The Favourites hotkey button under the screen is a particularly handy one, which can be set up easily as a fast access list for as many as 12 features or apps of your choosing, from Bluetooth or games to radio or vibrate alert. Useful if you want to skip delving into the menus for most-used functions.

Although these hotkeys are practical, the positioning of them may initially get some users inadvertently pressing them rather than the softkeys next to the navigation pad when selecting onscreen softkey options. The hotkeys sit almost directly under the screen options, so at first it's natural to reach for them rather than look to the lower half of the phone. You soon get used to it, however.

Some may prefer a larger menu font, but we tended towards the more practical normal sized, which makes it easier for menu browsing and seeing selection options. We'd have also preferred more choice of simplified fonts for number dialling, as the standard LG ones used here are too tacky or quirky for such a middle of the road phone.

Basic snapper

The LG KF300 has a serviceable set of additional features, without any real stand-out applications.

The 2-megapixel camera is a run-of-the-mill, low specced shooter. It's fired up from the D-pad, with shots framed and taken in portrait mode, with the viewfinder showing the image in a band across the screen (or unsatisfactorily cropping bits of the image if you go for full screen mode).

With this sort of camera, without flash or autofocus system, you get what you'd expect; image quality is limited. It's fine for quick snaps, and reasonable within its point-and-shoot fixed focus limitations, but shots aren't particularly detailed and colour performance is sometimes muted in lower light conditions. In darker conditions, image quality is poor.

Video capture doesn't impress much either. Shooting at average QVGA maximum resolution, footage is typically low-grade mobile quality.

Stingy storage

The KF300's music player software does an acceptable job of playing back tunes, although you'll need to slot in a MicroSD memory card if you're to fully enjoy its functionality, as the phone has a mere 14MB of internal storage. You don't get one in-box, but as MicroSDs are now pretty cheap, it's an inexpensive recommended upgrade if you want to load up more than a couple of tracks.

The music player interface is functional and a little basic looking, but easy enough for anyone to operate using the D-pad controls.

Copying over tracks isn't helped by the absence of a USB cable in-box, though it's possible to Bluetooth them over from a PC or phone, or copy onto an aforementioned MicroSD card.

Shouty speaker

The supplied earphones are a pleasant surprise, however, with a quite well balanced performance including reasonably good bass – and come with a 3.5mm standard headphone adapter socket on the two-part headset, so you can add your own better quality earwear easily enough.

The headset, which plugs into the side-mounted multi-connector port on the phone, is necessary for using the phone's decent quality FM radio, though it can also be played through the loudspeaker – which can be cranked up pretty loud (albeit with the usual tinniness).

Other features are predictable for a phone of this class, with organiser functionality such as calendar, convertor, memo and to do lists, various clock functions, voice recorder, plus email alongside text and MMS messaging.

There's a standard Wap browser for mobile internet perusal; links for the Orange World content and information portal are provided on Orange models. A couple of sensible games, backgammon and chess, also add to the sedate features list.

Battery life

One of the advantages of a more low-key features set is the relative lack of potentially power-draining, tempting-to-play-with features that you get on higher-end models.