One 5 megapixel cameraphone not good enough for you? How about
two?
Three? Still not satisfied? Good, because if there's one thing in this crazy world that we can say for certain, it's that there's no such thing as "too many 5 megapixel phones." Today we take a look at LG's
KU990 Viewty, a phone that builds in several ways on the
KE850 Prada's lovely formula. Read on.
Thanks to the good folks at
Wireless Imports for the hookup!
Manufacturers in a variety of consumer-facing industries are trending toward minimal packaging in an effort to become ever so slightly more environmentally conscious. The KU990's packaging manages to be both minimal
and fancy -- arguably like the phone itself -- with a pop-up representation of the goodness within when you lift the outer lid.
But never mind the packaging; we know that's not why you're here. The phone itself is beautiful in its simplicity, perhaps even more so than the Prada because it lacks some (but not all) of its predecessor's chrome accents. In the hand, it's comfortable but takes a little getting used to -- the send, end, and clear buttons are pushed so far to the phone's bottom edge that you need to perform some minor thumb acrobatics to make it happen. Since the rest of the interface is touchscreen, couldn't these three have gone up on there, too?
The interface is generally very good, and we think anyone who's used any of LG's recent touch devices like the
Voyager would feel right at home. The default black theme may not suit everyone; we found it a little difficult to read in certain situations, but happily, LG's theme manager does an excellent job of thoroughly making over every aspect of the phone. After changing themes, we could barely tell we were dealing with the same device.
As good as the UI is, it's marred a bit by a testy touchscreen. What's worse, it's testy in multiple ways. First, the surface of the display is not conducive to sliding of the finger -- in fact, it was downright sticky in every environment we tried. That wouldn't be a big deal were it not for the fact that all lists on the phone rely on sliding to scroll, and frankly, we came to dread the activity after a while. Second, it's not sensitive enough. Getting the screen to register with the press of a fingertip requires far more pressure than we'd have liked. We promised ourselves we wouldn't mention the
iPhone in this article, but frankly, this is one thing the iPhone really got right; its screen is usually slick enough for easy sliding and is plenty sensitive. LG, take note.
Browsing the web on the KU990 is a decent experience. It's not on the same level as S60's integrated browser or Safari, but it gets the job done, bearing in mind that the size of the screen is still the biggest limitation to browsing sites designed for full-size monitors in a meaningful way. Again, we think we would've had an easier go of it if the Viewty's touchscreen were a little more conducive to... you know, touching. As you can see here, landscape mode is supported and the toolbar can be hidden to give yourself a few extra precious pixels. We also figure we would've had more fun with the phone's internet capabilities if we'd been able to take advantage of that 3.6Mbps HSDPA radio.
The camera, of course, is one of the Viewty's headlining features on account of its 5 megapixel sensor, xenon flash, and autofocus with an assist lamp. We had a tougher time getting decent shots with it than with any of the other 5 megapixel phones we've tested, but that's not to say it's bad -- you've just got to be a little bit more mindful of your lighting. For what it's worth, the viewfinder is simply tremendous; it appeared to refresh at 20fps or better and made us feel as though we were shooting with an actual camera, not a cameraphone.
Perhaps the camera's most unusual feature is its zoom ring, a spring-loaded thingamajig situated around the lens itself. We found it to be little more than a gimmick -- it's not in the most user-friendly position when you're looking through the other side of the phone. We would've preferred a more traditional set of controls for this.
So there you have it, another 5 megapixel shootin' wonder in the mix. It's probably the most beautiful we've tested so far with a stunning UI to match -- but the lack of WCDMA 850 / 1900 is once again an issue. Fix the infernal touch screen and add a few more bands and we're sold, okay, LG?
posted Dec 17th 2007 3:09PM
Bought the iphone when it first came out and today I switch over to the LG ku990 so far so good however Im running into a problem vista on my PC. Its giving me a error message when I conect to the phone. any Ideas?
It looks absolutely beautiful... a lot like the Voyager.. and when I saw the UI I could tell it was an LG Phone. Looks exactly like my Voyager's UI
If the touch screen isnt working correctly, or accurately thats going to put a huge damper on this, I was hoping to get this in lieu of an Iphone in march because of the additional features and the supposedly amazing camera, which from your review does not seem very satisfactory either. Hopefully it improves at its official launch, I dont want to waste an early upgrade
So it has optical zoom?
No. Just looks like it.
i had this phone when it was first released and was one of the worst phones i have ever owned. The screen is horrible, gets completely washed out in the daylight, feels too light and cheap in the hands, touch screen is spotty at best, xenon flash is a joke. The camera is decent but takes time to get used to. Takes excellent nigh photos though (without the xenon flash). The video recording is great too, especially the slow motion video recording. The prada felt more sturdy and "high end" in the hands. My personal recommendation is to avoid this phone.
How come the lustful 120 FPS video shooting capability wasn't mentioned? That thing shoots slow-mo vids!
um. did i miss something? why is there a random picture of an htc?
Maybe they used the Viewty to take a picture of the Touch?
So, is the CU 970 (Vu) this phone with North American (ATT) UMTS bands?
I had this phone for 4 days and hated it - straight back to my k810.
The screen was nice, and the touchscreen/texting was better than I expected, but I disliked the firmware bugs (such as difficult-to-scroll phonebook), the camera seemed to produce poor pictures without a lot of fiddling - with results my 3.2mp k810 seemed to match, the ridiculous jog-wheel, the poor flash, and the totally iffy bluetooth (Ad2p) implementation.
The one thing that nearly made me overlook the flaws was the Divx playback, but sadly in the end it wasn't enough. And the dangly stylus was absolutely annoying - it neve rleft it's box.
In short an acquired taste, but not for me.