Gadget Wars: LG KF600 vs Samsung U900 Soul

Touchscreen handsets are one thing, but touch navigation is a whole ’nother story. I’ve pitted two high-end handsets – LG’s KF600 and Samsung’s U900 Soul – against each other in another Gadget War feature. Please note that I don’t intend to compare these handsets based on the many features they offer; it’s strictly about a specific feature (in this case, touch navigation).

Display Characteristics
The U900 Soul has a small 1-inch touch-sensitive OLED display called the Magical Touch for navigating its UI. It’s not full-color but you can adjust the colors to suit your style (and you have an extensive range to choose from). On the main menu you can also select any four shortcuts to link to the four points, and the center point takes you to the main menu. One advantage the Soul has are the two normal keys located on either side of the touch-sensitive pad, which can also be assigned shortcuts.

LG’s KF600 has a 1.49-inch full-color (256K colors, 176 x 240 pixels) touch-sensitive navigation pad that’s actually just an extension of the main display. It’s called the InteractPad. It allows the addition of a total of six different shortcuts, including access to the main menu.

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There is no color change option specifically for the InteractPad, but if the theme is changed it will incorporate any changes in the font and styling. Since most of the themes have animated wallpapers the animation will occur on both the displays in a continuum. As mentioned in the review, it seems as if there’s simply a division of the screen to distinguish the touch-sensitive portion from the rest of the screen.

One thing both navigation systems have in common is Haptic feedback, which can be controlled to suit your preferences. But in this round I’d have to give it to the LG for its vibrant and colorful display.
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Response
The Soul’s Magical touchpad may seem a bit small, but it’s extremely sensitive and responsive. It’s exactly like using a normal five-way nav-pad, only a digitized virtual version. The sensitivity can be easily controlled in case you find it too frisky.

The KF600, though larger and more colorful, is not too responsive if you use only your finger or thumb. To solve this problem, LG has graciously included a stylus. But this implies you’d need two hands to operate it – which isn’t always feasible, especially in crowded places. Anyway, this round goes to the Samsung for its single-handed ease of use.

Features
The Magical Touch pad in Samsung’s Soul is not a system with which you can find a function for every feature the handset’s equipped with. Since it has two normal keys as well, it tends to be slightly limited in terms of functionality. The icons, however, will adjust themselves to suit the application you’re running. The touchpad is most useful when it comes to the camera and music player. The rest is pretty much just for navigating the options and menus.

LG’s InteractPad, on the other hand, allows use of the touchscreen for everything the handset offers – from camera to navigation and even messaging. For messaging specifically you have the option of using the touchscreen as a medium to write out characters – it uses extremely responsive handwriting recognition, even without the stylus. It’s very feature-rich and intuitive, so LG takes this round.
The Bottomline

The technology is surely the way of the future for handsets that don’t want to be totally touchscreen, but wish to offer more than one way to navigate and input information. In this face-off, the LG KF600 scores decisively over the Samsung U900 Soul simply because it offers a whole lot more in terms of interactivity. It’s not only vibrant and intuitive, but also works well with all the handset’s features.