Here’s a bit of an LG Blog exclusive - Jeremy Newing, LG Mobile’s UK Marketing Manager, talking about the Secret and his ideas for the future of LG Mobile, at the bloggers’ event we held to launch the LG Secret last week: We also managed to collar John Barton, UK Sales and Marketing manager, as he spoke with Helen at the official press conference for the Secret’s release: These videos and more (such as an interview with Simon Perry of Digital Lifestyles) on our brand new LG Blog UK YouTube channel, which succeeds the LG Viewty one we had last year. Of course, we’re not the only ones who’ve been on about the Secret, or indeed videoed about it. Over at Tech Digest Susi has a video review (showing off the tempered glass front). Simon at Zath, Stephen at Gadgeteer and Al at Coolest Reviews both previews the phone - Al especially highlights the m-toy aspects, which I remember a lot of people enjoying at the event. In fact that’s one of the best things about it - was seeing how everyone enjoyed themselves in using the phone, something that I hope we’ll see as more detailed reviews come out in the coming weeks…

Last Friday we had the pleasure of some of the UK’s top tech and style bloggers at an exclusive event at London’s May Fair Hotel to have a look at the new LG Secret (KF750). A good crowd turned up, and as well as meeting us in the flesh, they got a chance to hear from Jeremy Newing, UK head of marketing for LG Mobile.

Jeremy first went through the phone’s features with a presentation, and then he fielded a really engaging Q&A with the audience, talking about the progress LG Mobile have made, LG’s plans for the future, including more open development for our phones, collaborating with users more, and designing phones with “Web 2.0″ in mind. After that our guests got a chance to try the phones hands-on.

I won’t go into to too much detail, as I think it’s best to read what the bloggers there thought instead, so why not check them out - from SMS Text News, Gaj-It and one part truth. There’ll be more to come (including video of the event) over the coming week, so keep an eye out for more…

Today in London, we revealed the name of the third in the LG Black Label line of phones - the LG Secret. The Secret (KF750) is a slender & stylish handset with a slew of enriched technological features, including a 5MP ISO 800 camera, a 120fps QVGA video camera and DivX-certified recording and playback. The camera also boasts a range of filters and modes, as well as on-camera photo editing.

The phone has a touchscreen and an accelerometer motion sensor. It also has auto luminance control, adjusting the screen brightness automatically, saving both battery life and making it more comfortable for your eyes. Inside, the phone boasts an MP3 player and FM radio, a reader for Word, Excel and Powerpoint and is loaded with a specialised Google Package that with a dedicated interface for Google services such as GMail, Google Maps, YouTube and Blogger. It also has Bluetooth AutoSync to synchronise data seamlessly with your PC, and on the fun side a range of games that hook into the motion sensor.

With the philosophy of “style that lasts”, it’s been made out of some of toughest materials around, including carbon fibre and tempered glass, with neon touch navigation buttons that gently light up the interface.

For more information, you can download the press release or the feature list. More photos and coverage can be found in our sneak peak post from a couple of weeks ago, or on the dedicated microsite at secret.lgmobile.com

Update: We have some video of the phone too. Enjoy:

Special Monday morning treat - we’ve got a sneak preview of the third in the highly stylish LG Black Label series of handsets, following in the footsteps of the successful LG Chocolate and LG Shine. Like its two predecessors, the phone is a combination of cutting edge tech with brilliant design, and it will be one of the slimmest 5MP cameraphones out there. With the philosophy of “style that lasts”, it’s been made out of some of toughest materials around, including carbon fibre and tempered glass, to give the phone a timeless elegance.

The new phone’s name is still a secret, but all will be revealed on April 24th at our European launch. In the meantime we can give you a cheeky sneak peek with the photo to the right - enjoy. You can also see shots of the phone from the back, closed and alongside others in the same range. Enjoy!

Today is the 35th anniversary of the first mobile phone call.

On April 3rd, 1973 Dr. Martin Cooper, Motorola’s Corporate Director of R&D and patent holder for the “Radio Telephone System”, used the DynaTAC handset to make the first ever portable phone call. Who did he call? Joel Engel, Head of Research at Bell Labs and his rival in the field, to let him know he was too late! I’m not sure I could’ve resisted making that call in his place.

“Suddenly there was Captain Kirk talking on his communicator. Talking! With no wires!”

“To the rest of the world it was a fantasy. To me it was an objective.”

In the same article you discover Cooper is not alone in having Kirk and co as his muses:

Robert Haitani, the designer of the Palm Pilot, revealed to the San Francisco Chronicle, “my first sketches were influenced by the Enterprise bridge panels…Years later the first Treo (a combo phone and wireless PDA) had a form factor similar to the communicator. You could stand there and talk into it like Captain Kirk.”

I’ve talked about the KF600 in brief before but having played with it the past week I thought it apt to talk about the LG KF600, our new mid-range touchscreen phone.

The phone’s most distinctive feature is the dual screen. The first screen is a 240×320 pixel 2″ LCD screen, the same top-quality screens on many of our other phones. The second is a 240×176 pixel touchscreen called the InteractPad. The InteractPad replaces the standard navigation keys on the phone with a set of contextual icons that change according to what you’re doing. For example, when navigating the menu it displays a set of arrows, while when composing text messages, it provides buttons to change input settings or insert symbols.

The InteractPad is customisable, so you can have your favourite functions available on the main screen. It also allows for handwriting recognition, either via a stylus (availability varies according to country) or just your thumbnail (which I found surprisingly easy after a little bit of practice). Like the touchscreen on the Viewty, the InteractPad has haptic feedback (i.e. it vibrates with every press), meaning pressing it is more intuitive to handle. The overall effect is a compromise between full-touchscreen phones like the Viewty, and more traditional interfaces, with an ultimate focus on being as user friendly as possible.

Both screens can be skinned according to eight different themes, including four by the renowned late pop artist Keith Haring, or customised with your own wallpaper. Speaking of pictures, the phone comes with a 3.0 Megapixel camera (capable of video), and also has an MP3 player. It come with 25MB of internal storage and an SD card slot capable of taking up to 4GB capacity.

It has a warm feel to the hand and is pretty slimline, at just 14.1mm thick and weighing 107 grammes. It comes in pastel pink, shiny pink, wine red or good old-fashioned black. For a closer look, take a look at the KF600 Specification, or better still check out the demo video below to get a real feel for it:

Zaha Hadid, the first female recipient of the Pritzker Architecture Prize, was chosen by Karl Lagerfeld to create the Mobile Art CHANEL Contemporary Art Container, pictured below. Hadid, described by The Times last year as “the world’s most flamboyant architect” due to her “breathtakingly sensuous designs”, seems like an obvious choice for a man quoted as saying “I don’t like standard beauty – there is no beauty without strangeness.”

Hadid was awarded the Pritzker, considered to be the Nobel Prize of architecture, in 2004 and is arguably one of the most talented architects of her generation. According to the Museum Marketing Blog (where I found the pictures above and below), the Pavilion was inspired by Chanel’s signature quilted bag, but the official Chanel Mobile Art site says the exhibition inside the pavilion which will include work “inspired by the elements that give the emblematic quilted bag from CHANEL its identity”.

I can’t find a definitive answer as to if the Pavilion is also based on the icon bags - if you know please comment!

There is a great little vital tour of the exhibition space on the Chanel Mobile Art site where the concept is described:

“It is important to note that Mobile Art is less an itinerant exhibition than an artistic experience in a nomadic building. This is how both the architecture and the exhibition were conceived.”
…
“When you see pictures of the scale model, you notice that the architecture is completely organic. The walls are not straight.

Once inside the structure of Mobile Art, you find something undefined and fluid. It feels temporary, giving the impression of a virtual reality.
It plays on the idea of being in another dimension, in a cinematic universe.”

The tour starts in Hong Kong next month and comes to the UK in June 2009.

A long wait but hopefully one that’s worth it!

With mobile phones so ubiquitous these days it’s hard to find places where they’re not usable - they’re generally restricted to being down coal mines, up the tops of mountains and when in an aeroplane. But that last one might be about to change:

The use of mobiles on planes flying in European airspace has been given approval by UK regulator Ofcom. It has issued plans that will allow airlines to offer mobile services on UK-registered aircraft. The decision means that mobiles could be used once a plane has reached an altitude of 3,000m or more.

Turning off mobiles is always something I forget to do on plane (though thankfully with no ill effects, touch wood) but it might be a while yet before we’re able to use them properly, as airlines still need to jump through other regulatory hoops before mobiles on planes will be allowed. So if you’re itching to use your phone, whether it be for texts, calls or Internet, when you next fly, you’re going to have to wait a little bit longer. Alternatively, you might think it’s good to take a break from a mobile lifestyle for a few hours once every so often. What do you reckon? Is allowing mobile use on planes a good thing or something we’re better off without?

We’re pleased to announce not just one but two new phones for the European market this week at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona.

The first is the LG KF600, which has already been out in the United States and has won an iF product design award for its InteractPad keypad. As well as the usual number keys which slide out, the InteractPad keys re virtual and context-specific, meaning they can change to the task at hand, making the audio player, camera and videocamera dead easy to use, as you can see below:

The phone is out now - for more information check out this press release.

The second is our brand new multimedia phone, the LG KF700, which has a three-inch touchscreen as well as an alphanumeric keypad that slides out, and a shortcut dial to make navigation quick and easy. The phone features a fully-featured web browser, letting you view sites like YouTube and use Ajax-powered sites like Google Mail or Reader. While the touchscreen allows ultra-fast 3G HSDPA browsing, the slide-out keypad allows a touch of familiarity for those who prefer it to dial or text:

It will be available from mid-March - for more information check out this press release.

It’s London Fashion Week and the beautiful and the stylish are flocking to London to fight for that impossible to get Moss/Westwood ‘comeback’ ticket. What could be a more fitting time to welcome the new ‘Dark Silver’ Viewty?

Yes, LG are now offering up the sleek silver edition LG Viewty in addition to the original black. LG researched colour preferences across Europe, and silver was selected as the number one colour choice of consumers looking for a stylish, polished, premium phone that reflects their own style.

But it’s not just a revamp don’t worry, the silver Viewty has all the functions and capabilities which made the original so popular, but with an improvement as well as a new look.

“The new ‘Dark Silver’ Viewty has all the quality of the black version but in addition to the stylish stand-out colour, we have re-designed the jog wheel to make scrolling the menus easier following consumer feedback. Viewty gives consumers the opportunity to own a phone that makes a statement, with a new high-tech finish that sleek, smart and complements its overall design,” said Dr. Skott Ahn, President and CEO of LG Electronics Mobile Communications Company. “We knew we had something special when we created Viewty, and it turns out that over half a million customers agree with us.”

There will be even more colour choices for the LG Viewty, with it’s 5.0 megapixel camera and a 3.0-inch touchscreen, available later this year.