Hands-on with LG Xenon, Arena touchscreen phones

As promised, the new—and relatively cheap—LG Xenon and Neon sliders are here at CTIA, along with a couple of envy-inducing touchscreen gems that we've yet to see here in the U.S.: the Arena and the GD900.

First up is the Xenon, announced earlier this week and set to arrive April 8 on AT&T. While it's not exactly the thinnest phone I've pawed here in Vegas, it's certainly one of the lighter ones—just 3.18 ounces, not bad for a touchscreen slider.

As far as the Xenon's touch UI goes, it's pretty much par for the course—in fact, anyone who's familiar with the touchscreen Vu will immediately recognize the same interface on the Xenon.

And while the 3G-enabled handset comes with the plenty of messaging features (mobile e-mail, SMS/MMS, and instant messaging are supported), streaming video/music downloads, and one-way video conferencing over the two-megapixel camera, don't look for smartphone capabilities here—indeed, even LG reps are careful not to call the Xenon a smartphone.

The good news, though, is that the Xenon's relatively cheap price tag--$99, with a two-year contract—reflects its mid-range features, and the full, slide-out QWERTY keypad (easy to use, save for the too-small Space bar) is a nice bonus.

Next, I tried out the Neon, a non-touchscreen QWERTY slider that targets the youth (or youthful, at least) audience. The Neon is even more bare-bones than the Xenon—no 3G, no streaming video, and no music downloads—but you still get the same basic messaging features, and I actually liked the Neon's round QWERTY keys better than the squarish Xenon keypad. Nope, the Neon's no iPhone, but it’s pretty solid considering the $29 (with a two-year contract) price tag.

So that's the scoop in terms of LG's new U.S. handsets—nice, but nothing earth-shattering. But then I got my first hands-on with a couple of red-hot touchscreen LG phones for Europe—the Arena, and the GD900.

Both phones were announced last month at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, and while the Arena recently won FCC approval here in the States, neither phone has a U.S. release date yet—not even a ballpark date, even.

That said, you can always dream, and the Arena and GD900 are clearly dream- (and drool-) worth. Both handsets boast LG's new "S-Class" interface, an eye-popping UI complete with 3D cubes that spin to reveal various applications (similar to HTC's TouchFlo interface). The GD900 (armed with an 8MP camera and speedy HSDPA access) takes things a step further with its transparent, slide-out and touch-sensitive numeric keypad, which you can swipe with a finger to manipulate menus, photos, lists of songs, and so on.

Cool, right? Sadly, though, no firm plans for either the Arena or the GD900 to make U.S. landfall, at least not yet. Still, fingers crossed.