There was a cell phone that made a greatest hit in 2005 in Korea. Its model name differs depending on which telecommunication company that its customer uses. For example, if you are a customer of SK Telecom, the best telecommunication company in Korea, SV-590 would be the model name of this phone. If you are a customer of KTF, also one of the leading telecommunication companies in Korea, the phone’s model name would be KV-5900. To sum up, SV-590, and KV-5900 refers to the same phone model. It has various nicknames. Two of them are Chocolate Phone, and Black Label. In my blog, I will just call this phone as Chocolate phone, because it was the most widely used term by Koreans. It was produced and released on 2005 by LG Electronics. This phone has a fabulous design that attracted more than 500,000 Korean buyers in a year.
This product has red-colored touch-operated buttons right below the screen, making it more prominent from the black background. When you close the slide, the red light touchpad buttons turn off. When the touchpad light goes off, this smooth-black and sharp-edged featured cell phone makes people think of a sweet-and-neat chocolate. In my opinion, its luxurious external look and the name it has gotten are perfect match. Can you possibly think of other names that match its appearance better than “Chocolate”?
This phone is one of the phones in Korea that had the biggest hit just because of its design. In 2005, to Koreans, it was “Most advanced, yet acceptable” (Raymond Lowey) in terms of cell phone designs. The reason why this product was loved by so many Koreans was that it had a very simple, but luxurious and marvelous design. This product corresponds to the principle that we’ve learned from the last lecture, presented by Dieter Rams rather than the principle of Raymond’s. “Good design is as little design as possible”. Just look at the product. How can it be simpler than that? It’s beautifully simple. You’ve got the navigation, OK/cancel, TALK (END button’s on the side of the phone.), menu, and number buttons. Just about everything you need in a cell phone. How do you operate it? It’s really simple. Turn the cell phone on, and the first thing you see in the bottom of the screen is the description of functions that each navigation button has. This will not disappear unless you change the display setting. So it is really easy for people to use. Apple’s i-Phone is famous for not having its description paper. I’m not saying that the Chocolate Phone does not have its description paper. It HAS description paper included in the box when you first buy it, but you simply don’t NEED one.
I bought this phone in 2006, and it came to our house by delivery. I was in my class in high school, so my mother took the phone out of the packet instead of me. I was surprised by the fact that my mother opened the box, took the phone out, and simply USED it. She just used it without having to read the description. My mother's not really good at manipulating and operating electronic devices. It came to me as a shock that she actually managed to send me a text message via Chocolate Phone to my older phone(of course, you have to open a cell phone account in Korea too. However, its process is pretty much simpler than here in America. You have to dial the number that is written on a piece of paper that comes along with the product and the operator answering the call will automatically open the phone account for you)!
It’s just that easy. Anyone purchasing this phone would be able to use this product right away without having to read the description, pretty much overlapping with Apple’s i-Phone. However, like any other electronic devices, Chocolate Phone had failed to achieve its sustainability. Therefore, LG Electronics released Chocolate II, and Chocolate III(Chocolate III has its another name by the way, and it’s called New Chocolate. It’s full touch-screen operated.) afterwards to revive the legend of the original Chocolate Phone. However these products could never catch up the sale-profit of their original version. If I ever have a chance to write about these versions, I will come back with the pictures of Chocolate II, and Chocolate III.
