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The feature phone UI goes in the right direction

It’s been more than a year since we last reviewed a regular non-touch LG handset. And it feels the LG BL20 New Chocolate is the right handset to get us back on track.

The New Chocolate features the regular, but richly revamped LG user interface, which scores very high on visual appeal. The feature phone menu takes after the high-flying S-Class by LG and it looks like the two New Chocolates are similar not only on the outside, The BL20 is a pleasure to use, with its colorful and customizable menu. It’s very fast and responsive too.

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The standby screen offers the usual readings – date, time and all the status indicators – signal strength, the active profile and battery status. There’s an option to add some extra items here – a calendar, various clocks. But don’t expect miracles – you can use only one item at a time on the homescreen.
The standby screen and the available homescreen items

The menu structure of LG BL20 is straightforward and easy to work with even if you don’t have much experience with other LG handsets. The main menu has two distinct layouts – grid or list view. Once you get beyond it though, all deeper submenus appear as lists.

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There are two themes available on the BL20 New Chocolate and they are the same as those on the BL40 – the menu icons have a bit of 3D-styling with some visual effects, but you can also use the old black and white menu if you so prefer.
The different menu views • the black and white theme

The touchpad directions are assigned shortcuts: New contact, new text message, profiles and the Quick menu. In the Quick menu you can have up to nine shortcuts to almost anything in your phone. It’s handy and is activated by touching the up arrow.

The two soft-key functions are non-customizable – they’re assigned to MyStuff and Contacts. The task manager button on the touchpad is nothing new either – it lets you easily switch between the currently running apps.

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The task manager • the quick menu

The Widget button will grant you access to some small but useful apps – memo, RSS reader, calendar, weather, alarms and VIP contacts. While the first five speak for themselves, the latter reminds of the contact homescreen in the S-Class UI. The VIP contacts are displayed in a scrollable arc of five contacts with their pictures. It’s not as efficient as the quick dial, but looks good.

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Some of the available widgets – weather, alarm, calendar and VIP contacts

The phonebook does the job

The phonebook in the LG BL20 New Chocolate can store up to 1000 entries. You can opt to display the numbers on SIM, in phone memory or both simultaneously. You can order the contacts by first or last name. Naturally, searching by gradual typing is available. If a contact has a picture assigned, it will only be displayed when you select the contact in question.

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There are plenty of available fields, so it’s unlikely you will find anything missing. But in case you actually do, you may be better off buying a smartphone.
The phonebook • contact view • editing a contact

Telephony

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The LG BL20 New Chocolate offers smooth and problem-free performance when it comes to the most essential task of a phone – making calls. It offers good reception and in-call sound, with pleasing voice quality on both ends of a call. The New Chocolate has smart dial too.
Smart Dial screen

We also put the BL20 to our traditional loudspeaker test. Here is how it ranks against some of the other handsets we’ve tested. You can find more information about the test itself and the whole list of tested devices here.

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Decent messaging

LG BL20 New Chocolate can handle all of the most common type of messages: SMS, EMS, MMS and email.

We aren’t really the biggest fans of the handset’s messaging department but we still believe it’s capable enough for most occasions.

The first three message types share a common editor. All you need to do to switch between them is insert some multimedia content – like a photo or audio track for example. The editor itself has rather basic looks and that’s one thing we weren’t particularly fond of.

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Messaging section • typing a message • adding media

The email client is quite easy to work with and mailboxes can be set up in no time. Creating an account is very simple – you need to type your email and password, then choose the type (POP3, IMAP) and your mailbox is automatically configured.
The email client

Poor multimedia

Very basic image gallery

The gallery of the LG BL20 New Chocolate is accessible only through the My stuff icon in the main menu. It offers two view modes: thumbnail with 9 thumbs on screen, and list view with only 7 file names with tiny thumbs displayed. Be aware that heavily populated folders take their toll: the gallery refreshes its thumbs every time it’s launched.

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You can view single pictures in both landscape and portrait mode or you can opt for fullscreen. You can also zoom in to see further detail. But there is a problem here – if your picture is more than two megapixel, forget about zoom. The BL20 tells you the file is too big and zoom is not enabled. Nice one! Even on images that allow it, be warned that zooming is slow and it might just get too annoying. The only good thing here is the panning speed.

Worst of all, the slow browsing speed inside the gallery is quite a bugger. Loading the next image always seems to take forever.
Thumbnail and list view modes in the gallery • single pictures can be browsed in fullscreen

Simple music player

The music player on the LG BL20 New Chocolate is the same as in the KF750 Secret. It sorts tracks by three different filters – artist, album and genre. You can also create your own playlist if you like. The player offers only two simple visualization options – Album art and equalizer bars.

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When the music player is active, the buttons on the touchpad are used as media controls.
Music player interface • the available equalizer presets

There are 7 equalizer presets on LG BL20. Sadly, neither can be modified, nor new ones created.

Video player is a letdown

Typical for a midrange feature phone, the video player is not much of an option. Varied codec support is non-existent and you can play only 3gp and some mp4 files at low bitrate. There are only few options there – fullscreen, delete or send file. You can jump back and forth in the video timeline though.
Video player interface

FM radio onboard

The BL20 New Chocolate has an FM radio of rather simple interface, that’s generally very easy to work with. There is an auto scan feature that locates every radio station in your area and offers to save it. Unfortunately, RDS is not available.

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The FM radio

Below par audio quality

The LG BL20 New Chocolate might have the looks but certainly lacks the voice to be a lead singer.

It achieved a pretty bad score in our test in the frequency response section and didn’t impress in stereo crosstalk either. The dynamic range and stereo crosstalk were also only average. It might not seem as much but it took quite a look of effort on our side to achieve even that kind of readings.

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The New Chocolate turned out quite pretentious musician and delivered awful output when set at the maximum volume. Only when it was set to 18 (from 20 level) and fed with mp3 files, rather than wav was it able to generate any kind of measurable result.

And as you can see from the table and the graph it is hardly setting the world alight.

Organizer and apps

The organizer and the standard applications are a pretty basic package too and far from what we expected. In fact most of the software are just cut-down versions of those on the LG KF750 Secret. But there is no document viewer and this may be the first LG handset to omit it.

The calendar offers daily, weekly and monthly view modes and three different events available for setting. Those are: anniversary, birthday and appointment, and each of them has its own unique fields. Naturally alarms can also be set up to remind you of the event at a given time.
The organizer • the calendar

There is also a To-Do app, Memos – text and photo, Alarm settings, calculator, voice recorder, stopwatch and unit converter. We can’t say anything special about them – all use a basic and simple interface to do their job.
Alarms • Calculator • Voice recorder • Unit converter

The Alarm clock, Calendar and Memos are also easily accessible through their respective widgets.

You will also find Google Maps, Sudoku and a bunch of demo games. There is no GPS on board so the use of GMaps is limited.
Games • Google apps

Final words

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The new Chocolate series by LG are trying to carve some new shapes into the design landscape. The BL40 is in charge of that. It allowed the designers to unleash their creativity and bend the rules. It’s the limited edition, the luxury piece. The BL20 in turn is staying faithful to the original Chocolate concept, trying to revive an iconic name.

Exactly following the recipe was a top priority for the BL20 we guess, and the few actual upgrades are only there to give the handset some up-to-date credibility. A 200 euro price tag sounded quite unreasonable for the offered functionality but the Chocolate BL20 price went down by a good 50 euro during the week it took us to prepare this review.

So in the end, with some subsidizing from your carrier, you might as well get yourself a fashion device on a bargain – without the price premium it started off with. But as we said before, you will be getting what you’re paying for.

It’s not a phone for the power-user but this doesn’t mean it can’t be successfully targeted. And telecoms are likely to be among the customers too.

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There are a few Sony Ericsson sliders that would fit the profile just as well. The C903 easily tops the Chocolate feature list with GPS, a better camera, and TV-out. And it also has enough sex appeal to go with the capable hardware and software.
Sony Ericsson C903

The compact Nokia 6600i slide may also be an option. It may have an average camera and web browser performance, but it tempts with minimalist styling, it’s compact, all metal and plays it nice with an accelerometer sensor and VGA video recording.
Nokia 6600i slide

In the end of the day, the BL20 would’ve been just another slider, but BL40, the first of the New Chocolates, may be enough to fuel some interest for the BL20 as well.

Beyond that, the BL20 is hardly inspiring. It’s unusually large and its feature pack is too trimmed down to make a point besides the obvious fashion statement. Truth be said, this here dark chocolate has a wee bit too much cocoa to chew on.

On the bright side, the recent price drop we witnessed may make it an attractive buy this holiday season and if you’re after some looks rather than wits, feel free to help yourself and don’t let us spoil your party.