The Viewty continues LG's recent trend of producing sleek and powerful multimedia phones (can one forget the Chocolate and the Shine?). It is not exactly slim and won't slip into most pockets but looks good enough for most people to want to flaunt it. The front of the phone is dominated by the large 3.0-inch touchscreen. Although there are buttons to receive and reject calls, this phone is almost totally touch-driven it has no physical keypad. The crown jewel of the phone's back panel is the 5.0-megapixel Shcneider-Kreuznach lens, around which is wrapped a dial that can be used for zooming in and out and also for scrolling through menus.

The overall effect is that of a device that looks like a sleek phone from the front and an equally snazzy camera from behind. And the Viewty can hold its own as either device. The 5.0-megapixel camera has got to be one of the most powerful we have ever seen we got absolutely clear images in daytime and its Xenon flash helped us dish out some equally good images at night. The Viewty is at its best while shooting video - it can do so at 120 frames per second, which is not only significantly more than any other camera phone in the Indian market, but actually gets it into the 'sports camera' category. And knowing that it was on to a good thing, LG has thrown in not just the usual bunch of photo-editing tools (you can doodle on pictures, write on them, crop them, etc.) but also software that allows you to load videos directly onto YouTube. The phone also allows users to watch movies in the popular (but not always supported) DivX format.


Given its imaging prowess, one could almost be forgiven for forgetting that the Viewty is a phone too. Voice clarity is excel¬lent on calls and so was signal reception. LG has done an excellent job in making the menu finger-rather than stylus-oriented,so one has large icons that one can tap without fear of missing or striking their neigh¬bours. You can even get some tactile feed¬back (the screen vibrates gently) to let you know when you have hit a button or an icon. The onscreen keypad is large too (sav¬ing one the trouble of using the slightly iffy handwriting recognition feature), so even messaging and emailing is relatively easy. Even the battery life was impressive for a touchscreen we ran it mercilessly for a day and half, making calls, shooting video and playing music, before it demanded a recharge.

Unfortunately, while the phone's interface is designed for the finger, its touchscreen clearly is not. We found ourselves sliding our fingers across it time and again and tapping icons in frustration, as it took its own time to respond. And scrolling through the menu using the dial around the camera lens on the back of the phone was pretty inconvenient it would have been simpler to have a scroll wheel on the side of the phone. Its large touchscreen and finger-friendly interface have made comparisons with the iPhone inevitable, but the Viewty can be considered a formidable device in its own right. It is brilliant in the imaging department, well above average as a phone and (we almost forgot), even serves up some very decent music.

Yes, its touchscreen should be rechristened 'thumpscreen.' Yes, the stylus dangling on the side of the phone does look ugly (it can fortunately be detached). Yes, its HSDPA support counts for little in India. But even then, the Viewty packs quite a punch. The LG Viewty is in a class of its own when it comes to 5.0-megapixel cam¬eraphones with touchscreens. However, if you can settle for a 2.0 megapixel camera with a touchscreen, you could try the LG Prada which comes for Rs 19,000, or the HTC Touch at Rs. 17,900

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TECH SPECS:-
Size: 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm Weight: 112 grams
Memory: 100 MB, microSD Battery: Li-Ion 1000mAh Screen: 262,144 colours
Talktime/Standby: up to 6 hours 1 up to 434 hours Bluetooth/lnfrared: Yesl No
Phone book Capacity: 500
Speakerphone: Yes
Camera: 5.0 megapixel
Frequency: GSM 900/1800/1900
Others: 120 fps video recordinglplayback,
Google software package, ISO 800 for low light oper¬ations, document viewer, DivX support, direct upload to YouTube and Blogger.