Japan gets a taste for Chocolate

The Chocolate phone by LG has proven to be a big hit in Japan since its launch.

Already hugely popular in the US and Europe, the sleek handset has emerged as a smash in the Japanese market.

Its earlier success in the UK owed much to the fact that the phone was as much a fashion accessory as a useful device, with various celebrities snapped by paparazzi while chatting into a Chocolate.

And now it seems that Japanese phone enthusiasts have caught the bug too, with 5,000 handsets shifted on the day it was launched.

It is perhaps surprising that a mobile market as developed as that in Japan has taken to the phone as much as it has, though the version for the country has been upgraded with 3G/HSDPA technology, intomobile reports.

The Chocolate is nothing if not elegant, with a smooth slide action and a touch-sensitive control pad on which the button symbols subtly glow.

Aside from its outstanding aesthetics, the phone offers a standard yet solid set of features, including music and video capabilities, Bluetooth, a 1.3-megapixel camera and a memory port.

Last month, LG unveiled a range of high-specification phones, including the LG-KS20 which comes with fully integrated HSDPA capability, a touch screen interface and Windows Mobile 6.