LG KS360

If you're old enough to remember when the The Bay City Rollers ruled the charts and 3-2-1 with Ted Rogers was on telly then it's highly probable that you have a love/hate relationship with the act of text messaging.

Yes, it's wonderful that we are able to send these bite-sized chunks of salient information through thin air but the whole process of 'texting' is fundamentally exasperating to anyone above the age of 25. School kids may be learning the equivalent of a new language thanks to the dubious art of 'txt speak', but for the more mature mobile users amongst us, it's often a wholly alien experience. Predictive text is all very well but it's lamentably inconsistent and here at Pocket Gamer we've lost count of the number of times we've accidentally sent an embarrassingly incomprehensible message thanks to T9 choosing entirely the wrong word for us.

If you too share this mistrust for new-fangled modern communication then LG's latest handset might just be what you're looking for. It comes with a handy slide-out QWERTY keyboard that means you're in total control of the inane snippets of information you send to your friends and family. While it's true having a keyboard on a mobile phones is hardly a new concept, the release of the KS360 marks the first time that such a feature has been included on an entry-level, non-business oriented mobile.

The KS360's keyboard works well; once you've become accustomed to the layout you'll find that the buttons are large enough to type with at high speed and the handy 'Message' shortcut makes accessing and sending texts blissfully straightforward. If we had one complaint it's that typing in the dark is harder than it should be; although the keypad is backlit, the letters are dark blue and the numbers white – no prizes for guessing which of the two is easier to see when the lights go out.

Fortunately the KS360 has other positive attributes aside from imbuing the user with insane amounts of text messaging proficiency. The large 2.4-inch QVGA display is delightfully sharp and bold, although it naturally pales in comparison to the high-resolution screens seen on the likes of the LG KF750 Secret and Sony Ericsson W760 – not something the KS360 should necessarily be ashamed of, as those two phones retail for a heck of a lot more moolah.

Speaking of the Secret, we were puzzled to find that the KS360 shares similarly half-hearted touchscreen capability. While The Secret bizarrely restricted the use of its touchscreen display for launching applications such as photo viewers and document readers, the KS360 only allows onscreen dialling of telephone numbers.

Why LG has decided to include this unique selling point in such a no-frills handset and yet not utilize it throughout the entirety of the phone's menu system is beyond us; it's like putting a turbo-charged engine in an unassuming family hatchback but then limiting it to 20 miles an hour top speed. As was the case with the Secret, this is a real missed opportunity – especially when you consider how accurate and responsive the touchscreen is.

Putting this disappointment aside for a moment, there's lots more to like about the KS360. It feels solid without being too bulky and although the inclusion of the sliding keyboard does make it a little thicker than you might otherwise be comfortable with, it's certainly not a deal-breaking issue. Battery life is also impressive, with our unit withstanding well over two days of rigorous use before requiring a top up.

Another aspect of the KS360 that impressed us is the interactive wallpaper. Dubbed 'Live Square', this backdrop – which contains several faceless figures congregating around a park – initially seems a bit pointless, but after you've sent a few text messages (which shouldn't take long, given the excellent keyboard we spoke about earlier) then it truly begins to show its worth.

The previously innocuous characters come to life and take on the identity of the people you've been communicating with. So if you send several texts to a friend, they will become one of the avatars on your display and will light up whenever you receive a reply from them. It also works for calls, and within a few days of use you'll discover that your regular acquaintances have become animated individuals on your phone's display. This seems like a bit of a gimmick at first but it genuinely comes in useful when you're communicating with several different people at once.

These little embellishments are all well and good but sadly closer inspection of the KS360 reveals the phone's budget roots. The camera is a middling two-megapixel affair with no flash or auto focus, there's no 3G, navigation of the phone's menu system is often slow and many of the creature comforts we've come to expect from LG's recent mobiles are missing.

Thankfully when it comes to gaming the KS360 manages to make a decent impression. The review handset we tested came pre-loaded with several demos, including Gameloft's Block Breaker Deluxe and Midnight Pool. Interestingly, the bundled titles require you to hold the phone in landscape mode with the keyboard exposed. The O, M, K and L keys double as the Up, Down, Left and Right buttons, respectively, and this set-up effectively turns the KS360 into a handheld console.

For the right-handed gamers amongst us it's slightly annoying that the improvised D-pad is on the right side of the keyboard, but otherwise this is an excellent set-up and hopefully more games will support this configuration in the future.

Despite lacking some key features the KS360 is a thoroughly likeable handset. The slide-out keyboard is so effective that returning to traditional T9 text input feels like a tremendously jarring step backwards; the best thing is that this feature has been integrated into the phone without making it appear like some kind of Frankenstein's monster – a common fate for other mobiles that sport such interfaces. You could argue that serious phone users hankering for full QWERTY input would be better off investing in a BlackBerry product, but for those of you shopping on a budget the KS360 represents a cheap and cheerful purchase that you certainly need not be ashamed of.