Barcelona – Last year at the Mobile World Congress, we started to see the iPhone copycats, essentially stock cellphones onto which had been grafted a cursory touch screen. Most of these phones made little use of touch – they used the standard menus and UI conventions they had always used.
A year passed and manufacturers realized that people weren't buying the iPhone because you could touch it. They were buying it because of what it did when you touched it. It was intuitive and, above all, not annoying. So this year at MWC 09 we are seeing the results of this realization – some real UI improvements.
LG's new flagship, the Arena, was launched today and shows that the company has been working hard. The Arena has all of the features you would expect, from camera (5MP with autofocus and flash) to YouTube integration to a big, bright 3" screen. But LG is most excited about its new 3D user interface, which achieves a decent smoothness thanks to hardware acceleration and a processor from AMD. Check out the (official) video below.
To picture the UI, think of a multi-touch, on-screen Rolodex. LG calls it Reel Scrolling, which is cutely accurate, although perhaps a little gimmicky. That processor means that the phone can also handle some proper movie codecs, playing back both DivX and Xvid movies (the favorite formats of BitTorrenters everywhere). The handset also includes Dolby Mobile, a certification for mobile devices from the Dolby Labs, as you'd expect. It really doesn't add much.
Lastly, LG seems to get it when it comes to web services. Instead of trying to force us to use proprietary services, the Arena is all about what's out there already. If you like Gmail, Google Maps and YouTube, you're in luck. In fact, the Arena is a solid all-rounder. It's doing what has to be done in a post-iPhone world – making something more than just good enough, with a splash of open-ness that Apple will never deign to match.
Product page [LG]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Grvfs_VQqw4
