By Tham Yuen-C

THE only time I have ever seen anyone talking into a watch is in a Dick Tracy cartoon or an old spy movie.

So, doing the same on the LG Watch Phone made me very self-conscious. Even the spy operatives in modern-day flicks do not use such gadgets anymore.

The bigger problem, however, was that I was broadcasting my conversations to all and sundry - the phone's speaker was loud and clear enough to carry my conversation to a few tables away in a quiet cafe.

Which is probably why LG meant for the watch phone to be used with a Bluetooth headset and bundled one with it.

Other than making it less obtrusive, using the headset also means you can turn off the phone's ringer and still hear a call when it comes in.

For the most part, its touchscreen interface was responsive. And it helped that the menus were simply arranged.

To switch from screen to screen, just swipe left, right, up or down. I fiddled around for a while without reading the manual and did not have any problems figuring out how to get to the different menus to make calls, change settings and send text messages.

But there is also a guide you can turn on, which will overlay arrows on the screen so you know which direction to swipe.

And for good measure, the phone takes voice commands and reads out text messages. You can also use the Send, Back/Clear and End/Power keys for basic functions like making calls.

As the 1.43-inch screen is rather small, it is easy to hit keys you do not mean to when typing on the virtual keypad.

So it is just as well that you cannot surf the Web on it, even though it is a 3.5G phone.

There is a music player but the watch has only 80MB of memory built in and cannot take memory cards. So storage is limited.

As a time-teller, the LG Watch Phone does not disappoint. It comes with eight different watch screens including some that display dual time and others that simulate analogue watch faces.

Scroll through and select the screen you want by swiping up or down in the time display menu.

The gizmo also feels solid to the touch and has a thick leather strap. It is a little on the chunky side, though, and would sit better on a large wrist.

Final say

For the true-blue gadget lover who values coolness over practicality.

This story was first published in The Straits Times Digital Life.

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