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By Damian Koh
Jul 15, 2008

Chocolate, Shine and Secret are not names you would normally associate with mobile phones. But thanks to LG, these monikers, together with the Prada and Viewty, have become just that. LG has undeniably done an excellent job here in creating an intangible brand attachment by replacing confounding numeric product names. Moving on, the Secret KF750 is the third iteration in the Korean chaebol's Black Label series. So what does it bring to the plate?

Design

The Secret's svelte 11.8mm body and solid build quality are what you'd notice when you first pick up the handset. On the front, a silver rim runs along three sides of the phone and a horizontal strip of faux leather wraps around from above the display into the back of the handset. The 2.4-inch QVGA LCD screen made from tempered glass and patterned carbon-fiber back give the slider handset its scratch-resistant properties. This is important for a phone with a large area prone to being nicked in the pocket.

There are three shortcut keys, along with the volume control on the right edge of the Secret. These give quick access to the Touch Media (we'll discuss this later), running apps (you can't close the programs from here) and 5-megapixel camera. On the other side is a proprietary connector for the bundled headset and charger and a lanyard eyelet. The microSD expansion slot is hot-swappable, but you'd have to remove the battery cover first.

To LG's credit, the Secret is dressed to impressed and we won't contest that. The problem here is the confusing use of the touch keys and dialing controls. The touch keys look mesmerizing with electric blue concentric circles radiating outward whenever they are touched and there's haptic feedback to let you know when it registers your finger taps.

Our peeve with it? It was very confusing having to switch back and forth between the touch keys and the center button which requires you to physically depress it. For most of the menus, there are three options at the bottom edge of the screen. This baffled us even further. We didn't know when we had to press up (on the touch directional pad) or use the central enter button. And it didn't help that the area surrounding this conventional button was touch-sensitive, so we often ended up activating them accidentally.

That's not all. While we like the option of having hard buttons for the call/end keys, on the Secret, it might as well do without them. These buttons have horrible tactility and are one of the worst we've used so far. Overall, it's a user-interface disaster for a phone with touch keys and LG seriously needs to rethink about implementing something similar for its next phone.

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