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LG Arena KM900: Rocking 3D interface

The LG Arena may not be mechanical battleground of household goods fighting over which of them will end up as scrap, but it is a multimedia phone with a very nifty interface

Richard Trenholm Former Movie and TV Senior Editor
Richard Trenholm was CNET's film and TV editor, covering the big screen, small screen and streaming. A member of the Film Critic's Circle, he's covered technology and culture from London's tech scene to Europe's refugee camps to the Sundance film festival.
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Richard Trenholm

When we first heard of the LG Arena, we had visions of a vast Coliseum full of baying gadget fans watching washing machines and hoovers engaged in titanic struggles to the mechanical death. Instead, it turns out the Arena is a mobile phone, which is nearly as interesting.

LG is rather proud of its new S-Class 3D user interface. So proud, in fact, they've gone and made a video, which as you can see shows off the Arena's rather nifty animated menu-scrolling, and spinning cube effect with a home screen on each face.

 

Our favourite bit is the bit with the surf guitar, which they used because that bit is about surfing the Web. D'you see?

The Arena is the first phone for the global market to feature Dolby Mobile to improve sound quality, with a 3.5mm audio jack so you can use any headphones. A 5-megapixel camera takes pictures to be displayed in the floating image gallery, which sees rows of pictures cascade across the 76mm (3-inch) touchscreen when the phone is turned sideways. LG also claims that the alarm clock and FM radio features are designed to make it feel like you're actually moving an actual dial with your actual fingers. Lawks!

The Arena packs a decent 8GB of onboard memory, expandable to 32GB via microSD card. It'll hit shops in March, in a choice of silver or black.