Simple and affordable clamshell

Jul 23, 2008 06:16 GMT  ·  By

LG Electronics has announced the release of its KF300 clamshell in both Europe and Japan. Part of the Wine series, the new handset was first seen on the Web several months ago.

Now the phone is finally official and should be available across Japan and on most of the European markets in the next few days or weeks. The KF300 is already on sale in some South American countries - in Venezuela, for example, Movistar is offering it for 439 VEF, which means about 130 Euros or $205.

Said to be targeted for customers between 30 and 40 years of age, LG KF300 is just a good-looking basic phone that comes with four quick-access keys, in several color versions: purple, black and pink for Europe, and pink, white and gold for Japan.

The features of the European KF300 include: a 2.4 inch TFT internal display with 240 x 320 pixels and 262K colors, an external 1.3 inch screen with the same number of colors but only 128 x 160 pixels, tri-band GSM connectivity (900 / 1800 / 1900 MHz) with GPRS and EDGE, Music player, FM radio, Bluetooth, Web browser, MMS and SMS capabilities, a 2 Megapixel camera with video recording, expandable memory and so on. The clamshell weighs 100 grams and, when closed, it measures 100 x 50 x 17 millimeters.

In Japan, the KF300 is exclusively offered by NTT DoCoMo, the largest mobile carrier in the country, under the name of FOMA L706ie. Unlike the KF300, the Japanese version of the new LG handset features 3G connectivity.

The retail prices of KF300 / L706ie for Europe and Japan are not known for the moment, but they should be similar to the one from Venezuela.

No word yet on whether LG will release the KF300 in the US, but it can surely do it, since the handset's South American edition works on the 850, 1800 and 1900 GSM frequencies, hence it's compatible with the North American networks too.