SINGAPORE : We love touchscreen phones. But messaging is a pain on even the most brilliant of virtual keyboards. Some tasks simply require a physical keypad.

Now, LG has very nicely combined a full touchscreen and an alpha-numeric hardware keypad into a thin and elegant 3.5G-enabled slab of glass and metal.

Such hybrid phones are not new but the LG KF700 (S$698) is worthy of praise, thanks to its admirable mix of good looks and ease of use.

The KF700 is a slider with an aesthetic that's clean and chic. There are no controls on the surface of the phone, just a clear, three-inch display with a black glossy frame and mirrored sides.

We like the screen for its fantastic touch sensitivity and precise vibrating feedback. However, screen visibility suffers markedly when viewed in bright sunlight.

You can add a widget (yes, only one) to the home screen, such as a calendar, a notepad and a dual-clock that displays the time of any two countries.

Slide the phone up and you'll see a flat checkerboard-like keypad with printed numerals, letters and symbols so big it's a little unglam.

But the keypad does its job well and you can call and text easily using one hand - an underrated capability that should be made mandatory on all phones.

There's a third way of navigating the phone - a ridged dial at the side lets you scroll through menus quickly with your thumb. You can also use the dial to zoom in and out on web pages and adjust volume levels on the music player.

The dial is especially suited for the carousel interface unique to the KF700. Press the dedicated carousel menu key below the dial and a wheel of applications including FM radio, video camera, SMS, tasks and goodness-knows-why YouTube - fans out from the left of the screen.

What bugs us though is that the dial is purely a scrolling mechanism. You can't select a menu option by pressing the dial, like you would on a BlackBerry device. You have to tap on the screen or press the carousel key - an extraneous step that goes against intuition.

We have no complaints about the KF700's 3-megapixel auto-focus camera. Image stabiliser is built in, shutter lag is minimal and the shutter key is logically placed. Images turn out as fine as images churned out by 3-megapixel phone cameras go, though colours sometimes appear washed out. You can pop a microSD card into the slot at the top of the phone to store your multimedia files.

Expect to charge the phone once every two days.

VERDICT

For a mid-range number, the idiot-proof LG KF700 is hard to fault. What would have made it sweeter is WiFi support. Intensive surfing via a cellular network is not an option for the budget-conscious. - TODAY/fa