LG KF700 slider phone

The three-megapixel camera may not be right up there with the Viewty’s 5Mp job, but it puts in a pleasing performance nonetheless. It has a reasonably fast-responding and accurate autofocus system and an LED flash.

The camera app slips automatically into landscape mode, with the picture framed on either side by uncluttered controls. The flash setting can be altered, contrast adjusted or you can slip into the image gallery. There’s a small settings control button, which pulls up a neat grid of 14 settings and controls. These provide a degree of control over white balance and light sensitivity, plus the usual cameraphone stock options: colourisation, frames, multi-shot settings, timer and so on.

The slider design gives it the girth of a sturdy candybar phone

LG has achieved a good balance with this camera interface between user-friendliness and detail. It’s quite intuitive and doesn’t overwhelm you with superfluous visual information.

As mentioned, the side dial can be used for zooming, although the digital zoom is only available on lower resolution shooting settings, not the maximum 3Mp size.

The autofocus system does its job efficiently, with a two-step capture button allowing you to focus and compose images before shooting. It works very well on macro close-up work too – although you’ll probably want to override the auto flash on near-range shots, as the LED light will otherwise burn out shots. There are a few basic image editing tools in the phone, too, should you want to add text, draw on the image, play with colours and so on.

The video capture capability doesn’t match the Viewty’s top-end 120 frames per second shooting performance - it shoots at a maximum 320 x 240 resolution at 15 f/s, producing an average, unimpressive video performance.