LG BL20 New Chocolate

 

A good-looking handset that performs well

 

 

 

Stylish, widgets, quick interface, multi-tasking, hold button, 5MP autofocus camera, music quality

Fingerprint magnet, no feedback for volume and camera shutter, battery life 

LG rolled out its first Chocolate series handset back in 2006 and now they are trying to revive the Chocolate Series with the addition of two more handsets. One of these is the Chocolate BL40, which we have already reviewed. The Chocolate BL40 is a touchscreen handset with its prime selling point being a 21:9 widescreen display.

Today we look at the other newly launched phone in the Chocolate Series - the BL20.

Bundle

• LG BL20 New Chocolate
• Stereo Headset with 3.5mm jack
• 2GB microSD
• USB Cable
• Charger
• Manual & Software CD

Build & Design

The LG Chocolate series of handsets has always been about style. The BL20 is no different and gets the same stylish treatment. Gloss, piano black and sleek seems to be the mantra for the Chocolate Series. The phone is sleek and has a complete glossy piano black finish. It looks like a showpiece on a table.

The front of the phone has an earpiece and a secondary camera while, the rest of the face is plain black. Only when active can you see the phone's screen light up and the touch buttons below it. The touchpad has a 5-way directional pad. It is accompanied by two menu buttons, one multi-tasking button and a Widgets button.

On the right side of the phone are the touch volume control and the touch camera shutter button. The left side has a multi-use port covered with a dust flap. This port is used for charging, connecting to the PC as well as a connecting point for the headset. The sides of the phone have a chrome strip that adds elegance to the handset.

At the top of the phone is a hold button that locks/unlocks the touch controls of the handset. The top and the bottom of the handset have a stylish red finish that adds to the overall chocolate color combination that we've seen through the series.

At the back of the phone you can spot the camera optics of the handset. It is accompanied by an LED flash. The back of the phone is again glossy black and if it weren't for the camera lens you wouldn't be able to differentiate it from the face.

Interface

The BL20 New Chocolate features the latest interface from LG. The phone is quick and has 60MB of internal memory. It comes bundled with a 2GB card, which is a decent amount of memory to bundle along with a handset. The phone is easy to operate as well. The touch controls take some time getting used to as there isn't any button press involved. The vibration feedback to touch is what makes you aware of the activation of a command. The other touch controls like the volume control and the camera shutter control do not offer any feedback, which makes it odd to use, but work seamlessly nevertheless.

One thing that is really good in the BL20 is the option to multi-task. You can run several applications and switch between them. This is good though I noticed that some heavy Java Applications do tend to hang but it's still possible to shut them down by directly hitting the call-end key. You can still switch between applications even if one of them is hung. You can run several application but beware every open application slows down the handset further.

Widgets

The LG BL20 New Chocolate has widgets in the handset. This is good addition but there is lack of Social Networking Integration in the handset, which isn't so appealing in this age of Social Networking. The widgets provided include Clock/Alarm, Calendar/Reminders, Notes, Quick Contacts, Weather Updates, and RSS Feeds.


Browser

The browser of the BL20 is very much like the ones we've seen in the previous handsets from LG. The browser is capable of multi-tab, which is quite a plus point, but overall its capability to load heavy webpages is poor. This can easily be overcome by the installation of Opera Mini, which now has support for multi-tab browsing as well. 

Performance

The BL20 New Chocolate is a good looking handset, but how well it perform is what we are about to find out.

Network & Calls

The BL20 has a good hold on the network and the call quality is clear. The phone though doesn't have a good noise cancelation, so there is lot of noticeable disturbance for the person at the other end of a call. The phone provides with good stable connectivity over GPRS & EDGE as well. Keeping browsing or internet usage running seamlessly provided there is network.

Multimedia

The BL20 New Chocolate is not touted as a multimedia handset but it sure has some goodies in store. The phone has an MP3 player as well as a FM Tuner to tune into. The phone comes with a stereo headset that has a 3.5mm jack on it. This let's one choose his own set of earphones if he/she isn't satisfied with the bundled ones. The audio quality of the ones bundled is pretty average, so I tried it with a pair of my own earphones. The audio quality of the handset is good. With a pair of good earphones you can definitely feel the bounce in playback performance. The FM Tuner on the other hand works only with the headset attached. It has an average reception and gets poor when indoors.

Camera

The Camera of the BL20 is a 5MP autofocus module. It has flash assist via a single LED. The LED isn't all that powerful, so results in the dark aren't that good. During the day or in well-lit conditions the camera captures decent pictures and it's worthwhile. The video recording capability of the BL20 is average. It is capable of a max QVGA capture resolution, which is decent enough for mobile.

Battery Life
   
The BL20 has a 900mAh battery that is capable of five hours of talktime. The phone after a complete charge lasted me over two days. In two days the phone delivered two hours of talktime, about two hours of music playback and 20-30min of GPRS usage. The battery life falls short from the specification and should have had more juice for talktime.

Price & Verdict

The LG BL20 New Chocolate sells for Rs.10,000 in the market. It's a bit hard to find a stylish handset for that price in the market; the only other alternative being the RAZR 2. So it basically boils down to whether you want a slider or a flip phone.

The Chocolate has features for the current day and is also is a smart device with multitasking capabilities. I'd pick the LG Chocolate BL20 not just because of its style quotient but the entire package that it offers.

For those not too keen on a stylish phone but have 10k to shell out, the BL20 is not the obvious choice. There are other options like the Nokia 5530, Samsung SPICA and many more.