KC550 LG’s

KC550 LG’s With all the 5 megapixel cameras on offer today it can be difficult to choose one to suit your needs. For those who require a decent camera, but don’t want to fork out for unnecessary features, the LG KC550 could be the perfect choice. Touted as the cheapest 5 megapixel camera phone on the market, the KC550 is sure to worry its competitors. We take a closer look to find out if there’s a catch to this great deal.
Despite its keen pricing, the design of the LG KC550 certainly hasn’t been affected. It sports a simplistic, classy look, with lashings of chrome and fingerprint-loving glossy black plastic. It shares the same slider layout as LG’s range-topping Secret, and the sliding action is just as smooth. Happily, the KC550 has rectified my main gripe with the Secret, and provides a ‘proper’ tactile 4-way d-pad and enter button. It seems that cost-cutting has its perks.

Either side of the d-pad you’ll find the device’s softkeys and call/end keys, as well as the dedicated cancel button. Oddly, the cancel button didn’t function as expected. Rather than offering a quick way to delete things, it is instead used to go back one screen. However, when entering numbers or text, it resumes its expected role as a backspace button. The red ‘end’ key also doubles-up as the device’s on/off button.

The front of the device is otherwise dominated by the 2.4″ screen, with its bright 262,000 colors and 240 x 320 pixel QVGA resolution. The display appears to be the same as the LG Secret’s, but without touch-sensitive capabilities. However, unlike the Secret, the KC550 doesn’t have a mirrored finish over the display, making it much easier to view in bright environments. Just above the display is a discreet slit housing the earpiece. Overall the front of the device is very simplistic and stylish – very LG.

The rear of the phone is clad with grippy soft-touch plastic, so you don’t have to worry about fingerprints here. There are also a few slits for the loudspeaker, next to the camera’s brushed metal effect lens cover. The lens cover slides across with a satisfying click into place, but is fairly stiff, so you might find yourself opening the phone instead. Opening and closing the lens cover automatically activates and deactivates the camera.

The left side of the device is home to a single headphone/data/charger port, covered by a plastic door that slides across to keep grime out. The right side is a little busier, with a covered microSD slot, zoom/volume keys, and the camera shutter button. At the top corner of this side you’ll also find a neat lanyard fixing. The microphone and button to unclip the back panel can be found on the bottom of the device.

Giving the fascia a push upwards will reveal the KC550’s large 12-key keypad. It sports an attractive checkered design, with some keys being black, and others in a grey spun metal effect, similar to the
Call audio quality on the LG KC550 was good, with callers coming through loud and reasonably clear. Unfortunately, the device is tri-band only, on the GSM 900/1800/1900 bands. Still, network reception was good, showing full reception a lot of the time. I didn’t experience any dropped calls with the KC550 either. Overall, call performance was good for a 2G device. Battery performance was average for this type of device, lasting 2-3 days in our tests. Your mileage may vary, as our use was moderate, with a few calls, some light texting, web browsing, and some multimedia use. LG claim the device’s battery can offer up to 450 hours of standby time and up to 6 hours of talk time. This seemed a little optimistic to me though, based on our tests.

The contacts system was very easy to use, with a handful of different data points available for each contact. These included several phone numbers, an email address, and a contact specific ringtone and photo. The number of data points could be an issue for some people though, with only three phone numbers and one email address available per contact. Adding and removing contacts was very simple, as was the search system. However, the contacts system only contains one ‘name’ box, meaning that you can’t input forenames and surnames separately. This means that the search system will search only by forename, unless you type contacts in surname first. It is possible to group contacts to manage them more easily.
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Ring profiles are supported on the KC550, with five to choose from. Three of these are customizable. There are options for ringers, message alerts, and keypad tones. A decent selection of ringers are included, such as the classic ‘ring-ring’. It is possible to choose from various alert types, such as ring and vibrate, or ring then vibrate, and MP3s can be used as ringers/message tones too. There are also customizable sound effects for turning the device on and off, and opening/closing it. Thankfully these can be turned off altogether. Long pressing the # key will put the device directly into silent mode.

The LG KC550 features a decent loudspeaker for making calls via speakerphone. Overall the quality was good for calls, with voices being easily heard and understood. Callers reported no change in sound quality at their end when speakerphone was activated, which is good. Speed dialling was also present on the KC550, with the number 1 key preset to voicemail. Voice dialing is not supported on this device.

Thanks to the device’s large keypad, typing messages was quite easy. However, the predictive text function wasn’t the best I’ve used. It felt quite clunky and prohibitive – making it difficult to piece together words from individual letters. Like Sony Ericsson devices, the d-pad is used to toggle between predicted words. This is a departure from other LG devices like the Secret, that use the * button for this purpose. Unfortunately, I was unable to get IMAP4 email working on this device, with it reporting various errors when trying to retrieve my inbox. The LG KC550 also does not feature an instant messaging application.

As the KC550 is only a 2G device, this means no high-speed downloads for web browsing and such. All is not lost though, and LG have included Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP to sweeten the deal. This allows users to connect a set of stereo Bluetooth headphones. Users can also send music, photos, and documents between the KC550 and a Bluetooth-enabled computer. Transfers can also be made via the included USB cable, at USB 2.0 transfer speeds.
Multimedia / Applications

The main feature of LG’s KC550 is its high-spec 5.0 megapixel camera. Despite its favorable price-tag, the KC550 still features a Schneider-Kreuznach lens for superior shots. To compliment this, an image stabilizer and LED flash are included to help improve shots even further. If the flash isn’t enough for your darker shots, don’t fret, because the KC550’s camera also features ISO800 sensitivity for improved low light photography. As with most higher-end camera phones these days, the KC550 features autofocus, which provided us with crisp images during our tests. There was also a macro mode for capturing close-up shots. Some of the shots we got with macro mode were very impressive indeed. Example shots can be found at the end of this review.
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Overall, images taken with the KC550’s camera were clear and offered vivid colors. Images were also very detailed and low light performance was generally good. There was an element of graininess to photos taken in low light, but this is to be expected from a phone camera. Unusually, there are no scene mode options on the KC550, although white balance and exposure values can be adjusted. There is also a multi-shot mode that allows you to take multiple photos with one press of the shutter button. There are options for 3, 6, or 9 shots to be taken, and they were taken in very quick succession. Unfortunately, using multi-shot (burst) mode reduces photo resolution to a mere 640 x 480 pixels. A nice feature of the KC550’s camera, is the four icons that appear on the device’s d-pad, providing shortcuts to; flash settings, macro mode, image stabilizer, and photo album. Once photos are taken it is then possible to edit them in a variety of ways, using the in-built image editor from the gallery. Effects on offer are quite basic, but there are options to crop and rotate images too.

The LG KC550’s imaging capabilities don’t end there though, as it also features a formidable video recorder. Videos came out surprisingly well during our tests. Once captured, you can then play your footage back in 740 x 480 (DVD) resolution. Color reproduction is good, and the footage is pretty detailed. It is also possible to adjust the brightness and white balance. The only real downfall was a juddering that we noticed when recording some test clips. This was surprising, given the device’s advertised 30fps encoding – so we checked it out on the computer to find that our device was only encoding videos at 15fps in both WVGA and VGA resolutions. Videos were also recorded in 3GP format, rather than the more popular MP4 format that many devices use these days. This is a shame, as the video quality is otherwise pretty good.

Browsing through images and videos is as simple as every other aspect of the device. There are several ways to view your photos from the camera menu, or they can be accessed from the ‘My Stuff’ folder. The KC550 is equipped with an accelerometer, so when you turn the device on its side, the image automatically rotates to landscape. This works in any direction that you turn the device, even upside-down. You can also view your photos with the device’s ‘Muvee studio’ application. This allows you to make a presentation from your pics, with music and transition effects.

Web browsing wasn’t the KC550’s best feature, and loading up pages was quite slow. This should be expected really, as this is only a 2G device, but the browser even shut down remarkably slowly, which was frustrating. The KC550’s browser was also very limited, only being able to show very basic pages because of its lack of HTML compatibility. Overall this browser is definitely for emergencies only.

Thankfully, the KC550’s MP3 player was better, although I had to completely re-format my microSD card before the device could find any of my music. The headphones that came with the KC550 were of low quality, and connect to the device’s charging/data port. This meant no charging whilst listening to music, unless you use the device’s Bluetooth A2DP connectivity to link up a set of Bluetooth headphones. This was definitely the MP3 player’s saviour, as there is no 3.5mm headphone port to be found on the device. However, when testing the player with a set of Samsung Bluetooth headphones I found a strange flaw. With the headphones connected, the music player refused to minimize, meaning it was not possible to lock the device’s keypad. This of course meant that I had to carry it in my hand as I walked – not ideal, especially when all the controls are on the headset anyway.

Playlist creation was supported, and the device automatically creates ‘recent songs’ and ‘favorite songs’ playlists too. The music player also features an equalizer, although this is best left alone in my experience, as it didn’t really help the sound. Overall sound quality was pretty good, but I found it somewhat lacking in volume and punchiness. Playing music through the device’s loudspeaker didn’t sound too bad, and offered respectable volume. You can search your tunes by song, artist, album, and genre, plus shuffle or repeat them. You can also view visualizations whilst listening to your tunes, with a choice of album art or moving bars. Music can be synchronized with a PC via the included USB cable, or loaded onto the device and memory card in mass storage mode. To compliment the music player, an FM radio is featured on the LG KC550, but requires the headphones to be connected to use as an antenna.

The KC550 also comes loaded with some handy information management functions, such as a calendar, calculator, stopwatch, memo application, unit converter, and world clock. An alarm clock is included too, and offers up to five alarms to be set at once. If written memos aren’t your thing, a voice recorder is included to keep you covered. It is also possible to view various documents on the KC550, including word, excel, powerpoint, and PDF files. The device has an internal memory capacity of only 12MB, but can take microSD cards up to 4GB. We tested the device with a 2GB card without any issues once we’d re-formatted it. Unusually, it couldn’t read most of the data on the card until we did this, despite plenty of other devices reading the card fine.

Lastly, the KC550 features a selection of different games, including LG’s ‘M-toy’ games that use the device’s built-in accelerometer. The games on offer are; darts, baseball, magic 8-ball, hammer throw, mazes, and fishing. Each of the games offer a Nintendo Wii-like experience, being controlled by the user waving the phone around. The games are very short though, with little variation, so are only good for a bit of quick entertainment. There were a couple of other games on our test unit; ‘Extreme Skateboard’, and ‘Mini Game World’. Again, these only offer entertainment for short periods of time, but use the device’s keypad for control, rather than it’s built-in accelerometers.
User Interface

The LG KC550 is altogether a very simple device to use. Everything in the menu system is well placed and easy to find. The main menu is preset to grid layout, but can be changed to a list if you wish. All submenus are in list format, and this cannot be changed. Within any of the menus each item is numbered, and pressing the corresponding number on the keypad jumps directly into the item. Overall, the KC550 was very easy to navigate, with consistent menus that ensure you’ll be able to find what you’re looking for. I’d say that this device was one of the simplest phones I’ve used in a long time.
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Theme support is very basic, with only two themes to choose from – ‘Black 3D’ and ‘Black line’. Both themes are very similar, with the only difference being the menu icons. They even use the same default wallpaper (water), which amusingly uses the built-in accelerometer to rotate itself as you turn the device. To make things a bit more exciting, you can set some of the M-toy games as your wallpaper – either darts, mazes, or the magic 8-ball. You can even play the games from the standby screen! Another welcome customization feature, was being able to change the device’s font. Doing this changed the font throughout the entire phone – from the menus, to messaging, to the MP3 player, and even the standby screen!

As mentioned earlier, the cancel button functions as a dedicated ‘back’ button, or a delete button when entering text. During our tests this button could sometimes be quite unresponsive, frequently missing key-presses. I think this was due to the interface being a little slow to respond at times. It seemed to struggle with quick typing and quick menu navigation, which sometimes made buttons feel unresponsive. There was also a dedicated camera button for focussing/taking photos. This could also be used to activate the camera by long-pressing it from the standby screen, though you’ll still have to open the lens cover.

KC550 LG’s

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