LG Viewty - their first real offering of a top phone (LG KU990 Viewty)

Member Name: elmopants

Product:	LG KU990 Viewty
Date:	12/01/08 (1449 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Look, feel, cool interface, features, amazing mobile camera.

Disadvantages: Battery life, slightly fiddly but you get used to it quickly.

First off I have read a few reviews of this mobile phone prior upgrading and signing a year of my life over to owning it and was somewhat puzzled by the mix of reviews that I came accross on various sites. There seems to be a split of opinion over this shiny black marvel. As you can see from some of my other reviews, I am partial to shiny black items. Some people saying that they wouldn't touch it, no pun intended, and others loving every minute. Well I took a walk down to my mobile phone dealers who were more than happy to let me have a play with one prior to signing up for another years contract etc.

First impressions are good, nice box, well packaged, feels nice when you pick it up, not to big or heavy, no sticky out bits to catch in your pocket and oh so shiny and black. So we were off to a good start me and my potential new moby.

The case is good quality plasics with some panels black coated metal with a chrome trim all of which seen sturdy and well produced. The buttons are limited as most functions are carried out using the touch screen but you'll find take call, cancel and end call on the bottom edge of the screen. A chrome camera and unlock button on the right hand side with the slider for selecting camera, video etc. There is a rocker switch on the back which is disguised as the ring aroung the camera lens, this is the worst button/switch on the phone, feeling a little weak and its position lends itself to ensuring sticky fingerprints on the lens of the glorious 5.0 mega pixel camera. Its purpose is to allow the user to scroll menus, control volumes and zoom the camera. On the left you get a sliding panel that stops the headphone/charger socket from filling up with pocket fluff, a nice touch. All in all the build quality is suprisingly good, maybe not as good the Sony but better than the Nokia N95 and Samsung.

Once switched on the phone operating system looks great with clear icons and menus navigated by poking at them on the screen. Obviously the screen gets a bit grubby but I have kept the plastic coating on mine to protect it and you get a spare one in the box which is nice. The home screen is customisable with clocks and calendars etc and there are 4 installed themes on my orange phone but I have mine on black as it looks smart, isn't confused with moving backgrounds and I hope saves a bit of battery. The screen is bright and the level of brightness is adjustable, I have mine all the way down to save on batteries and its still clear and easy to see in all but bright sunshine. The home screen options give you one touch access to the main menu which is in a further 4 sections, dialing pad, messaging and address book. Accross the top of the screen you can access sound profiles easily and also switch between applications. If you have the clock on the screen (this is optional) then you can also set alarms etc. One other menu that has various short cuts to it is accessed with a ipod touch style finger flick across the screen, this is a little frustratingly awkward to do but satisfying when it works, slow and steady movement seems to be the way.

All the menus can be easily used with a good poking finger but unfortunately texting isn't quite as easy.

Messaging is such a major use for most phones and its a shame that the Viewty isn't one of the better texting machines. The on screen keypad allows the practiced finger to text reasonably well but you can only see 3 lines of text which makes reviewing what you have written another finger flick operation and this time it only works occasionally, not good. You can use a QWERTY touch pad which is only really useful for those with littel fingers or with a stylus type poker and as the supplied one can't be stored in the phone a pen etc is often easier to lay your hands on. You can also write using your finger/pen etc and this works quite well with good levels of recongition although some characters are tricky to get right all the time.

Making voice calls is ok but the interal speaker isn't as clear as my old Sony Ericsson but ok, the supplied headphones are good though for handsfree.

The camera is feature packed with great in camera image editing and lots of proper type camera features like adjustable ISO and a flash although only useful close up in the dark. The video is also worthy of a quick mention with image stabliser doing a good job on this handset.

So overall this is a good phone but some features are tricky to use and I would venture are bette on the i phone but with this coming free on most contracts its a good alternative.

Summary: Black, shiny and feature packed.

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