LG Renoir eight-megapixel cameraphone
Serious alternative to the you-know-what
Review LG’s successor to its Viewty focuses on imaging capabilities with a centrepiece eight-megapixel camera.
The KC910 - or Renoir, as it's artistically labelled - doesn’t only have an eyebrow-raising cameraphone resolution, though. The device, built around a large, 3in touchscreen, is packed with a roll-call of the latest must-have mobile features. It‘s an HSDPA-enabled 3G device, supports Wi-Fi and has A-GPS location-finding technology on board.
LG's Renoir KC910: packed with the latest must-have features
LG is also claiming a first for mobile audio, with Dolby Mobile sound-enhancement technology built in too. And as the phone arrives with an 8GB memory card in-box, LG is clearly hoping Renoir's multimedia credentials will be attractive too.
What the phone doesn’t have, however, is the flexibility for customisation that a smartphone operating system offers. LG has stuck with its own touchscreen user interface.
Nonetheless, that 8m-pixel camera is the real attention-grabber. At launch, LG hailed the Renoir as the thinnest eight-megapixel handset around - the phone's a sliver under 14mm. While these things change, it’s undeniably slim for the imaging technology it packs.
It doesn’t skimp on the photo features. It has Schneider-Kreuznach endorsed optics, and is boosted by the inclusion of a xenon flash. It includes a stack of tweaking and shot-enhancing options, including touch-to-aim autofocusing. On the video front, LG has reprised the slow-motion video capture capability, and DivX video playback support introduced on its successful Viewty.
OK, so the Renoir looks a bit like the you know what. It has a smaller footprint and is lighter than the iPhone, at 107.8 x 55.9 x 13.95mm and weighing 110g, but it's a slightly bigger proposition (though slimmer) than its Viewty predecessor.
COMMENTS
@Neil Alexander
Facually incorrect.
GPS uses some fancy maths to work out where it is in relation to certain GPS System (RAS Syndrome?) satellites, based on the delay between sending by the satellite and reception by the device. Devices overhead will be closer than those at other angles to the location, so the GPS receiver can work out where it is from comparing the delay from several sources.
A-GPS makes this easier by downloading the appropriate information based on the location of the nearest Cell over a data connection. This makes the guesswork / mathwork of the GPS receiver take far less time, as it already has reference information for where satellites SHOULD be relative to its (approximate) current position. It can also allow the device to approximate what a GPS signal SHOULD be telling it if the signal drops, allowing for better connectivity within buildings and under cover (to a certain extent).
Re: The A-GPS on our sample was quick to get a satellite fix
A-GPS doesn't use satellites. Unlike vanilla GPS, A-GPS uses phone masts to determine it's location. Can we please decide whether we are talking about GPS or A-GPS here?
No ijesus competitor
It's just an 8mp cameraphone (probably with a tiny sensor to it will be horribly compressed and worse than a decent 5mp sensor), not a smartphone.
And I bet..
.. it's got all the same problems as my old Viewty, inconsistent UI, over-compressed imaging, hopeless multi-tasking, poor multimedia player, promises that glitches will be fixed in "an update" etc etc.
The Viewty was the first phone I ever PAID to get out of a contract to get away from... Never another LG phone as long as I live. All they're interested in is being able to boast bigger numbers for each feature, no thought to the end-user experience. And if you find a bug, tough, LG are too busy looking at their next great handset to be bothered going back and fixing the issue...
hmm, 6 pages and I could not find....
a long article, not to badly written, how ever. What about its spec?, how does it compair to other 8MP phones? like the samsung, i found the other comments very intresstig as i am in the market.
The samsung 8510 comes with 8Gb internal and upto 16Gb cards (which are about £40 each atm).
What codecs does the vieaty thingy support?, can it charge off a standard usb port.
So on top of that, 8MP is not really all that awsome that it can not be compaired to 5Mp phones.
/rant
