If you've had your head turned by touchscreen mobiles, but don't have deep enough pockets for high-end iPhone-alike gadgetry, LG may have come up with a solution in the form of the Cookie KP500.

A slim, chic looking device, the Cookie has a tasty 3-inch touchscreen and a user interface similar to that used on LG's flagship Renoir, but with a far more digestable price tag – it's initially selling for under £110 on pre-pay at The Carphone Warehouse (or free on contract deals).

Limited feature set

Bringing affordable touchscreen tech to the masses is one thing, but what about features? Inevitably, to hit this price mark there are compromises.

There's no 3G (this is a quad-band GSM/EDGE only phone), and high-end features enjoyed on the Renoir, such as Wi-Fi connectivity and A-GPS satellite navigation, are absent here.

But if you can live with the lack of 3G multimedia swiftness and other top-of-the-line gagdetry, adding to the touchscreen appeal are a 3-megapixel camera, music and video players, MicroSD card support, an FM radio, plus a stock set of organiser functionality.

Classy device

In the hand, it's hard to think of this as a budget touchscreen phone. Its curvy rubber-feel matt black casing and large screen design has a classy minimalist feel about it. And its slimline bodywork –measuring 106.5(h) x 55.4(w) x 11.9(d)mm – weighs a lightweight 89g. For the screen size, it's comfortable in the pocket and great to handle.

There are just three buttons on the front panel – Call, End and Multitasking (opening up Favourite Apps and Running Apps lists for fast feature access and quick app changing). A screen lock key and a camera key on the side add to the manual buttonry, but the main action is onscreen.

The display is a 240x400 pixels 262K-colour touchscreen, 3 inches across diagonally, providing ample room for finger pressing and swiping. And to aid your digits where more precise tapping is needed, LG has secreted a small, extendable stylus in the base of the phone.

Having introduced several variations on touchscreen and touch sensitive control on previous handsets, the control system on the Cookie is pretty responsive to fingers, and is mostly straightforward to use.

Based on the set-up of the Renoir, the standby screen has four virtual buttons to take you into a voice call dial pad, contacts, messaging and the main menu. Tapping the top of the display pulls up further phone status information, with additional shortcuts for the music player and Bluetooth.

LG widgets

The Cookie also supports widgets – mini applications and features - for the homescreen. Tapping a small arrowed tab just above the main menu button opens up a toolbar containing widgets you can either press to add to the main part of the screen, or drag and drop into place.

This is a similar ides to the Renoir's widgets, though the Cookie's options are more limited; widgets include calendar, memo, analogue clock/alarm, world clock, music player, FM radio, and image gallery.

When the widgets are onscreen, you tap to open them up, allowing you access to stuff like memos, calendar info and images, plus control of the music player and radio while they're playing in the background.

You can swap around widgets as much as you like, and thanks to an onboard accelerometer motion sensor a shake of the phone organises them neatly into grid patterns. You can easily drag them back into the toolbar when no longer needed.

Choose your favourites

In addition, swiping your finger across the display 'turns' the screen into an almost identical second home screen, where the widgets tab and toolbar turn into a speed dial options toolbar.

Up to 8 favourite contacts can be allocated to mini speed dial boxes that can be dropped on the standby screen. Tapping these pulls up quick dial and messaging options, plus contact editing settings.

Both are nice touches rather than essential functionality, adding to the user experience without being too tricksy or fiddly.

Easy navigation

Delving into the menus, LG's touchscreen operating system is clearly set up.

The screen reacts efficiently to pressing, with haptic feedback giving a brisk vibrating confirmation of button pressing onscreen. While it's not up to the smooth efficiency and user-friendly slickness of the iPhone's Multi-Touch system, it's a decent touchscreen set-up, particularly when you consider the price.

In the main menu, a vertical sidebar with icon-labelled buttons provides categorisation of functions under four headings – Communicate, Entertainment, Utilities and Settings. Tap on any of these and the grid of icons on the main part of the screen changes accordingly to the functions and applications for that category. Tap on one of the icon options and you either open up that function or get into sub-menu lists you can scroll through. It's well laid out and quite intuitive.