Customer Reviews

LG KM900 Arena Sim Free Mobile Phone - Silver

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(7)

 

 

I got this phone as an upgrade and was extremely happy with its sleek appearence and good initial reviews.
After about a month of use it all started to go wrong with the touch screen becoming unresponsive or becoming stuck on one button. The off button then wouldn't work either. I took it back and got them to reset it all which they assured me it would correct the problems. It worked for about a week before reverting to being unresponsive.
This phone has been the worst phone I've ever had and is very frustrating. I've still got a year left on my two year contract and have reverted to using an old phone rather than the LG Arena.

I'd choose a different phone if you are deciding to buy this one.

The first thing is that this phone uses Dolby Mobile in its music player. It is ASTOUNDING. I've had an ipod touch over two years, and Dolby kicks *ss and wipes the floor over the ipod.
Music: I had no problem transferring my MP3s via the software although i would recommend Windows Media Player its so much faster, and it kept all my files/folders/artists in order as i know them on the ipod. (If you have AAC files you will need to get itunes to convert them to MP3).
Camera:The still camera is incredible and the post-tweeking of your pics presents endless possiblities. The dvd quality video camera is also extremely good quality.
Movies: To be honest, if you don't want to play around with video conversion software, dont bother, as you will become very familiar with the words 'Not Supported'. But there are some very easy to use software packages such as Cucusoft DVD converter or AVS DVD converter. You can only convert to certain types of files (i use H264). Also the player will not play movies with sound file sample size greater than 16-bit or with a bit rate lower than 16kbps or a sample rate lower than about 32000Hz.
I cant praise this 'phone' enough. Its the only satisfactory piece of kit that can handle music, movies, photos/video, has a memory card slot and can make calls(!) that i know of. I will of course use itunes for downloads, but they will go straight onto this handset.
The browser is also very good. Navigation is a little fiddly but ive gotten used to it.
Lastly, as far as i can tell, the arena is no faster or slower than an ipod touch to operate.

This is a great phone. Took a while to get used to it as touch screen is very sensitive but they'vbe built in some user friendly features like it vibrates each time you touch the screen so you know you've hit the right button. At first you feel like your fingers are huge blundering digits (if you have medium to long nails this is NOT the phone for you) but well worth persevering as it has a nice intuitive feel. It's light weight and slim but packed with really useful features like swipe screens and optional qwerty keypad in landscape view. The camera is very good and takes beautiful photos. The only downside is rubbish internet browsing but that's down to the technology rather than the phone.
Highly recommend this phone.

The KM900AT is a class and a beautiful piece to own. I actually got it free on upgrade. I have always wanted an iPhone but cant afford one so l asked for something close to iPhone and l was advised to go for this. Unfortunately l've mislaid the operating manual booklet but am getting used to operating it by the day. Touch is very very sensitive and sometimes when you touch it might seem it's not responding but touch gently but firmly. Good functions but no windows. The functions gets easier as you get use to the phone. The memory size is about is very large even though you've got slot for memory card you may not need one. The pix is 5.0 Mega Pixel. Music is Dolby Mobile.
For me the down side is is the network reception. With my old phone (HTC and Blackberry) l do not suffer being disconnected at the middle of a call or not having service bars at all but with this this is very common when am at home however whilst in the office l do not suffer this. So if you leave in an area with not very good network service this phone is not for you.
In conclusion l must say I LOVE MY HANDSET.

I have had this phone for nearly 18 months and the LG Arena appears is not the perfectly good phone it appears to be. It has a good camera, a large screen, a decent music system and is a reasonable size. Unfortunately the operating system is incredibly clunky and slow to use, searching through your contacts is a chore and sending a message to more than one person is a pain. The touch screen is not as responsive or accurate as one would expect, sometimes it just doesn't respond to anything and if it gets so much as a drop of rain on it it doesn't work at all. The phone also has a problem with freezing and just turning its self when it feels like, it really does seem to have a mind of its own.

To be quite honest I'd recommend almost any phone over this one even if you have to resort to some old brick you have to dig out from under your bed and blow off the cobwebs.

This phone has turned out to be a great disappointment. On paper and visually, it's great. The handset design is sleek, the interface is lovely to look at and the phone is packed with features. In reality, however, things are rather different. Firstly, it's very slow; you press a button and wait... Secondly, the video camera doesn't work. Thirdly, although the mp3 player is great, I am unable to display any album art and I am unable to delete any play lists (think about that for a second). Fourthly, since I bought it I have been unable to update the firmware and iron out the above mentioned bugs.

The Arena seems to have been pushed through far too quickly and there are too many flaws. On the strength (weakness?) of this phone I doubt I'll ever buy a Lucky Goldstar phone again.

This phone has some good and bad points:
The music player is really good quality. You can search by album, artist, song and also set up your own playlists, although I find that playlists tend to cut out after 2 or 3 tunes which is really irritating. It does also have a built in FM transmitter which is really useful for long journeys and the built in memory supports quite a few songs and it also has a card slot for additional memory.

It can take a reasonably good picture. You can zoom in well to view pictures in more detail and there are quite a few options available including a front and rear facing camera, sepia, black & white options, flash, macro, ISO etc. However, it can't cope if the subject is moving even slightly. There is also quite a significant delay between the shutter time and the picture being taken. Several times I have thought the picture had been taken to turn it round to check the picture and found a blurred image of myself!

Calling and texting are simple enough although the autotext can be difficult to use quickly and the touchpad is slightly over-sensitive. I do like the addition of threaded text options. However, there is no easy scroll or find option so you can only delete messages individually and after each deletion, you have scroll through the messages again to find the next one to delete. There are also no game options ready loaded which I think is a shame. Web browsing is quite user friendly and quick though which is a bonus.

The main irritation for me though is the auto-lock. The max time for auto-lock is 60 seconds which means if you want to switch between calls or have called voicemail and want to delete a message etc, the phone will have locked itself and it's a race against time to unlock the darn thing to use it again. In the 9 months I have owned this, the phone has also turned itself off for no apparent reason on 5 or 6 occasions and takes a good 3 or 4 minutes to turn back on. Battery life is quite good - I only need to charge it every 4 or 5 days although I have it on the lowest power save settings and don't use it that often.

In conclusion, I would definitely not get this as an alternative to the iPhone (as I was recommended), for the gadgets, the camera or if you like texting a lot. However, it would be good as an average everyday phone for limited usage or for the music player and only if it was free on contract.

This phone is probably the worst phone I've ever had.

Took 1 day for this phone to break on me. Charging it up from out of the box, once it had charged for a day I turned it on and the whole screen went graphically corrupt. Went and got a replacement.

A month later, I ran the battery down on the replacement as I was away on holiday for 5 days (battery life is poor, lasts one day with regular use of mp3), came home and charged it up. The whole touchscreen had become unresponsive.

Now waiting for repairs to be done on it, inevitably to happen again.
Get something else and save your time and money.

Some reviews can be a little unfair in the comparisons with other phones, but this handset has been nothing but a dissapointment.

It's a media orientated phone so I tend to judge it on it's media capabilities. Firstly, the music player. The dolby sound is very good, I'll give it that. The in-built transmitter is useless as it produces a very bass-less sound. This could be a firmware issue as it will play the first track with base so it's likely a bug. mp3 and wma files will play. There is typically a 5 second pause between tracks for no other reasons than rubbish firmware/hardware. It seems there is no remote control available for music media playing which I think most Nokia N-series and Sony Ericsson handsets come with in the box.

Video playback is just annoying. The Arena has a great screen but the much hyped DivX playback will only use half the resolution and you MUST convert your file to this resolution. Anything larger will prompt a 'Not Supported!' pop-up. As I understand it, older LG phones could play without hassle. mp4 files may well play, it's just that 'Not Supported!' will pop-up when I have tried and I don't have the patience. Trawl the internet for a solution if you want, I want something to work out of the box with a comprehensive manual that hasn't been put through a Korean to English babblefish translation. I've tried BBC iplayer downloads, of course they are 'Not Supported!', but you can't blame me for trying.

The built-in browser wheezes with a relatively complex website. It's pretty much unusable in fact as the 'pinch to zoom method' has a serious lag. Best to download Opera Mini really, but as with all Java apps on this phone, around 30% of the screen is lost to a navigator button pad on the touch screen. Of course that's not an option to turn off, that would be too simple. Java apps run curiously slow as well, it leads me to think this phone is nowhere near 'cutting edge'.

I've had the handset 6 months now. In this time I think there have been 3 updates to the firmware. Some probs have been fixed, i.e. the GPS to an extent actually works now. Some probs have been created, any additions to the built in dictionary for texting are lost when the phone is switched off and on (I mean, c'mon!). LG are completely shoddy on this, I don't expect anything to be solved.

Great modern styled phone, Phone is quick, responsive and layed out well. Has great colours on the phone and lots of memory to store music and photos etc. Has a great 5mp camera, and battery lasts a long time even with wifi turned on.

Great headhphones come with the phone, 5/5 great product.