The Cookie has a TFT resistive touchscreen with 240 x 480 pixel resolution capable of up to 256,000 colors; the Arena has a TFT capacitive touchscreen with 480 x 800 pixel resolution capable of up to 16 million colors. Both displays are 3.0 inches. The Cookie comes with a stylus for use with the handwriting recognition technology built into its touchscreen, running a Flash UI. But the Arena features the more cutting edge S-Class 3D touch user interface with multi-touch capabilities. Both user interfaces include an accelerometer for shifting easily between standard portrait and 16:9 widescreen landscape views.

The two devices have similar dimensions - with the Cookie's being 106.5 x 55.4 x 11.9 mm and the Arena's being 105.9 x 55.3 x 12 mm), but for two such similarly sized devices, the Cookie is a lot lighter weight (at 89 g to the Arena's 105 g). This has no doubt at least in part to do with the Cookie's pared-down feature set as compared with the Arena's beefed-up feature-set.

The 5 megapixel digital camera on the Arena surpasses the Cookie's 3.2 megapixels. Plus, the Arena's camera comes with Schneider Kreuznach optics, geotagging, image stabilization, and built in autofocus and LED flash whereas the Cookie has none of the above. Also unlike the Cookie, the Arena has a secondary camera for video calling.

As for storing your photos (and music and videos and other files), the difference in memory capacity between the two is great, with the LG Cookie only having a 48 MB internal memory to the LG Arena's 8 GB. Both devices, however, sport microSD card slots for expanding each device's memory capacity to as much as 16 GB.

The battery on the Cookie is also slightly weaker than the Arena's. They're the same basic kind of battery - standard Lithium-Ion - but the Cookie's is 900 mAh and the Arena's 1,000 mAh, which in practical terms translates into a bit more talk time and standby time on the Arena.

Other sacrifices an LG Cookie user makes over an LG Arena user is Wi-Fi, a GPS (the Arena's supports A-GPS and includes Google Maps), and instant messaging capabilities (though it does have email, MMS, and SMS). The Cookie does however have built-in Bluetooth, a USB port, and an FM radio tuner - all of which the Arena has too.

When comparing and contrasting the LG Arena and the LG Cookie, it should be remembered that the two LG devices are not in the same family, and so don't lend themselves well to comparison. They were each obviously devised with two different prospective customers in mind. The LG Cookie is considered a budget smartphone, for people who just want some of the basic features of a modern smartphone, including basic cell phone, multimedia, and PDA-type capabilities. The LG Arena, on the other hand, is more for the type of consumer who wants all the bells-and-whistles a 21st century smartphone has to offer, and doesn't mind paying a little extra for it.