Review of LG BL40 Chocolate 4" 16:9 wide screen Camera Phone
OCWorkbench 7 Dec 2009

LG BL40 is the latest phone in the chocolate series. Finished in black piano and with a large long candy bar form factor. It is definitely one of the phones that will capture the eyes of on lookers.

With the S-class interface, it easily deceives the user thinking that it is a windows mobile or android phone. In fact, it is powered by it's own OS. Measuring 128 x 51 x 10.9 mm, it is a bit tall and slim but it offers a 4" 16:9 widescreen screen. For a feature phone, the BL40 seems to be heavy at 129g.

The phone comes with a 5 mega pixel camera and comes with microSD slot. For high speed data access, the phone supports HSDPA and wireless LAN for connections.

Although not powered by OLED, the tempered glass finish gives brilliant display of pictures and video playback in good contrast ratio. The New Chocolate BL40 features a wide screen 16:9 display ratio but it does not stop there. The screen can be further adjusted to 2.35:1 cinematic wide view for vivid and realistic video contents play at any time and place. The wide display ratio applied to the camera's viewfinder and photo gallery makes photo taking & image searching more dynamic and enjoyable.

The 4" screen of 345x800 pixel also makes it easy to browse the web in landscape mode. Zoom in and out on pictures and web pages with the help of multi touch technology. On top of that, it can easily do one touch copy & paste of text.

For the busy executives, you can configure your email to be read in a dual screen UI. Just like Outlook Express, Dual Screen UI splits the screen into two and shows email subject and contents in one view. Instead of searching the email subject then open a new window to view contents, subjects and contents can be quickly cross checked simultaneously.

With the New Chocolate BL40's Gesture Shortcut, you can access menus by drawing simple icons on a touch pad. You can set up each of your frequently used menu items to be accessed by one of the twelve gesture icons stored in the handset.

Specifications

General
Phone type
Candy bar

Operating system
Others

Dimensions (H x W x D)
128 x 51 x 10.9 mm

Weight
129g

Expansion slot(s)
microSD

Built-in memory
1100 MB
Connectivity
GSM frequency bands
Quadband

Connectivity options
3G, HSDPA, microUSB, WAP, Bluetooth, A2DP, WLAN
Display and Text Input
Display size
4-inch screen

Display type
TFT

Touchscreen
Yes

Keypad
None
Performance
Max. standby time (in hours)
400 hours

Max. talktime (in hours)
6 hours talktime
Multimedia
Maximum camera resolution
5 megapixels

Imaging features
Onboard flash, Autofocus, LED

Sound features
MP3 playback, WMA playback, Voice recording, Built-in speakers

Audio jack type
3.5mm

Additional multimedia features
Dual-screen user interface