Too Much Too Soon (LG KU990 Viewty)

Member Name: dav_dump

Product:	LG KU990 Viewty
Date:	19/04/08 (259 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Range of Innovitive Features, Size/Wieght, Brill Loud Speaker, Desirable

Disadvantages: Poor Camera IQ, Unpredictable Touch Screen, generally disappointing.

Looking at a few other reviews, I feel I must make a review for this phone, my experience of the phone seems to differ alot from others, however I have had two handsets and used so many "instore" so it isnt just the phone I had!
My review may seem quite subjective so I'll try to explain my low scoring.

Touch screen: fun to use at first, but becomes extremely frustrating very quickly. Compared to the iPhone it is terrible! the sensitivity varries wildly from one area of the screen to the next. Making Texting and other day-to-day functions way too complicated and time-consuming, there is no replacement for a physical keypad!

Battery Life is ok, but it depends on what your used to. My average was around 2 full days between each charge, which is good if your coming from a Nokia N-series, but poor for pretty much any other phone!

The Video is pretty great, probably the best I've seen on a mobile phone. The 120 frames a second mode is, however, can be pointless, as due to the short frame time, less light enters the camera so its always quite dark, unless its bright sunlight or lots of artificial light. If you can get enough light, however, its a brilliant idea.

The still image quality is very disappointing, the extra MP degrades the quality not imporves it.
Image Noise is a unavoidable and unmanagable. In anything other than bright light, noise is excessive.
Colour Reproduction is also very poor.
When comparing the 5MP Viewty images to the 3MP images from my Nokia N80 and 6500 Slide, in my opinion the Nokia versions were actually better!

The web browser is tottally unreliable and it is impossible to effectively browse the pages due to the annoying screen!

reception and call quality is pretty poor, and this has been mentioned by many other users on other networks.

SDHC is not supported, but you can work around larger cards by NOT formatting it in the phone, I had a 4Gb SDHC in mine, with relatively few issues. However I couldn't record directly to the card (from the camera etc)


For Balance I'll give some good points!

The loud speaker is fantastic, for both music and calls.

I liked having a lock and unlock button on the side, much better than the nokia/SE method.

The LG suite is pretty effective, and the phone synchs with MS Outlook perfectly.

The phone is very light and fairly compact. It's also pretty unique, everyone is always very intrigued by it!


In Conclusion, all I'd say is try it as much as you can before you buy, as it isn't an easy device to use. The touchscreen is rather annoying and inconsistant, but that could just be me!
The main selling points of the phone and quite innovative and therefore seem quite rushed, so rather than doing a few things well, the Viewty in my opinion trys to do lots of things, but unfortunatley does most of them poorly.


Hope I've helped. let me know if you need any clarifications or extra info.

Summary: A great attempt by LG, but unfortunatley doesnt quite make it.

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