Design and Looks
From the above description, you may think the LG KF300 is frumpy looking. But who says a functional phone can't be stylish? The LG KF300 is hence sleek and sports the clam-shell form factor. The looks may be a little '90s but is nonetheless mature and elegant (presumably like the audience the phone is targeted at?) LG have made good use of the space and incorporated a large screen and keypad but more on this later.
The glossy front of the phone is designed to catch light and reflect it. The obvious down-side to this is that it's a finger print magnet. Below the front is a secondary display that indicates missed calls and displays a clock with large numbers. It's hidden well when the display remains off. At the top of the front fascia is the phone's 2MP camera. Apart from this there's nothing much to talk about the front. The back is nothing interesting either so it's best we move along to the insides of the phone.
Flipping open a clamshell is always a surprise, you just don't know what to expect. In this case, it's a pleasant surprise. LG made good use of the space and incorporated a large 2.2” screen that produces 256K colours over QVGA resolution; they even managed to fit four shortcut buttons below it and a large earpiece above. The images on the screen come out sharp and are fairly legible under all conditions. LG has made good use of the space in the clam-shell's lower chassis too by incorporating a large D-pad and alphanumeric keypad.
But first let's talk about the four buttons below the screen; they are hot keys to alarm, organizer, images and favourites. While the first three are pretty self-explanatory, pressing favourites lets users access 12 customizable shortcuts where each function can be assigned to any one of the 12 alphanumeric keys. The utility of these four shortcuts may not be readily apparent but they are in fact very handy.
In the lower chassis we see the nav-pad and the softkeys around it. Both are sufficiently large and easy to use. But the alphanumeric keypad below it takes the cake; its keys are huge and sufficiently differentiated to offer good touch-orientation. The keystroke is short so it's not very tactile but the phone is not meant to be a texter's wet-dream-come-true and its fine the way it is. The build quality of this phone is good and it feels nice in the hand. It is also ergonomic and the inclusion of the rubber coated soft-touch plastic at the back is a nice touch.
The UI is classic LG and is built to be even more user-friendly this time around with all options only a few clicks away. The keypad tones are loud and users can increase font size to ridiculous heights. It's perfect. The only hitch is that the font size settings do not affect the font size of the icons at the menu screen which are pretty small to begin with. The phone's speakerphone is also optimized to be loud and can make you permanently deaf if you happen to keep the phone near your ear when you receive a call!
And now for the phone's secondary features: media and camera. The media player is Spartan but offers the basics. The bundled earphones are decent for a non-music oriented phone and there is memory card expandability and drag and drop feature too. But users should note that the phone does not come with a memory card or USB cable. The camera is a 2MP unit that produces images of passable quality. Infact, it seems like the image isn't subject to much processing and we see exactly what the sensor captures. Nonetheless, the images feature good colour representation and low-noise levels but also show a lack of clear definition. The camera also doubles up as a video recorder. Since this is not a dedicated camera phone, the camera performs more than sufficiently.
Let's be honest, the LG KF300 is targeted at the elderly who may be sight and hearing impaired. But then again, the phone is not just another patronizing solution to the 'lesser'-abled, it's a bold and confident phone for people who are comfortable with their 'short-comings'. It's also ideal for people who have good vision and hearing but would like a practical phone nonetheless. The only fault we can find with this phone is its exorbitant price. I guess that's what you must pay for to get a phone which doesn't have a miniscule keypad like everything else.
Features
- Elegant slider form
- 2.2” 256K screen with QVGA resolution
- Four shortcut keys below display
- Large user friendly D-pad and alphanumeric keypad
- Customizable font size and loud keypad tones and ringtones
- Decent 2MP camera
- Extras including music player and radio
- Good battery life
