LG Launches iPhone Wannabe

The iPhone-like handset that LG Electronics unveiled at August's Internationale Funkausstellung (IFA) trade show is now on sale in Europe, the company said Monday.

The LG-KS20 looks a lot like the recently-launched Apple handset thanks to a 2.8-inch touchscreen that dominates the front of the phone but despite this similarity probably won't wow people that same way the iPhone did when it was first unveiled.

This is due in part to the industrial design of the handset and also because it is based on the Windows Mobile 6 operating system. Most observers agree this latest version of Microsoft's mobile OS is not as polished and slick as the Mac OSX inside the iPhone.

There are a couple of features on the phone that aren't found on the first generation iPhone: 3G (third generation) telephony and HSDPA (high-speed downlink packet access) data service at 3.6M bps (bits per second).

Features include a full Internet browser, Wi-Fi, natural handwriting recognition, 128M bytes of internal memory, a Micro SD card slot and Bluetooth 2.0. There's also a 2-megapixel camera, FM radio and tri-band GSM (global system for mobile communications) support. The screen has QVGA resolution (320 pixels by 240 pixels).

The phone is available from Monday in all major European markets, said LG.