LG has brought another edition to its Black Label line, this time in the shape of the LG BL40 Chocolate. The world's first full cinematic screen mobile, the new Chocolate brings LG's richest feature set yet.

Given there's no phone out there quite like the BL40 Chocolate, it's hard to see who this phone is aimed at. LG maintains it's one for the fashionista, thanks to the Black Label tag, yet a full 21:9 (cinematic) screen is definitely one for the hardcore PMP lover.

LG bl40 chocolate

You can tell by the styling that this phone is meant for the user who likes to enjoy looking at his or her phone as much as using it. The chassis is a combination of metal and glass, with vibrant red plastic at either end, with the top housing the 3.5mm headphone port and the power/lock key.

LG bl40 chocolate

The left-hand side of the LG BL40 Chocolate has a dedicated music key to take you straight to your tracks, which needs to be held down for a while to get it working. It's embedded into the thin metal stripe running around the outside of the chassis, and is a nice look for the phone. There's also a hinged microUSB slot here as well, with a very solid-feeling cover, similar to the one seen on th recently.

A similar system is on place on the right-hand side too, where the volume up and down buttons are built into the chassis like a kind of wave, and the camera key is a raised, metallic ellipsis. It sounds very fancy, and to be honest, it very much is.

LG bl40 chocolate side view

What's odd is there are no touch sensitive keys, like those we saw on the original LG Chocolate. It's basically a fully black front, save for the LG logo, the speaker and a small video camera.

LG bl40 chocolate rear

The rear of the LG BL40 Chocolate is the equally shiny, but this time plastic, solid black cover, again very minimalist, with the LG logo, a small amount of lettering to let you know the lens is Schneider Kreuznach and the 5MP camera with LED flash. Overall it's a very well laid out phone (if not a little bit odd looking) and in the hand it works rather well.

LG bl40 chocolate in the hand

The depth of 10.9mm feels very comfortable in the palm, and despite the early worries from some, fits fine in the male pocket. We're not sure if this is meant to be a phone aimed at the ladies yet, but if you're a guy hankering after a 21:9 phone, then this will fit you nicely.


he second-gen Chocolate phone is a world away from the original slider. With its 4in, high-resolution widescreen, the BL40 is primed for 21:9 cinema-esque movie playing and, theoretically, desktop-style web browsing.

To house this extended display, the sleek BL40 is ridiculously long. It’s about 2cm taller than the iPhone, and will make its users the butt of many ìÖor are you just pleased to see meî jokes. Still, the usual Black Label Series build quality is evident, with red paneling mirroring the original’s markings.

Cinema screen
But back to that screen. The 4in, 800x345 resolution display has a 21:9 aspect ratio, just like your local multiplex – and it’s a thing of great beauty when fed a decent quality movie file.

Of course, if you want to fill the screen, you’ll have to encode your videos at this ratio – otherwise you’ll be watching your movies in widescreen 16:9 or 4:3 format. You can manually extend your 16:9 movies to 21:9, but blocking will occur.

Watching high-quality files in the full-on cinema mode is fantastic and images are smooth, sharp and detailed – up there with the iPhone 3GS – but watch movie trailers and some smudging does occur. Resort back to lower aspect ratios and the pictures, particularly iTunes music videos, look a tad small in the widescreen real estate.

Widescreen web browsing

Another advantage of the 21:9 aspect ratio is the entire width of a web page can be viewed without the need for scrolling horizontally. Use the phone in landscape mode and the accelerometers are super-quick to render the web pages in its widescreen entirety.

Review continues after the break...

LG’s successor to the fairly successful Chocolate phone sees a new direction for mobile phones, in the shape of the new Chocolate BL40.

Featuring a high res 4-inch screen, it looks more like a remote control than a traditional mobile phone, but that’s so LG can fit in the world’s first 21:9 full cinematic screen on a mobile phone.

As part of the Black Label series, the new Chocolate is ostensibly a phone for the style lover, but that hasn’t stopped the Korean firm packing in a whole host of tech to make it attractive to all.

The Chocolate is ultra-thin at just 10.9mm thick, meaning it can slip into the pocket easily, despite bringing a huge screen. At 800 x 345 pixels, the new Chocolate is being dubbed ‘proper’ widescreen VGA by LG, and the screen packs such high contrast and colour saturation you’d swear you’re looking at an OLED.

The capacitive screen is also LG’s best yet, with a touch response that’s finally beginning to rival the best on the market, and far better than that seen on the LG Viewty Smart or Arena.

However, the new Chocolate does take some cues from those phones, namely in the shape of the S-Class interface, although this has been overhauled and improved to make use of the new extra long screen.

The spinning cube design and ‘full icon’ menu are still there, but have been given a nice graphical tweak to help show how the Chocolate has evolved.

Text messaging has thankfully been improved on the new Chocolate as well, with the large screen giving ample opportunity to use the QWERTY layout with decent accuracy.

And the screen also comes into good effect for the internet too, with full page layouts displaying nicely on the wide screen. Some of the text resizing is a little bit inaccurate at times, but overall it works nicely and allows speedy browsing of the web.

Constant prompts to choose between Wi-Fi and 3.5G for the internet might be a little annoying at the start of each session, but at least you get to use the right connection each time.

The camera on the new LG Chocolate is also top notch, with the 5MP snapper ably assisted by an LED flash. The picture quality was more than reasonable, although the shutter time was a little longer than we would have liked.

The flash on the camera was also brighter than anything we’ve seen before, with test shots, even from a long range, highlighting everything in the shot. This isn’t the best for close ups but works well when trying to take snaps of your mates in the club.

As you can imagine on such a large screen, the video on the new Chocolate is amazing, with full cinematic framing of your favourite movies. If they’re only available in the standard 16:9 widescreen format you can simply double tap the display to stretch it out, but then the video does tend to look a little bit strange.

If you’re after a bit of music on the new LG Chocolate, there’s a dedicated music key on the side of the phone, as well as a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top. However, starting up the tunes this way does take a little bit of time, which may irritate some.


I attended the press event for the LG BL40 Chocolate phone this evening and had a chance to have a quick play with the phone to see what it’s all about. The key feature of the BL40 is the 21:9 aspect ratio screen that measures 4″. This makes the phone longer than your average phone, yet after seeing the phone and holding it, it isn’t as long as expected and the dimensions work well. The phone is quite thin measuring just 10.9mm while the width of the phone is 51mm and length 128mm. The screen is covered in tempered glass to give it a nice sleek look.

The phone is capable of speeds up to 7.2Mbps and functions on GSM and HSDPA networks. The BL40 has a 1000mAh battery that allows about 5 hours of calls to be made on a 3G network with up to 360 hours of standby time.

Back to the screen for a moment we see that due to the wide aspect ratio it can display 345 x 800 pixels and thanks to the wide screen it allows the messaging and task sections of the phone to use a split screen set-up like you would see in Outlook for example. On the left you can see messages as they come in while on the right you can see the text of the message that is currently selected. Also it allows for films to be watched in their full width. The screen is a capacitive touch screen that does allow multi touch. The web browser is also fantastic as it allows for full width web browsing by default.

The camera on the device is 5 mega pixels and although it obviously isn’t a DSLR in terms of quality you can still capture some fairly decent images on to it. A rather cool panoramic option is included with the BL40 chocolate that allows you to just move the phone around and the camera automatically stitches the images together. When a review sample of the phone comes I’ll make a video to better describe how that feature works. Needless to say, it is quite cool for capturing wide panoramic images. The BL40 also has a built in photo editor that allows features such as morphing images as well as blowing in to the mic which frosts over the image letting you wipe out the steam with your finger on the screen.

Back to connectivity the phone uses wireless LAN at b/g speeds and bluetooth connectivity is also included.

LG New Chocolate BL40_Image2

The LG BL40 uses the S-Class operating system that was first seen on the LG Arena we reviewed a while back. A few enhancements have been made to work with the wide screen such as what looks to be a new web browser, new messaging system and more customisable menu’s. From what I saw it functioned quite well and was responsive to touch. A gesture system is also included that allows you to draw on the screen certain shapes to activate certain features on the phone.

Overall I am more impressed than I expected to be. Before seeing the phone it seemed odd due to the size of it, but after having a play with the phone it works very well, fits in your pocket comfortably and is spot on in design.

A full review will be done when we get our hands on a review unit. Also some pictures will be uploaded of the event as soon as I can connect up my camera to upload them.

LG New Chocolate BL40_Image1


he original LG Chocolate was a very popular handset back in 2006 and sold by the bucket load. Now, three years later, LG is back with some more eye candy in the form of its "New Chocolate" handsets, designed to follow up on that success. There are two versions of the New Chocolate so far, in keypad-toting slider and full touchscreen variations, giving users a little extra variety in their choice, with both handsets running LG's S-class user interface. We managed to get our hands on the full touchscreen BL40, so read on to see if the New Chocolate is really as sweet as it looks.

The LG New Chocolate BL40 is a very striking phone, in terms of its appearance. However, despite its simplistic, handsome looks, the BL40 seemed to divide opinions when I showed it to family, friends, and colleagues. This was mainly due to the length of the phone, which was usually the first comment anybody made upon seeing it. Although very narrow and thin, the BL40 is also very long in contrast with most of today's handsets, which seem to be shorter and wider. The handset's actual dimensions are: 128mm x 51mm x 10.9mm (5.0in x 2.0in x .4in), and it weighs a pretty hefty 129g (4.6oz).

Thankfully, the New Chocolate BL40's weight is the result of the sturdy materials used in its construction, such as the tempered glass covering the whole front of the handset. The overall look of the handset is very dark, with a moody black color scheme, finished off by bright red panels on either end. The front of the BL40 is home to the huge 4.01-inch display that LG tout as having a HD resolution. In fact, it has a resolution of 345 x 800 pixels, which is more of a WVGA resolution. Despite this, the screen is still very sharp and I could've sworn it was an AMOLED display when I first saw it because the colors are really vibrant and the blacks are very deep indeed. It isn't actually an AMOLED display though, so it doesn't get the power saving benefits of one, unfortunately.

Above the display is a forward facing video call camera, an ambient light sensor, and a proximity sensor to turn off the display when you put the phone to your ear. On the rear of the handset you'll find a 5 megapixel autofocus camera with Schneider Kreuznach optics and an LED flash. The rear cover clips over the entire rear of the phone, so there are no splits or joins, for a seamless look. Both the SIM card slot and microSD slot are under the rear cover, which has to be completely removed to access either of them, unfortunately.

The bright red top of the phone is home to the power/screen lock key and 3.5mm headphone port, and the bottom is home only to the microphone pinhole. The edges of the device are punctuated by a chrome stripe through their middle, which adds some style to the handset. The stripe also houses the volume keys and camera shutter button on the right edge, and the music key on the left. The micro-USB port for charging and data is also on the left edge, just above the music key, and is covered by a hinged door to keep debris out. Altogether the handset feels very well constructed indeed, although its glossy exterior is real fingerprint magnet. Overall, the LG New Chocolate BL40 is a stunning looking device, even if it is a bit lanky for some people.