is the sliding End key. Yeah you got it right - LG KF510 uses a slider for that purpose, rather than a normal press key. It might seem a bit confusing at first, but with use it becomes quite natural. It serves all the purposes of a Red Receiver key, like exiting menus and powering the handset on and off.

The final key on the right side of LG KF510 has double functionality. When pressed it starts the music player. A press-and-hold activates the camera. It is quite easy to distinguish between the two types of press, so working with this rather specific control is no problem at all.

Neither the top, nor the bottom of LG KF510 feature any controls or apertures. They are neat and sleek with nice chrome finish.

The 3 megapixel autofocus camera lens is at the back, only visible when the phone is slid open. Its support crew is right next to it - the LED flash and the self-portrait mirror. You can find out more about the camera and its performance in the dedicated camera chapter of our review.

Removing the battery cover of LG KF510 reveals the 800 mAh Li-Ion battery. With the beta status of the device in mind, we will refrain from commenting on the battery life for now.

The SIM card slot is located right under the battery. Inserting or changing the SIM card is a rather complicated task with the LG KF510. You have to pull the small plastic tray quite hard to get it out. The design seems too flimsy and you always seems like a step from breaking the tray when you have to pull it out, so it's possible that it will be changed in the retail version.

The build quality of LG KF510 is truly great. High quality materials have been used and the rather heavy weight, given the dimensions, shows it. The phone feels great in the hand and is a definite looker. If looks are high on your list of priorities when picking a phone, you just can't afford to overlook the KF510.

LG KF510 is equipped with a 2.2" 262K-color LCD TFT display of QVGA resolution. It's pretty much the golden mean given today's feature phone display standards.

The picture quality is on the good side, excelling in brightness and contrast levels. Sunlight legibility has also improved compared to, say, the LG KU990 Viewty. This doesn't necessarily make it great. It is still hard to find a proper angle for working with the phone when outside on a sunny day, but at least it is possible.

LG KF510 is a real texting-friendly device with its large keys. They are also nicely elevated at the center, which benefits touch orientation greatly. Typing was a sheer pleasure after only a few hours spent with the KF510.

We're still sitting on the fence as far as the touchpad is concerned. There is no doubt that it brings some fun to using the LG KF510. However, we do find navigation with regular press keys a bit easier, even though the KF510 also features haptic feedback. Not that it is something you cannot get used to but it does take its time. Other than that, the touch pad has its positives. For example it allows quick scrolling by sweeping your finger across, which is impossible with normal D-pads. By the way sweeping is not an option with Samsung's navigation displays in E950 and U900.

The backlighting of both the touch pad and the keypad is strong enough. It is not really even but the illumination of the touch pad makes the LG KF510 one of the best looking phones in the dark.

When it comes to telephony, we have no complaints with LG KF510. It offers good reception and great in-call sound. Voice quality is good on both ends of a call. Besides, the phone has nice interface and dialing a number or calling a contact from the phonebook is easy and pleasant.

  

The user interface of LG KF510 does add to the sleek looks. It is very user-friendly and generally really quick and responsive. In addition, the black and white icons we saw in LG KF600 are now traded for full color. This is a very welcome improvement and we do appreciate the new styling.

The standby screen has information about the current time and date, as well as the typical status readings. It shows signal strength, the active profile and the battery status. In standby mode the touch pad features 4 shortcuts, which can be customized to best suit the user's needs. Each of those is attached to one of the directions, while the center is responsible for entering the main menu. You can also make small icons appear in the middle of the stand-by screen indicating the shortcuts attached to each direction key.

The menu structure of LG KF510 is straightforward and easy to work with. Except for a few strangely placed settings everything else is perfectly logical. The different files and features are exactly where you would expect them to be even if you have never held an LG handset before.

The touch pad is the main option for navigating the menus. You can also use keypad shortcuts, with alphanumeric keys linked to icons on the screen (depending on the menu). Unluckily there was no setting about the haptic feedback of the touch pad. We did appreciate the wide ranging customization the KF600 offered and we would've liked it better if the KF510 was capable of doing the same. Still the feedback is good enough, even if we found it a bit delayed on some occasions. We didn't however have any trouble navigating the phone for the time of our review.

There are two main menu modes available - a standard 4 x 3 grid or a list of 7 icons with labels. Both are nicely looking and comparatively easy to work with. Still, old school as we are, we did appreciate the grid view mode more. The menu font and dialing style are also customizable.

If you still get bored with your LG KF510 you can go ahead and change the theme. There are only three preinstalled themes on the handset but those are all really nice and won our appreciation.

Another thing that can be customized is the the slider sound. There are a few rather interesting options here.

The phonebook in LG KF510 is not the most feature-rich around but user-friendliness makes up for that. The numbers from both the SIM card and the phone memory are displayed simultaneously. There is no way of hiding any of the two. Searching of a contact is done by gradual typing of the desired name. However, you can only search contacts by first name.

LG KF510's phonebook has a capacity of 1000 entries, which should be enough inmost cases. The contacts appear as a list and you can opt for displaying the picture of the currently selected name.

The available fields when editing a contact are 11, which may seem a lot to some but are in fact seriously short of what some competing brands have to offer. You can save up to 4 phone numbers for each contact, along with a personal photo and a ringtone.

Finally, LG KF510 features grouping. Contacts can be organized in groups for easier management.

LG KF510 can handle all of the most common type of messages: SMS, EMS, MMS and email. There's support for Bluetooth messaging too like on several other LG handsets. We aren't really the biggest fans of the handset's messaging department but still we believe it is capable of doing the job on most occasions.

The first editor has rather basic looks and that's one thing we disliked. Next the editor always assumes that you are going to send the message to multiple recipients and has a separate screen for inputting several numbers.

There is a counter showing the number of symbols remaining to the limit of 160. If this limit is exceeded the editor turns another page, which should act as an indication that the message will be sent in two chunks.

The fact that LG KF510 uses a single editor for all common types of messages (SMS, EMS and MMS) is influencing the user-friendliness somewhat negatively. If each of those had a separate editor the required feature would have been more comfortably accessible, without the unnecessary ones getting in the way.

The Bluetooth message editor is very similar to the one we just described. It manages its job just fine, no bangs and whistles.

The email client is quite easy to work with and mailboxes can be set up in no time. The big downer here is the lack of SSL support. It makes using some very popular public mail providers impossible with LG KF510. We were unable to set up a Gmail account on the handset, for example.

MMS and emails are saved in the reserved part of the phone memory, so you can have quite a number of them stored in you device. Normally there is more than enough free storage available for that purpose but this depends on quite a number of factors. SMS storage has its capacity fixed to 500 items.

So generally, as far as the most common messaging needs are concerned, the LG KF510's performance is passable. We do feel though LG could have done better. Still, given recent efforts to improve user interface, it's likely to have messaging at a higher level in the nearest future.

The music player of LG KF510 performs nicely. It sorts tracks by three different criteria - artist, album and genre. You can also create your own playlist if you like. The player also has nice visualization with equalizer bars interacting with the current track.

There are as many as 10 equalizer presets on LG KF510. Unluckily, neither can they be modified, nor new ones created.

In case the preloaded tracks on your LG KF510 are no longer entertaining, you can turn the radio on. The FM radio interface is rather simplified and generally very easy to work with. There is an auto scan feature that locates every radio station in your area and offers to save it. We would have appreciated RDS but it's not an option with the KF510.

The video player was one of the most disappointing parts of LG KF510. It had no support for mpeg video clips, which was quite a bad surprise to us. The handset can only play 3gp videos, which are currently used only in MMS messages.

As users inform us, the retail version of LG KF510 is able to play MPEG4 videos, so as it seems LG have managed to fix that.

Videos can be played fullscreen with the labels of the selection keys hidden to make the whole display usable. With the nice user interface, it is a real pity the format support is so limited. If LG come round to fixing that in the retail version it would make a huge difference.

File management in LG KF510 is terrible. It is not as bad as the LG KF600, which could hardly handle any user-created folders but is still annoying enough. Basically you will need to place every file in its designated folder if you want to use it.

With the KF510 we had various results when we misplaced some files. Once it did reorder the whole memory card, putting every file in a directory suiting its type. While this might not sound bad at first, as those files are still usable, it made a real mess of our memory card folder structure. The files were all heaped in a single folder and we could hardly sort them properly when we put the card in a card-reader to work with on a pc.

At least, the fact that the memory card is hot-swappable improves the situation. It is easier to correct any mistakes you have made uploading files to your memory card. We do however think that users shouldn't be forced to do that at all.

The gallery of LG KF510 really scores a point for the handset. It is accessed through the My stuff icon in the main menu and offers two view modes. The thumbnail view can show 9 thumbs at a time, while the list view can fit only 7 items on the screen. No wonder we preferred the first one, is there?

Single pictures can be viewed in both landscape and portrait mode and can also be displayed fullscreen. You can also zoom in to see further detail. Be warned that the first zooming step is a little slow. However the following zoom steps complete in an instant and panning is also very fast. Here might just be the place to mention that as a whole the multimedia performance of LG KF510 is really satisfying in terms of speed.

The touch pad is also enhancing the gallery experience greatly. When you zoom in on a picture you can use it for quick panning and it really works great. Sweeping your thumb across will move the selection grid quickly, while single taps will pan and scroll in small steps. It might not be as good as the InteractPad on KF600, which also displayed a mini-map of the picture, but is more than adequate.

The final extras of the gallery include picture sorting (by name, date or type) and slide show, along with deleting multiple files at a time. Truth be told, we aren't particularly fond of the slide show capabilities of LG handsets at this point.

Obviously LG KF510 stakes a lot on youthful appeal and the nice 3 megapixel camera onboard seems to play the right strings. It is topped with LED flash and a self-portrait mirror which, at least on paper, sounds great. And we were quite happy that the impression still holds true after the test.

The camera has rich settings, from white balance and effects to quality levels. There's also shake reduction, although we are not really sure of its real effect on photos. In addition, the interface is very user-friendly and easy to use.

The picture quality is commendable. Images have enough sharpness and precise colors and, overall, the KF510 camera ranks among the most capable 3 megapixel units we have seen. Noise reduction is also quite efficient, keeping noise levels at a very good level, without sacrificing almost any detail.

The camera is impressive in terms of speed. In fact, LG KF510 packs one of the quickest cameras we have reviewed. Photos are saved extremely quickly, especially if the phone memory is used. Our unit had some trouble writing to memory card but that's probably due to its beta status. The only complaint we have is the auto focus speed in low light conditions, but it makes up for that with reliability.

As far as video recording is concerned, LG KF510 supports QVGA resolution. Not much of a boast but videos might occasionally turn out usable. Zooming is also available and so are white balance and exposure settings. Videos are saved in 3GP format and can use the LED flash for better results in darker environments. However in general, LG KF510 is lagging behind in terms of video recording capabilities.

The connectivity options of LG KF510 have their ups and downs but the overall impression is positive. USB v2.0 connectivity is nice and sharp. Data storage mode is available and even the phone's internal memory is accessible from a PC like a removable drive. The bad side is that the phone is unusable for calls and messaging during a USB connection to PC, which is rather inconvenient.

The Bluetooth version is also 2.0 and, as we mentioned, A2DP is supported. We had no problem pairing our unit with a third party headset, so compatibility issues seem unlikely.

As far as network connectivity is concerned, the phone features GPRS and EDGE. We are definitely missing 3G support. That makes EDGE the best option here and it really isn't the fastest around.

Finally, we've got the memory card slot. The hot-swap capabilities make it a very fast and easy way of transferring data from and to your LG KF510.

We are very pleased with the LG KF510's web browser. It offers great page rendering and even the most elaborate web pages fit perfectly on the screen. Plus, with the optimized rendering mode is enabled, text is even easier to read. The downside is that the page no longer looks as if browsed on PC.

The web browser of LG KF510 also has a virtual mouse pointer that jumps between links. However, just like the one on LG KF600, the mouse pointer moves rather illogically which can be irritating. You can hardly foresee its next step when a lot of links are placed close together.

Otherwise the phone is doing great. In addition to the rendering mode setting there are also settings for caching web pages and accepting cookies. Finally, you can disable images to save on traffic - and time - browsing with EDGE does require patience.

LG KF510 has good time-managing capabilities, even if some of the applications in the organizer do need a little improvement. All the basics are covered and there are more than enough applications available.

The calendar offers daily and monthly view and event setting. However, there are no different types of events so you will have to customize every entry yourself. You can also set up an alarm to remind you of the event at a given time.

The other organizing features include text notes and an alarm clock. The alarm clock is really advanced on LG KF510. It allows you to set up to 5 different alarms, each with its own name, ringtone and repeat interval. There is also a voice recorder that can come in handy for making voice memos.

The calculator offers a good number of options and functions. Its navigation is also very nice and easy to control with the touch pad.

The World Clock application is a nice little helper that can tell you the current time in any time zone. In terms of layout and graphics, it's really great and it also has an extremely large database of cities for each region and time zone. The only thing missing is a search option to make selecting a location easier but that's something we can live with.

Next in line is the KF510 document reader. It is an Access powered application and is capable of handling all popular document formats - .xls, .doc and .pdf are all covered. In addition, it has nice interface and good functionality. Add the pleasing speed and you'll understand why we are so pleased with it.

Finally, there's a stopwatch and a unit converter - they both feature a decent level of user-friendliness. However we aren't really pleased with the set of conversions the unit converter has to offer. It still has the most commonly used ones (temperature, volume, velocity etc.), so it might just be welcome by most users.

LG KF 510 comes with two games preinstalled. The first is a collection of a few mini-games and is the same as the one found on LG KF600. It is however not as easily played with the touch pad as it was with the InteractPad. On the other hand, you can use the alphanumeric keys for that purpose, so it isn't that much of an issue actually.

The other game is a java version of the popular Japanese game of Sudoku. We did like the navigation around the board and find the game as good as if played on paper.

  

Recommending or not the LG KF510 is a tough call. Provided especially that the handset hasn't yet officially hit the shelves and its retail price is still unknown.

What's beyond any doubt though is that LG KF510 is a very sleek and fun to use phone. It does have a few flaws in the user interface, some of which aren't that minor either (read file management). It still is a nice step forward for LG in terms of user-friendliness. Not the least, the build quality is great and the phone does feel great to hold.

We would recommend it to all willing to consider the LG KF510 to try its user interface before plunging into a purchase. Even if it's not as much of a novelty as the KF600, its navigation is far from traditional. Now, that would be enough of a selling point for some. Plus, all those who find the KF600 too audacious for its InteractPad, seem to have a good enough alternative.