LG smartens up to take on iPhone
DID someone order an iPhone killer?
It looks like LG put in its request and the LG Viewty Smart answered the call.
The update to 2007’s Viewty phone is smaller than an iPhone, with a slimmer and lighter body and a screen that measures 3in rather than 3.5in.
But at least one part of the Viewty Smart is very much more substantial than Apple’s offering.
Its camera has a resolution of 8 megapixels, an LED flash and a Schneider-Kreuznach lens, making its photos eminently printable.
Connect put this shooter to the test in several situations, light and dark, and we were mostly impressed with its results.
The LG Viewty Smart camera can be triggered with a dedicated button on the side of the phone; one of very few buttons on this handset. The camera can then be used on the phone’s side, in landscape mode, but a built-in accelerometer means the camera will adjust its menus if you hold it upright.
The Viewty Smart’s screen is much improved on previous models, both in clarity and colour, and this makes a photos’ colours pop on the screen.
Also helpful in this regard are the photographic settings, which will let you choose between modes such as Auto, Portrait, Sports and Night.
The camera also boasts additions such as Continuous shot mode that lets you fire off six photos in a row, as well as tweaks for exposure, light sensitivity (up to 800 ISO) and even focus.
Sadly, despite having a touchscreen, this phone will not let you touch objects on which you want the camera to focus.
Its auto focus mechanism is also not infallible, particularly on close objects, though it’s well above the standard of most phone cameras.
It also features a second camera on its face for video calls.
Other elements of the phone are governed by LG’s S-Class 3D user interface, first seen on the LG Arena phone.
It’s an attractive menu system featuring four screens that animate like a turning box when guided by your finger.
Being a Telstra Next G model, the first home screen is littered with Telstra services such as Yellow Pages and Foxtel that you cannot customise, but the others are open to customisation, including a screen just for widgets, another for favourite contacts, and the last for your favourite media, be it photos or songs.
But a touchscreen phone is only as good as its screen is sensitive.
Thankfully, LG also seem to have boosted its skills in this area, as the Viewty Smart’s capacitive touchscreen is responsive and easy to use.
It is hampered from time to time, though, by the phone’s processor that sometimes fails to keep up with its flashy 3D menu.
Also, users might find its QWERTY keyboard hard to master, as the keys are small enough for mis-hits aplenty.
Thankfully, keeping the phone upright gives you access to a finger-friendly standard keypad.
Other features in the Viewty Smart’s arsenal include a GPS chip for use with online map services, an organiser, MP3 player, FM radio, games, a voice recorder and, of course, an email program and web browser to make the most of its WiFi connection.
Bluetooth also features, as does 1.5GB of internal storage and space for a MicroSD card up to 32GB in size.
Ultimately, the Viewty Smart is not a smartphone as we know it, and it won’t kill off Apple’s iPhone, but this phone should be a serious contender for anyone seeking a responsive touchscreen phone with better-than-average photographic capabilities.