The LG Arena takes much of its styling from the Apple iPhone, and isn’t ashamed to flaunt its obvious similarities. Lets take a closer look and compare it to the iPhone.
The LG Arena is available on Vodafone now, Optus shortly and Telstra later in the year. The Arena is seeking some of the market share curently owned by the iPhone by offering a slicker version iPhone.
How they compare: iPhone vs. LG Arena
Dimensions: The Arena feels much smaller at 105.9 x 55.3 x 12 mm than the iPhone’s larger 115.5 x 62.1 x 12.3mm unit.
Screen size: The Arena’s 3″ screen feels a great deal smaller than the phone’s 3.5″ display. The buttons are tricker to touch as a result of this size saving. However, the Arena’s 480 x 800 pixel count makes good use of 3D menus and video playback, as compared to the iPhone’s lesser 480 x 320 display. The Arena boasts WVGA quality, with sharper quality than almost any phone we’ve seen before.
Weight: The Arena is definitely lighter (105g) and more pocket-friendly than the iPhone (133g).
Menus/ Navigation: Based on a ‘cubist’ theme, the touch screen responded well. The iPhone is slightly easier to navigate.
Unusual function – Dolby sound? The Arena offers Dolby Mobile, a world’s first for a mobile. A 3.5mm jack is already a leg up on Apple’s annoying earphone jack.
Video functions: The Arena can play DivX encoded films on your 42″ plasma without it appearing too grainy or pixelated. A decent video-out cable/plug makes this very easy to do on the Arena.
Camera: The Arena’s 5.0MP (2592 x 1944) camera kicks the lousy 2.0MP offering on the iPhone. You can even shoot video up to 120 frames a second using the Arena.
Additional functions: The Arena features Bluetooth, WiFi, assisted GPS, 7.2 HSDPA and FM tuner. Arena beats iPhone here for the inclusion of an FM tuner.
Battery life: The Arena offers 30 hours of MP3 listening action and 6 – 8 hours of video watching. It also boasts a simple removable (and cheap to replace) Lithium battery.
Middle of the road: The Arena’s tricky menu functions do not let you go ‘back’ to your last selected input. Based on its cubist rotating menus, users are forced to rotate back and forth until they find the menu mode they desire.
Epic fail: No apps/app store. LG’s sparkling proprietary flash based OS is let down by a non-app support model.
Awesomeness: Internal memory on the Arena is 8GB built in – but expandable to 32GB with optional microSD (40GB total memory).
