Compare & Buy LG KU990 Viewty Contract Mobile Deals

 
Are you one of those people who’ve always been cranky or skeptical about convergence gadgets? The mobile phone that does everything but pick up your pills at the chemist? Given how most multifunction mobiles run, and how horridly documented they are, this isn’t an unreasonable attitude to take. One possible candidate for a reversal of opinion is LG’s new KU990 Viewty Camera Data Phone.

In functionality, it’s a perfectly good “bar of soap” format device with a bright touch screen. There’s a setting that, when turned on, gives the touch screen some vibration that almost makes up for the lack of physical buttons. Call quality is quite good; you can’t bring a mobile to market without decent sound quality any more, for which most consumers are extremely grateful. We were pleased with the quality of the speaker phone when we tried it out as well.

However, if all you want is something to place calls on, you can do that for far cheaper than the KU990. What sets this phone apart is its camera – there are only a handful of five megapixel camera phones on the market, and this one is probably among the best. It has an excellent xenon flash that brings the most out of low light photography, and has good color pickup. The lens is recessed in the upper right hand corner of the back of the phone, and seems to be immune to the hazards we’d expect from exposed optics. The digital stabilization is not as good as an optical stabilization set would be, but it’s more than adequate for most snapshots.

 
 
Remarkably for such a compact device, the Viewty has the ability to shoot decent quality video streams. Its natural speed for shots is roughly 120 frames per second, which seemed extravagant, until we loaded the clips to our computer and realized we could run them at slow-motion. We can see lots of calls for this if you shoot sporting events and the like. The version we had had an application that would upload video straight to YouTube that we managed to get working after several trials and errors. We hope the documentation for this application improves from here on out.

Nicely enough, the Viewty works as a music player (most phones in its price range do as well), and it’s got a respectable talk time and “hold a charge” time; not quite as long as the manual says it does, but more than long enough to be usable.

In terms of usability, the phone is a little thick to jam into a coat pocket, and I’d want a dedicated case for it to prevent it from getting scratched up. While it’s lightweight, it doesn’t feel like a cheap plastic disposable item; it’s got some serious style and quality built in, without being ostentatious. The rocker wheel and buttons are decently placed, if somewhat stiff; you need to press them harder than you’d expect, even the dedicated camera buttons.

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