RSSIt's official: LG Arena 3D phone to debut at MWC
By Jacqueline Emigh | Published February 9, 2009, 11:05 AM
Over the weekend, LG corroborated industry rumblings about the rollout of a potential iPhone rival at Mobile World Congress (MWC), also claiming that the Arena's 3D "S-Class" interface will set it apart from all others.
"The direct, intuitive and dynamic S-Class UI will be unlike anything that has appeared in a mobile phone before," said LG's Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company, in a statement issued on Sunday. "With rich 3D graphics, touch senstivity and exciting multimedia capabilities, it will truly make Arena a fully loaded multimedia phone."
The Arena's S-Class interface will provide a cube-based layout with four customizable home screens and touch-based 3D menus.
Other features of the phone to be introduced at the MWC show in Barcelona this month will include DivX and Dolby technologies; HSDPA 7.2 connectivity; Wi-Fi, A-GPS, and "far more," according to LG's statement.
"We will announce more specifics about Arena and its features along with some surprises during a press conference at the Mobile World Congress."
As previously reported in Betanews, buzz about an impending Arena phone began to circulate earlier last week after a device with that name appeared on a phone retailer's brochure in the Netherlands.
LG has also been rumored to be working with AT&T on a Neon-branded edition of the KS 360, a text messaging-friendly phone previously available on the Orange and O2 networks in Europe.
My Blackberry Pearl and its "Sure" type technology fail miserably. It’s SURE to type **gags** instead of **haha** five or six times until is learns, and then forgets yet again, leaving your message recipients often deterred and confused.
I want to see full VOIP/ video action. Someday, after the US private sector eases up on its cheap allocated bandwidth for high prices; we'll be having video conversations with ease.
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|Still sitting here, hating all touchscreen-only devices. Tactile feedback is a must. The new blackberry devices try to merge the two and fail miserably. I doubt this one will be any different.
...I like being able to type and *not* have to look at the dang thing to see if I hit the right button. If you can't tell what key you've hit by "touch", it's a "type and look" screen phone, not a touch-screen phone.
/rant off.
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|Don't care for the tacky interface and agree about touchscreen-only. Of course that's all the consumer sees but the technologies underneath seem to have quite some punch.
Isn't there a ridiculously priced PC keyboard where all the keys are OLEDs? They should work on miniaturization to use it on partial cell screens and we might get somewhere.
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|Yeah, the keyboard is out there. It's ridiculously expensive and you buy the OLED keys separately as I understand it.
*shakes head*
I'll stick with my LG voyager and my G11. ;)
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|Recalling some conversations last year you got weak fairly quickly with smart phones :)
Anyway, I've exhausted my time for BN today...
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|:p
I had one, decided I might as well have one that would work as my phone, music device and video player. It's more about consolidation than "smartphone".
That said, my wife "texts" me constantly and it is *far* easier on this than my old "free" flip-phone.
*shrug*
The smartphone gripe was so last week, man. Now it's netbooks. ;) Keep up, will ya?
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|In case someone truly wanted to purchase the OLED keyboard ...
http://www.artlebedev.com/everything/optimus/
Just shy of $1700.00 USD
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|Isn't this LG's third or fourth "iphone rival"? They appear to have decided that innovating in design isn't going to work, so they are going for the closest, non-chinese knock-off, clone so far.
I think only Palm has understood that the user interface and overall ease of use are what really set the iphone apart, so to beat it, you have to innovate in that area (and get it right). Blackberrry/RIM always knew this, and it has given them some time to catch up before losing current users, but they haven't found the right solution yet.
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