There's just 48MB of onboard memory though, so you'll want to add a MicroSD card if you want more than a handful of tracks; cards up to 8GB are supported, though you don't get any card with the phone. Bluetooth can be used too, for transferring tracks or using stereo headphones. That could be an avenue to explore if you're not impressed with the in-box earphones - a fairly average pair for a budget mobile phone.

The earphones limit the sound quality, which is fine for casual mobile phone tune listening, but a bit bass-light, and harsh at higher volumes. There's no 3.5mm socket for adding your own headphones to get optimum performance out of the device, which is a shame. The side positioning of the multi-connector is a bind too, as it's more prone to getting tangled in-pocket than would a top or bottom-mounted jack.

Both the music player and the very usable FM radio can operate in the background while you play with other features, and can also be controlled by onscreen widgets.

Camera action

The KP500 Cookie's camera is a workmanlike 3-megapixel shooter. It's a fixed focus camera, with no autofocus system or flash onboard, so is limited in its shooting capabilities.

Still, it's reasonable for this class of phone. The side camera button switches it on, and the screen rotates automatically into side on viewfinder mode. The touchscreen user interface is welcome, making it easy to operate by tapping and scrolling through options onscreen, while the buttonry tweaks and settings options onscreen are fairly standard mid-range cameraphone fare.

Shots taken with the camera are unexceptional. You can get pretty acceptable snaps with decent colour reproduction in good light, but in less favourable lighting conditions, colours can appear washed out, and without a flash it produces poor quality shots in dark conditions.

A decent selection of editing tools and fun touchscreen tweakery options are to hand for still and video imaging. Video capture quality is pretty average though; recording at top QVGA quality at 12 frames per second, it can look fairly basic and jerky.

Playback of pre-recorded MPEG4 video copied on to the Cookie is much better quality, however, in full screen mode.

Handy applications

Relying on GPRS/EDGE speed data connectivity rather than 3G or Wi-Fi, you would expect the browser to be slower. While it may not zip around like an HSDPA-powered browser, its user interface is actually pretty good for a mid-tier phone, with LG making smart use out of the touchscreen control to make it more user friendly than most.

The LG KP500 ticks the appropriate boxes for organiser functionality too, with calendar, memo, calculator, world clock, stopwatch, alarms and a voce recorder. Email with attachment viewing is supported, the Cookie incorporating a tidy document viewer app in its software. In addition, the touchscreen can be used for making drawings you can save or send to others as messages.

The motion sensing accelerometer that flips the screen in some multimedia function is also employed in some basic games, which appear more for show than real gaming entertainment, with a wheel of fortune and dice rolling game the limited offerings.

Fair battery performance

The LG Cookie doesn't crumble when it comes to voice calls, putting in a perfectly good audio performance, and uses a no-nonsense touchscreen numberpad for dialling new numbers.

LG's quoted battery life figures for the Cookie – up to 350 hours of standby time or 3.5 hours of talktime – aren't particularly impressive for a non-3G handset.

However, although it has a touchscreen, its lack of additional battery hungry features, such as Wi-Fi, GPS and 3G-powered online activity, means it gives a reasonable running time in day-to-day usage; we got around 2-3 days between charges.

Buyers on a budget

It's hard to be too critical about what the LG Cookie KP500 lacks.

Sure, it doesn't do all the high-end stuff that other top-of-range touchscreen models do, and its text inputing will put off some. But the user interface is generally good to use.

And for mobile buyers on a restricted budget who want their share of touchscreen action, the LG Cookie KP500 delivers a decent set of features in a very attractively designed – and affordable package.

Network availability: O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin Mobile

Looks: 4/5
Ease of use: 3.5/5
Features: 3.5/5
Call quality: 4.5/5
Value: 4.5/5