Let's accept it. Shine, the new entrant in LG's Black label series is essentially a fashion statement and LG has no scruples in flaunting the fact. And bearing the hallmark of the Black Label series, the mirror LCD and a chic silver reflecting body, it definitely commands attention. This tri-band slider is a front runner for those who seek to show off their hand-held in social circles. But there is a down side attached to having a slider with a mirror reflector LCD and shiny casing. There's no ridge to grab hold of when sliding the phone open and closed, so users are left with no option but to put their thumbs on the mirrored front - leaving greasy prints behind. The 2.3in display provides 240 x 320 pixels of viewing area with 262,000 colours.


Below the LCD screen is the navigation panel and instead of a toggle or a joystick, the KE970 features a scroll bar set between two buttons. The scroll bar is used for up and down navigation, and the buttons move side to side. It goes without saying that the arrangement takes some getting used to, but we found it much more comfortable once settled with the system. The scroll bar also serves as the central OK press button. The side buttons are all on the right edge and comprise volume controls and shortcuts to the built¬in music player and camera as well as a covered connector for headphones, PC link cable, and power. There is a microSD card slot on the left edge and you need to remove the battery cover to get to it. Memory is reserved for 300 SMSs, 1000 contacts, 100 calendar entries, and 100 memos. 45MB of other memory can be filled in as you wish.The slider mechanism is quite sturdy and has little of the slippery effect we've seen on other slider phones. The only complaint is that there's not a good thumb grip at the bottom of the slider.

On a few occasions the fingers slipped up to the scroll bar instead. The alpha numeric keypad is flat and large and easy to use with well spaced buttons. Feature wise, the Shine doesn't lack in packing a powerful punch. Its 2-megapixel camera with flash, auto focus and digital zoom are a norm these days but it's the picture quality that matters. Shooting pictures indoors is a breeze, but the reflective LCD in sunshine can put a camera enthusiast off and make clicking a difficult manoeuvre outdoors. The music player's design is very confined, but it does the job and delivers good quality audio output. It supports MP3, WAV, AAC, AAC+, and AAC++ files and you can save these files as ring tones as well. On the other hand, features are limited to an equalizer and a shuffle mode. At high volumes in speaker mode the volume does crack; though with headsets it works just fine. The sound recording and video capturing features are regular with decent performance. Video quality was good but not great, though the clips weren't as grainy as seen on other lesser camera phones.

The Shine has a rated talk time of three I hours and a promised standby time of . 11.6 days. Features include PhotoID, Bluetooth, document viewers for Microsoft Word, Excel and Powerpoint and t PDF, Web and WAP browsing, mobile e¬mail, calendar, calculator, memo, stopwatch and unit converter and a USB U mass storage mode for file transfer and a PC connection cable in the box. All in all, this model, a raked up version from its LG's Chocloate avatar demands considerably higher value than its candy bar variant, but it also packs in more style and a few more enhanced features. The point is whether you are willing to pay for it.