LG might not be well known for their uber-stylish smartphones, but the New Chocolate is every bit as mysterious and welcome as a gourmet box of chocolates.
The rather large red and black colour device won't be everyone's cup of tea - but it does have a few key features worth savouring.
LG's New Chocolate is a massive revamp on their earlier Chocolate smartphone designs (now in its fourth generation). On the technical side, the phone is rated for up to 5 hours talk time on 3G networks, HSDPA 7.2 GPRS EDGE, TV-out and has 5MP camera. All this and it only weighs 129 grams.
Most strikingly about the New Chocolate is undoubtedly its size. It's 128mm long, and is noticeable for it's unmistakable long and rectangular sharp angles.
 |
| Long, rectangular and with plenty of viewing landscape - the New Chocolate is 12.8cm long |
At first glance, it's easy to be put off by the phone's length (128mm x 51mm x 10.9mm). The odd size certainly calls attention to those chocolate bar comparisons. But there is good reason for the form factor: screen landscape and plenty of it.
Instead of the 3.5in screen seen so often in smartphones, the New Chocolate delves into 21:9 territory with a 4inch TFT LCD touchscreen (345 x 800). Every inch is very welcome when you're viewing video.
LG also announced that they will be setting up an app store to service the New Chocolate in the coming weeks.
The screen is perfect for watching movies - we viewed an Avatar trailer in 21:9 and we were very impressed with the HD quality (with digital Dolby sound quality certainly helping its cause). In fact, the phone doubles as a handy little movie player, supporting XVID movie downloads and is optimised to play films in 2:35:1 mode.
 |
| Fashionable, stylish and very blocky - love it or hate it, but the phone does have a certain style about it. |
The touchscreen is complimented by LG's own proprietary OS, and shows few signs of lag. Copy and paste is useful for documents, while you can navigate web pages with multi-touch zoom and scan functions.
But the New Chocolate is certainly not cheap. It will retail for $1,000, making it one of the most expensive phones on the market. LG are calling it "aspirational" and it's certainly that.
The phone comes unlocked and can be used on any network. On the downside, the phone only has 1GB of internal memory, but there is a 32GB microSD slot available. It's odd that LG didn't bundle a larger flash memory with the unit.
LG told us the New Chocolate will arrive in select retailers a couple of weeks before Christmas.