LG Cookie KP500 > Reviews (108)

This review is for the mobile phone LG Cookie.

Design

My phone is actually purple in colour (only choice they had in an emergency) and you can get them in other sorts as well but the design is done with this screen which dominates the front part of the phone. On the base of the unit there are 3 buttons.

The first button is to ring people with and this is highlighted in green when the phone is active, the middle button takes people to the main screen and menu and the final button it to end a call and to switch the mobile on and off as well.

On the back are where the camera is located and the battery slot and on the right hand side is where the Micro SD card slot is and also 2 other buttons as well which are for usage involving the camera.

On the left hand side is where the headphones slot is located and also the volume control as well which is done via a two button system.
The charging section is where you insert the headphones and this is using the same slot.

The phone has a very good feel which makes it seem like glue in the hand you never seem to drop the phone and the grip overall is fantastic.

Statistics

The screen size for this phone is 3 inches which is kind of standard nowadays for phones and it does seem much bigger perhaps due to how big it appears on the unit itself.

The screen resolution is 200 x 400 pixels and I am not an expert on these numbers but overall I find them quite good because the screen is very useful.

The phone memory is 48 MB which is not helpful at all so you do need to find a Micro SD card to insert into the phone.

The weight of the phone is 89 grams and considering this you might assume it is heavy but when you pick up the phone is does feel much lighter overall.

The size of the phone altogether is 106.5mm in height, 55.4mm in width and 11.9mm in depth.

The phone is also a touch screen phone which might require a stylus for some people.

Touch Screen

I am not that great with the touch screen idea because I prefer to have buttons and with this phone you have no choice. You might require a stylus which I got given to me with the phone and that is vital because without it mistakes are prone to occur.

The phone on menus, when writing a text or doing basic tasks takes for what seems forever because the phone sometimes does not recognise if you have touched the screen or not and your left waiting to see if the phone is just being slow or you might have to tap the screen again.

If you tab the screen to hard it sometimes registers a different movement altogether which is frustrating so you have to be careful.

If you do not turn off the vibration setting you can be left with an annoying vibration each time you press the screen which might please some people but it did irritate me.

If you want that vibration sort of motion take away when pressing the touch screen you can do this but sometimes you have to search long and hard for the correct destination as it is hidden. You go the main menu and can easily sort out the touch screen settings which might be useful for people to know.

I find the touch screen good for some parts but lacklustre in others.

Messaging

Messaging is very good on this phone, when you are ready to type a message there is a few ways to get to the messaging page and you can do this via the side button on the right hand side which takes you directly to the inbox.

You can use the main menu screen and locate messages or you could use the bottom of the main screen which has a side menu and that option is there as well.
The option to construct a message can be complicated and there is not much help given in this area. You find that you are given a key pad with all the numbers there exactly how your mobile phone usually looks and you click on the letter and it pops up on the screen.

You have the option of having the dictionary available to you which helps spell words or give you alternatives or you could just go ahead and write the word in yourself depending which you find easiest.

If you want to add pictures to a message or an image which is already on the phone you can do this as well and it makes the message better in my view if you do this.
You can then add a recipient as well to whom the message will be going to and you do this at the bottom of the screen and click there so you do not have to scroll through tones of names to find the correct person.

You will find all messages you send are saved, you have a drafts box as well for those messages you might have wrote but not finished and you can save messages if you wish to your phones memory or delete them as they arrive.

Camera

Fortunately the camera is very good and you have many options open for when you use the camera. If you choose to take a picture you might need to watch what buttons you press.

Most people are used to pressing a solid button and when they do it automatically takes a picture for you but this is not the case here you need to touch the screen itself and it will take the picture for you and to be fair the overall look on some pictures are very good but the majority do not look that great.

The truth is that if you’re taking an image of something bright the phone cannot handle the bright colours but if you do an image in the dark and turn the flash on the image is blurred and impossible to work out.

When you have finished taking a picture and you want to view a gallery of all the pictures you have done they display them in a thumbnail sort of style which gives people a change to pick an individual photo and edit them or delete them quicker rather than scanning through them all hoping to find the right picture.

You have to try and find a common ground there to work out which is going to suit you. I have found if your outside in the sunshine to put my hand on the top of the camera to hide out some of the light and sometimes the image comes through perfectly. In regards to night time I try to ignore the flash and find some other way to generate light which is not that easy.

You can edit any image you want though afterwards by choosing to sort out the brightness or the contrast and then saving it but sometimes pictures which are already looking poor in quality need to be deleted immediately.

Music

This mobile was always providing people information on how great the music player is overall and to be fair it is not too bad but I feel it could be better.

You can visit the music area whenever you wish and you have many options open to you and you need to pick which one suit you best. If you pick to play a particular artist you admire you can go on there and find an individual you like to hear and it will play all the music from that person.

Perhaps you have created a playlist of your favourite songs you can play that if you wish to do so and if you want to find other routes to playing music you can use albums of your artists if you wish or even play all tracks and the phone decides in which order.

There is always a menu brought up when you play a song with the usual controls such as pausing a track or even playing it louder and this depends on the person of course but you can listen to music sometimes and do other things but this has only happened a couple of occasions.

Phone Book and Blue Tooth

The phone book has the option for people to insert names in quite easily and you can insert much more information there as well.

They have got a chance for people to insert information such as the person’s name, there home and mobile numbers and even there place of work and occupation and that is quite a large amount of information to put in.

I personally think you should limit down what you put in there due to security reasons but you can have many names and so far I have 77 names and numbers and they are all there for me to view when I need to.

Bluetooth is one of the major features people are looking for when they have a phone and this phone does have this available but it takes a while to find the feature and you can turn it on with a switch and then you find devices and transfer documents to people and receive them as well.

I tend to find the Bluetooth very slow and at times takes forever to find people and that is not great and when you receive an item it can take forever even when the file is very small as well so again something which is not impressive.
Internet

The internet again is not that easy to locate on this phone and this could be down to many reasons but when you do find it going through all the menus your left with the option of going straight to the homepage of your particular network or you could go ahead and find a web page yourself.

If you know the webpage address you type this into the phone and then it should direct you straight to that screen but this is not always the case and it can take a while to load up properly and in that time you might be paying for the service you’re using.

Unfortunately you can never be too sure how much page costs if you have to pay because some pages take a while to load up with very little on them in terms of features and then others with plenty of information attached to them can take a few seconds to load up so your left in a catch 22 situation as to how quickly it decides to load up pages for you.

Battery Life

I would have to say the battery life is a hit and miss again and this is because when the battery is fully charged if you use the phone for the odd text message and phone call you will find it takes about 4 days for the battery to slowly go down and this would mean the phone is on 24 hours a day as well in this instance.

If you go on the internet or you try and play music you get about 30 hours battery life and then to make things sound really confusing if you decide to take pictures constantly and keep deleting them and adding them again you find it takes 4 days again for the battery to go down.

I cannot work out why the battery gets eaten up for the music playing but for picture taking it pretends nothing has happened.

Sometimes the battery life is confusing because the phone might tell you that you have a low battery and then a few seconds later the phone amazingly appears to have created another bar in the battery metre on the main screen. So the battery life is complicated at the best of times.

Drawing Pad and Games

On the main menu you also have a few other options and two of those are the drawing pad and games and to be fair you might use these more than you think.

The drawing pad is a clear screen and you can draw an image on the touch screen and it is reflected into the white background and you can send that as a message if you wish or keep it for future reference but the only down point is that even though it sounds cool you might find it never draws accurately enough as you might expect it to.

The image never looks clear and it seems to be very fussy when it comes to how much pressure is needed to draw.

The games area I do spend some time on and with one particular game named Pipe Game and this is just a simple game of trying to re-route some liquid through some pipe work to the other end as quickly as possible. There is a few other games named Wheel Mania and Flying Dices and these are nothing really just a game where you spin a wheel and the other is where you throw a few dices.

You can download new games whenever you wish and you do need to pay for them and make sure they will suit your phone as well in terms of memory.

Good Points

The first good point is perhaps the weight because I have had phones in the past which are so heavy it is frustrating and your left holding up your trousers hoping they do not fall down and this is all due to the weight of the product you are carrying.

I think the size of the screen is extremely useful and is a good size which helps people who might have poor eye sight sees more of what they are actually doing.

I like the messaging part of the phone because it has so many options for people and all on one screen so it saves people looking around so much for contacts and other pieces of information.

I like how you turn on the mobile, you turn on the device and you’re asked to unlock the phone just by holding your finger on the screen in a similar fashion to a finger print ID scanner. It saves you pressing two buttons at once and remembering passwords which is easy and I have to stress it is not a finger print scanner just acts like one.

Bad Points

I do not like the vibrations because you can turn them off which I understand but sometimes you want to know that the button you have clicked was fully clicked and if you hear a sound it makes you aware if you have or not.

I do not like the phone in terms of the touch screen I feel the touch screen itself is poor and works when it wants to and other times it seems to go to sleep when you need it and that is very annoying.

I feel the main menu screen is poor because it has some of the basics on there but there is no button to bring up the camera, Bluetooth or even the internet you need to go and find this yourself and add them to the screen. This to me is silly and they should already be on the main screen from the start.

I think the camera could try and take better pictures and stop having a useless flash which ruins images so this is a major problem in terms of this phone.

Summary

When I got this phone it was mainly to be used as a spare due to my problems in the past of destroying mobile phones but the problem with this phone is that the touch screen is annoying, the vibrations are frustrating and the overall features which you want are hidden and you have to go searching for them.

I think this phone is useful because it can be used to ring people, messaging is quite good as is size and weight.

I paid £50 for this phone recently inside the Argos catalogue and the time I felt it was a good deal and overall it was not too bad, just a shame some features are not the best.