Pocket Picks :: The coolest things for the coolest phones

Yesterday Sony Ericsson and Motorola announced their new handsets at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. Now LG’s got in on the act with its 2008 line-up.

Already award-winning at the CES Innovations Awards, LG’s handsets are bound to get a lot of interest before their releases later this year. LG’s certainly got form in this ever since it caught everyone’s attention with the 15m-selling Chocolate.

So what’s it got lined up? Sadly only two phones that sound at all interesting.

First up is the LG Voyager (right). Already heralded as LG’s own “iPhone killer”, LG claims it’s the first handset with both a touch-screen and full QWERTY keyboard, but it also has access to V CAST Mobile TV (Verizon Wireless’ mobile TV service – well, CES is in the US)and full HTML internet browsing as well as a 2-megapixel camera. For music and video playback there’s also dual stereo speakers.

Then there’s the LG Venus, “the brightest star in the LG handset lineup” according to the manufacturer. This slider, available in black and pink, has dual screens, touch navigation, a music player and 2-megapixel camera. Hmm. We’re not quite sure yet why it’s the ‘brightest star’, but maybe we’ll find out soon enough.

Of the rest (and there’s a LOT), the others are all pretty low-end mass-market handsets pitched at particular markets…

The LG VX8350 is a low-end device with ease of use its key selling-point, the LG VX5400 is a “mobile mainstay with a twist” apparently and really is low-end with a VGA camera.

LG CU515 is apparently the “ultimate multimedia phone” with music features, the ability to share videos with people you’re speaking to and Push To Talk (PTT).

Making up the numbers are the LG Rumour which lets users talk handsfree via Bluetooth or the duplex speakerphone.

The Aloha is a tiny phone with the usual phone features and the LG Trax is a 3G music phone, the Muziq has a dedicated music key so users can listen to music while doing other things on their phone, and finally the enV multimedia phone comes in a range of colours.

So apart from the two headline-grabbers – which will no doubt sell by the bucketload – we can only think that LG is going to be a little underwhelming in 2008.