LG are certainly firing out the quality handsets at a serious rate, matching main competitor Samsung at every turn.

The LG Cookie had the Samsung Tocco firmly in its sights, and the LG Renoir and Samsung Pixon had a bloody 8 megapixel battle at the close of 2008. It seems like s close race, but now the battleground has turned from cameras to touchscreens.

The Samsung Tocco Ultra reviewed really well with us, we were impressed at how it was a melting pot of old Samsung slider and new Tocco touchscreen. The LG Arena however, is a different beast entirely.

New form factor (for LG at least), new user interface, the Arena is taking centre stage for LG in 2009. Is it worthy of the spotlight? Let's give it a thorough audition and find out!

Design:

The rectangular, glossy frame is almost the official uniform of the touchscreen phone, and the LG Arena is decidedly uninspired in this department. The titanium frame does have a matte finish with glossy piping that makes the phone look a little more stylish than most iPhone pretenders. The dearth of external buttons aside from a volume control (on the right side as opposed to the left on most) is also very familiar to those intimate with Apple's finest.

The only additions are touch-based 'call' and 'end' buttons flanking the menu switch at the bottom of the screen, and a camera key beneath the volume.

Picking it up, the Arena immediately feels comfortable, and is significantly smaller and lighter than we expected. It is deceptively lightweight at only 105g, and the 3" screen seems to fit beautifully within the sleek dimensions (105.9mm x 55.3mm x 12mm).

We all know what today's touch phones look like today, the Arena is all about the user interface.

Features:

S-Class. Let's get it out of the way. LG's 'revolutionary' user interface is apparently the product of 100 man hours of development, and it is admittedly very impressive. No 3D interface has been this smooth on a mobile phone before, and the immediate impression is one of "wow".

The central menu button brings up a fully 3D cube in the middle of the screen, each face showing off a different function. The cube's faces are all live and showing what is on each screen, rather than a static image like theXperia Panels.

The first is multimedia, presenting two circular stacks of photos and images/video which can be vertically scrolled through.

A finger swipe to the right brings up the shortcut screen, allowing one touch access to most frequently used functions, represented as small 'tile' icons.

Another swipe brings up a Samsung TouchWiz-style widget screen, allowing for a completely customisable interface with your favourite functions from calendar to radio and everythingin between.

The final swipe brings up an image-based rolodex of contacts, all visually arresting but pretty annoying if you have 50 contacts and are trying to get to your friend Yasmin...no worries, as there is a more traditional text-based list also.

Oddly, whilst the cube can be accessed at any time, a lateral swipe whilst you are 'on' any of these screens will take you to the next, effectively making the zoomed out cube a bit pointless. There are also four tabs at the bottom of each face of the cube, giving access to four shortcuts. The interface all seems impressive, until you discover they are just a myriad of ways to access the same functions.

Aside from these four screens, there is a fifth home screen which is a lot more like the iPhone's tiles grouped by 'multimedia,' 'communication,' 'utilities' and 'settings'. The coolest part of this page is that rotating the handset to horizontal automatically brings up all of the available tiles on a single screen, and is probably the most user-friendly of all.

The 3" high res display is definitely made good use of by the Arena, with the transition animations and menus all looking beautiful.

Texting and messaging is all touch, with an alphanumeric keypad in portrait, and a full QWERTY when switched to landscape. The iPhone inititation I have had made it easy to type with both, with none of the fateful lag which ruins the experience of quick typing on some touch phones.

The camera is a 5 megapixel affair, with autofocus and LED flash, supported by Schneider-Kreuznach optics to provide amazing pictures. The video capture is no slouch either, with 720x480 at 30 frames and QVGA at 120 fps.

The media player is seriously impressive, with a decent MP3 player and both an FM radio receiver and transmitter, making you a portable pirate on your chosen frequency. Incidentally, tuning the radio is done just like those old ones with the giant virtual tuning knob, a cute application of both touch and S-Class. The Arena is also a great handset to handle all type of media formats including DivX , and also to have Dolby Digital audio which offers an amazing aural experience through headphones. Scoff, but the first time you hear a movie with Dolby on, you will be blown away.

GPS with Google Maps is present and correct, and looking particularly gorgeous on such a high res display.

8GB of memory means plenty of built-in space to chuck content onto, and the microSD slot allowing for an extra 16GB makes it a luxury of space.

Calls and connectivity:

Aside from the usual ears making the touchscreen smudgy, there were not problems to report when making calls. The reception was okay, and voices tinny on occasion, but most calls were made and reception consistent.

With 3G, wi-fi, Bluetooth 2.0 and even TV-out, the Arena is stacked in the connectivity department.

Talk time was claimed to be about four hours, which seems dead-on, whilst the 300 hour standby fell short of the mark in our battery testing by 40 or so hours. Still mightily good though for such a power-hungry, feature rich device.

Verdict:

Good phone? Yes. Great phone? Certainly. Best touchscreen experience after the iPhone? We think so. It seems like innovation rather than imitation paid of for LG, and by putting the highest spec phone we have ever seen from them with such an impressive user experience makes the LG Arena an instant hit.

Is S-Class more style than substance? Perhaps, but this is only the first implementation of many, and if they can make it work this well first time on the LG Arena, we can't wait for the next opportunity to use it!