LG Secret KF750 review

It all started with Chocolate. Five years ago, LG wasn't considered a strong brand in mobile phones. Now, LG phones are everywhere. The launch of the Chocolate phone almost two years ago repositioned the once lacklustre company as a design leader. Hoping to maintain its fashionable position in the market, LG has come out with another Black Label Series phone called the LG Secret KF750.

At first sight, the Secret is an attractively solid phone, but this a case of style over substance or is does it work as well as it looks? We're letting the cat out of the bag to make sure that LG's Secret isn't a disappointing one.

The Secret will shortly be available for free on a monthly contract on several major networks, including Vodafone. It will be the first LG phone available to buy on Vodafone.

Design
Carbon fibre, fake leather, glass and metal are materials you'd usually expect to find on the inside of a car. Wild and wacky LG has put them on this phone. You'll either think it's an inspired design move or you'll scoff, but we think it looks very swish. It feels satisfyingly heavy, like there's actually something inside of it, which is a refreshing change from the so-light-they'll-snap-when- you-sit-on-them phones we sometimes see.

Considering the amount of features that are squashed into the Secret, it's very slim. The slider format helps to highlight its screen, which is large enough to comfortably view content. Unlike the Chocolate phone with its completely flush front, the Secret features a silver 'OK' key that sticks out. We're overjoyed to find at the bottom of the Secret's front are mechanical send, end and cancel keys.

If you've ever owned a phone that doesn't have said mechanical keys, then you'll know how frustrating it is to not have them. One wrong move or accidental brush of the wrong touch-sensitive key and you've deleted a whole text message, as we found on LG's KF510. Although it might seem like a small detail, we want to scream it from the mountaintops that the LG Secret has dropped the touch-sensitivity and made mechanical these important keys.

The keys on the Secret's keypad are flat but easy to use

Sitting above the aforementioned keys, the four-way navigation pad that surrounds the silver OK key is indeed touch-sensitive but -- hallelujah! -- it works well due to its responsiveness and vibrating feedback feature that lets you know when you've tapped a key. Bizarrely, the Secret's screen is also touch-sensitive but only in certain sections of the phone. You can get to these sections via the 'touch media' menu, which we'll discuss later.

Features
Although it's not marketed as a camera phone, the Secret hides a 5-megapixel snapper. Regrettably, there's no xenon flash so don't expect well-illuminated shots in low light. In daylight, though, we found the Secret's camera quite fun to use, particularly for shooting videos.

As with the Viewty, the Secret allows you to shoot video at up to 120 frames per second, which means you can shoot slow-motion videos and you can also speed videos up à la Benny Hill. We found the Secret's slow-motion videos slightly blurrier than the Viewty's. You can add music by overlaying it on to a video while you're shooting or afterwards to create a music video. Post editing tools also let you add special effects, which are gimmicky but fun nevertheless.