The LG KF600 - known as the LG Venus - is a beautifully crafted but equally practical slide phone with a touch-sensitive user interface as well as a full numeric keypad. The top half has a high quality TFT screen with touch-sensitive navigation buttons below with the keypad revealed beneath. In this aspect it's a combination of the LG Viewty and the Apple iPhone.

Moreover the touch-sensitive navigation keys are context sensitive virtual keys: the function of the keys changes depending on what you're trying to do with the phone: known by LG this as an InteractPad™. People like a touchscreen user interface but find them awkward for some tasks such as texting. The Venus offers the best of both worlds. And you can turn the phone sideways and use the screen and user interface in landscape mode.

The main display is a 262k colour TFT screen with 320 x 240 pixels and the lower screen (the touchscreen) has 240 x 176 pixels. The 3 megapixel camera is perfectly good enough for snaps and can record video clips. It is a tri-band phone with an excellent array of applications from document reader to handsfree operation with EDGE for fast Internet browsing and full SMS/MMS/email messaging facilities.

As a music player the Venus is good - the main speaker is loud - and it comes with a Bluetooth-enabled stereo headset; there's an FM radio and the microSD card slot accepts cards up to 8 GB - enough for around 2 000 songs.

There is support for both Bluetooth and USB as one would expect. Battery life is rated at three hours of talk time and 300 hours on standby.

• 3 megapixel camera with autofocus and 2x digital zoom and video.
• Upper display: TFT 262 000 colours 320 x 240 pixels (2 inches)
• Lower display: touchscreen TFT 262 000 colours 240 x 176 pixels (1.5 inches)
• MP3 player and FM radio
• 64-voice polyphonic ringtones / MP3 ringtones
• Internet: Web browser WAP 2.0 GPRS and EDGE
• Bluetooth for wireless short-range data transfer
• Expandable memory up to 8 GB.
• Triband connectivity