LG makes KF700 touchscreen slider official

Expanding on an early look at the Mobile World Congress show, LG on Tuesday officially launched the KF700. An enhanced cousin of the Venus (KF600), the phone provides a larger, 3-inch touchscreen and aims to fix some of the control limits of these phones; aside from including a slider keypad, a dial on the back lets users quickly jump to music or other functions at different points in the touch interface. The interface mixes and matches, letting users zoom in or out of websites with the dial and supplementing typing on the keypad with touchscreen input for special characters.

Despite its non-smartphone design, the KF700 has a full HTML web browser and supports 7.2Mbps HSDPA Internet access both for browsing and for dedicated access to YouTube, Gmail, and other services. A 3-megapixel camera with flash supplements an AAC/MP3/WMA music and MPEG-4 video player for songs stored on microSD cards and an FM radio for when storage isn't enough. LG is selling the KF700 in black and silver versions and intends to sell the phone both in its Korean home and abroad. A North American version isn't immediately expected given the lack of either an 850MHz GSM band or a CDMA edition of the handset.