LG, the South Korean manufacturer, has presented a new full QWERTY handset during the Singapore CommunicAsia fair, the KS360 - a device that doesn't bring high-end features but it sure is interesting, especially because of the way it is designed.
The QWERTY keypad of the LG KS360 is a sliding one and, when opened, it unveils lots of red round buttons that contribute to the toy-like overall look of the handset. The navigation buttons are also round and what's weird is that, although the KS360 does not have a touchscreen display, it lacks an alphanumeric keypad. This might be a serious downside, especially when it comes to dialing numbers, as the only numeric keys are on the QWERTY keyboard - which, unless slid out, it stays hidden under the display of the handset.
The full list of features packed in the KS360 includes: a 2.4 inch TFT display with a 240 x 320 pixel resolution, a nice-looking User Interface, only tri-band GSM connectivity with EDGE (thus no 3G speeds), a 2.0 Megapixel camera with video recording, "powerful picture editor",
Music player, Video player, FM radio, Web browser, email, Instant Messaging, stereo Bluetooth and USB 2.0. When closed, the handset doesn't seem to be too big, which is a good thing for a QWERTY device.
The retail price of KS360 has not been announced, but it can't bee too high. Anyway, the phone seems to be made for Asia only, hence European or American users will probably never get to experience its weirdness.
KS360 is among the few QWERTY phones manufactured by LG, the two most recent such handsets being the affordable
LG Rumor and the KT610. Unlike the new handset, though, these both come with alphanumeric keypads besides the QWERTY ones, so the KS360 really is a unique phone.
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