LG is quite keen on giving its mobile phones touchscreens at the moment, no doubt having been inspired, as many others have, by the iPhone. The KF600 takes the touchscreen idea a step further than any we've seen before, though, as it has two front screens, one of which is a touchscreen and one of which isn't.

The idea is that the smaller screen is a touchpad whose actual ‘buttons' change depending on what you want to do with the phone. And occasionally the touch area isn't present at all, instead simply extending whatever is showing on the main screen.

This is a clever idea and it works really well. The main screen measures two inches across the diagonal and its 320 x 240 pixels are on a par with what you get from other mobiles. The screen underneath it measures 1.5 inches on the diagonal and has 240 x 176 pixels.

The success of the second screen, which LG calls the InteractPad, comes from two factors. First off, you get a beep and vibration that confirms you have actually pressed a ‘button', so you are always sure you have made contact with the screen.

Second, what you can do with the InteractPad is customised to the Nth degree. When you are in the phone's main screen the InteractPad offers shortcuts to messaging, contacts, missed and made calls and profiles. When you are in the music player it gives you playback controls. If you are using the phone's camera it lets you capture images, tweak the camera controls and so on.

The temptation to tap at the main screen as well as the InteractPad is great and this can become something of a nuisance, but if you can overcome that then the phone's ergonomics work well.

This is a slider handset, so you have access to a real number pad when you want to dial calls or write texts. There is also some handwriting recognition built in if you would rather use that than the number pad for entering text.

As for the general phone capability, the KF600 is a tri-band mobile and the application suite is quite strong. It includes a Web browser, calendar, alarm clock, calculator, stopwatch, voice recorder and FM radio as well as music player and 3-megapixel camera. There is 40MB of built-in memory and a microSD card slot so you can add more.

As if the InteractPad were not enough to mark this handset out from the crowd, a suite of animated screensavers give it a perky and distinctive look.

The KF600 is a quirky phone and for once the quirk works well. The InteractPad has been well thought through and as a result this phone is easy to use as well as looking very distinctive.