LG GT350 and GS290: Touchy teen texters
LG announces two additions to its Cookie family -- the GT350 and the GS290: two mobile phones with a heavy focus on that social networking
Just in case you didn't get enough LG goodness yesterday, today the company announced two new phones for its Cookie family, the LG GT350 (up there on the left) and the GS290 (over on the right) -- two mobiles that are all about the social and the networking.
Unlike the almost buttonless Mini, the GT350 is packed to the gills with clicky stuff -- as well as the 76mm (3-inch) touchscreen, there's a pull-out Qwerty keyboard (pictured, centre).
The GT350 is essentially an upgrade of the earlier KS360, which failed to impress us back in 2008. The main difference with this model will be an increased focus on Facebook, Twitter and the like.
This equates to a slightly larger keyboard -- four rows deep instead of the previous three, which should make for some easy and speedy typing. There's also a social-aggregation tool built in, so updates from various services will all appear on the home screen in one feed. There are even dedicated shortcuts to your social feed built into the keyboard, so you'll never be more than seconds away from important banter. You'll also get push email, Web browsing and instant messaging thrown in for good measure.
All this networking will require some pretty hefty connectivity, and there's no word yet on whether the GT350 will support Wi-Fi or 3G. The colour scheme is putrid, but there's the chance one of the three other colours won't make you vomit -- black, blue (pictured), purple and silver are available.
Details on the GS290 are a little more sparse -- we're told that it will be the most affordable full touchscreen phone in the Cookie family, so expect this phone to be more budget than bling. It'll have the same focus on social networking as the GT350, so the smart money's on this phone being aimed squarely at touch-mad teens. Which, if we think back, is all of them.
The GT350 gets a European release this April, while the GS290 is due in March -- stay tuned for updates and pricing details as and when they're announced.