LG Cookie (KP500)

The LG Cookie, model no. KP500, or Cyon Cooky (쿠키) in South Korea, is a discontinued touchscreen mobile phone announced on 30 September 2008. LG targeted the entry-level touchscreen market keeping the cost of the Cookie as low as possible by omitting some of the features found on higher-end products, such as 3G. The LG Cookie was highly popular, and is credited for starting the "cheap touchscreen craze".

Features

Its main feature is a 3-inch, 240 x 400 pixel touchscreen, powered by an ARM9E CPU with a clock rate of 175 MHz. It has a 3.15 MP camera capable of capturing still images and MPEG-4 video capture at 12 frame/s, but has no flash module. The LG KP500 Cookie also has an FM radio receiver with RDS and an accelerometer motion sensor with support for auto-rotating display. Software installed on the handset included a document viewer for DOC, XLS, and PDF formats, and a Java MIDP 2.0 games player. The battery is capable of standby time of up to 350 hours and talk time of up to 3 hours 30 minutes.

The phone was originally released in four colors: Black, Vandyke Brown, Anodizing Silver, and Elegant Gold. This was later increased to ten colors including white, pink and purple.

Model differences

The LG KP501 is a variant of the KP500 with slightly different shaped front buttons and some minor software changes.

The South Korean Cooky model has a slightly different weight and dimension compared to the Cookie.

Sales and reception

With the Cookie, LG brought a basic and affordable mobile phone but one that included a touchscreen. The Register reviewed it and gave it a score of 70%. GSM Arena in its review wrote that the LG Cookie "simply makes sense", adding that "it doesn't seek to impress but is straightforward, credible and convincing." Softpedia in its review said its best features are its "cheap price and the exceptional look and finishes", with the biggest drawback being difficulty to use in sunlight.

LG Cookie recorded over two million unit sales worldwide in the first five months after its launch in December 2008. It sold 1.2 million units in Europe, 600,000 in Asia and emerging markets, and 100,000 in Korea, where LG claimed that it was the most popular handset as of March 2009. LG planned to expand the Cookie’s availability from 40 to 60 countries as part of its push to hit 13 million in sales worldwide.

In July 2009, LG reported sales of 5 million for the Cookie, making it the company's fastest selling touchscreen phone yet. At the end of the year, LG reported that it had shipped over 10 million units, including over five million in Europe, two million in Latin America and two million in Asia.

At launch, the Cookie was virtually the first basic touchscreen phone on the market. Its popularity led to a swathe of rivals in 2009 offering similar touch phones at low prices, such as Samsung's S5230 Star/Tocco Lite. The LG Cookie's successor, LG Pop, was introduced in late 2009.