LG KG800 Chocolate (2006)

Released April 2006

Today LG announced that they were pulling out of the mobile phone business, a market that they had competed in for two decades. The loss-making unit struggled to compete with the likes of archi-rivals Samsung (a Korean company like LG) and increasingly competitive Chinese manufacturers are taking substantial market share in the Asia-Pacific region.

Recent LG devices have been slabby and competent smartphones, but did they ever make an iconic device? Possibly the most memorable phone they made was 2006’s LG KG800 “Chocolate”.

LG KG800 Chocolate

An elegant slider phone, coming to market 15 years ago, the KG800 came from the golden age of mobile phone design. The smooth almost featureless phone slid open to reveal a keypad that had a passing resemblance to the squares on a bar of chocolate – hence the “Chocolate” name the phone was marketed under. An adaptation of a Korean-only phone launched the previous year, the KG800 was sold worldwide in one form or another and was a huge hit.

What interesting feature were the touch-sensitive buttons on the front of the phone which were normally invisible but lit up when they were active. This gave the device a sleek, mysterious form factor. Unfortunately they could also be easily triggered accidentally, one common problem being that it was easy to trigger the sequence to delete all the contacts in your phone. Ooops.

In these pre-iPhone days, expectations about technical specs were not very high but the Chocolate didn’t really meet up with those, even by 2006 standards. A 2.0” 176 x 220 pixel display, 1.3 megapixel camera, 128Mb of non-expandable storage, no 3G support… it wasn’t great. But primarily this was a fashion phone and the sleek looks were the appealing factor.

Where the Chocolate may have been the most memorable, there were some other interesting devices too. LG’s U8000 series of clamshells were among the first 3G phones to be widely available on the market, the GD900 had a very cool transparent keypad, there was the GD910 watch phone, the PRADA phone that might have been an iPhone rival under different circumstances, the LG Optimus 3D (which you might guess had a 3G display), indeed looking back LG weren’t short of innovation, but they could never quite create the “must have” phone that they needed for real success.

LG tried to follow up the success of the Chocolate with a number of other devices such as the BL20, BL40, KU800 plus also the Secret and the Shine. They met with limited success in a market that was shifting towards smartphones rather than feature phones.

While it’s sad to see LG go, it’s unlikely that most people will notice. But if you want a device to remember them by, the KG800 is typically priced at only £10 to £25 in decent condition.

Image credit: LG