LG Viewty Smart GC900 Review

Introduction:

World used to be a much better place two years ago. If anything, we were younger and better looking. There were no bad, bad things like financial meltdowns and a credit line to get one of these beautiful 40-meter yachts looked near at hand. It was the time when the LG Viewty KU990 came out, a touch sensitive screen phone equipped with powerful camera delivering DivX video support. The model managed to make it big and gained enviable popularity, although high quality wasn’t exactly on the list of its strengths. The LG Renoir KC910 appeared last year and looked like successor to the KU990 at first, but never really came even close to winning as much fame as the Viewty.   

Today we are introducing its brand-new, true-blood relative that even dares bear its name – the LG Viewty Smart GC900.  It sports 8-megapixel camera, utilizes S-CLASS 3D interface (that first appeared on the LG ARENA KM900 that we have reviewed), delivers Wi-Fi support and comes with multitouch, WVGA resolution screen. Well, you must be wondering where the “Smart” part of its name came from, given the device is not a smartphone. Well, we´ll tell you. That´s just another way its manufacturer has chosen to hint at the intelligent camera of the phone and the Intelligent Shot function it delivers. The phone also looks like gifted multimedia device with its DivX and Xvid video support. All the slicks sound pretty well, aren’t they? Well, read the whole review to find out if there is a catch or not.

What is in the box: LG Viewty Smart GC900, Earphones, Wall charger, USB cable

Design:

We might have been slimmer (and better looking) two years ago, but the LG Viewty KU900 was neither. Although in reality the difference between these two is mere 2.8 mm, the Viewty Smart doesn’t create the same feeling when you hold it. The new model fits into your hand much better and is, despite its length, really comfortable to carry around in your pocket. Unfortunately, it lacks fancy elements such as the rugged back of the LG Renoir KC910 and is easy to take out the wrong side up, since the device is almost perfectly symmetrical.





You can compare the LG Viewty Smart GC900 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

Having seen the Cookie, PRADA II and ARENA and now the Viewty Smart, we are seriously beginning to think LG must have a load of surplus 3-inch screens they are scratching their heads how to get rid of, meaning what device to integrate one into. This particular size is OK, but let’s just say one more time that we would have liked to see something that is, at least, 0.5 inches larger, not to mention the screen of the Viewty Smart delivers WVGA resolution and the colors look richly saturated indoors. Thanks to the light sensitivity sensor display remains usable even in direct sunlight, although things get rather worn-out and disagreeable to look at. Fortunately, screen is really sensitive, reacts to your even slightest touch and gives both vibration and sound feedback (either can be switched off). The only gripe we have is the lack of kinetic scrolling, available on the iPhone that allows you to browse through even stunningly big lists really fast.

Unlike the LG ARENA, there are no send and end buttons below the display - their functions are available via the phone screen. The only hardware key on the front side is used to quit menus and reject calls. It doesn’t have much of a travel and needs to be pressed right in the middle, otherwise it simply won´t work. Buttons on the right hand side of the phone are too small. Camera shutter is prominent enough and easy to grope your way to, but both volume rocker buttons are unpleasantly flat and hard to use. Charger port is on the same side, protected with a small flap and here we come across another difference from the LG ARENA and its sliding charger cover that is really enjoyable to use.


The microSDHC slot on the left hand side is protected in the same manner and there is but one button below it that calls up the S-CLASS 3D interface cube when pressed and the multitasking menu if you keep holding it for a while. The key is easy to feel with your fingers despite its small size and the same goes for the button that locks/unlocks the LG Viewty Smart GC900, located on the top side of the phone. We are unpleasantly surprised to find out the phone lacks 3.5mm jack, especially given the manufacturer´s claims that the phone is a multimedia device.

As we mentioned already, there are no distinguishing features on the back of the phone, aside from the 8-megapixel camera with Schneider KREUZNACH optics it houses. It´s just too bad it´s not protected with a cover, so the glass can get damaged easily. The back panel looks like made of metal, but is actually entirely plastic. Fortunately, the battery cover is easy to remove, without the necessity to overexert yourself, study rocket science or obtain enough knowledge to finish the first two parts of Myst, the PC game. The battery has is covered in painted, flowery pattern that makes it look pretty cool.

As a whole, the LG Viewty Smart GC900 has a modern and likeable overalllook. We don’t really think the latter will turn out to be a decisivepurchase factor to many, not that it doesn’t look great, but we findwhat´s under the pretty face of much greater interest.

Interface:

If you are unaware of our opinion on the S-CLASS 3D interface that has first appeared on the LG ARENA KM900, let us briefly fill you in on the details. We do like it a lot, because except for being beautiful and comfy, it has been made with great attention to details. Its four home screen pages are located onto the sides of a three dimensional cube, which is most easily seen when you press the dedicated button on the left side of the phone.



In a nutshell, the four home screens of the LG Viewty Smart GC900 offer different shortcut options. The first houses up to 9 of your overused applications, the second not more than 30 of your favorite contacts (with pictures). All the rage widgets are present on the third - up to 10 in this case with no option to download more. Fortunately, most of them deliver extra functions – for an instance, the clock function allows you to set an alarm, calendar allows you to take a look at your schedule in monthly, weekly or daily view etc.

The last home screen is dedicated to multimedia – you can load up to 15 files (songs, snapshots or videos). The phone audio player, also stared from here, looks quite pleasingly and you use it in pretty much the same way as Cover Flow on the iPhone. Unfortunately, the rather small number of files that can be placed here gives this particular screen limited usability.



Changes can be made by keeping your finger pressed against the display for a short while; this is a common feature to all home screens, while sliding your finger sideways allows them to be switched between. Tapping at the top calls up (the band that shows the battery status etc) a menu, where you can turn on the Bluetooth and Wi-Fi functions, set an alarm, start the audio player, take a look at missed events or customize the ring style (profile). Quite a pleasing bonus feature that is, unfortunately, not accessible through the main menu. Before we get down to the latter, let us first take a look at the icons at the bottom. They are shortcuts leading to your phone dialing menu, contacts, messages and well… the main menu. Now let´s get to it.



The main menu is the major reason that might make you think the interface resembles the Apple´s when you first see it. The main difference is LG designers have arranged all icons by relevant categories. Icons can swap places, provided they remain in the row they belong to. So, you will always have communication-related icons in the top row (contacts, recent calls, messages, browser etc.), multimedia ones below them (player, camera, video camera), organizer functions coming up next (calendar, notes, alarm list) and finally settings. Actually, the same division exists on previous manufacturer models as well, it´s just that everything is merged together now, so you have to scroll the rows sideways if you need to find a less important function. All icons become visible when the screen is in landscape mode.



The combination of many shortcuts on the home screen, widgets and comfortable main menu allows you to get to the basic functions really fast. The most complex action we had to take (without using a shortcut) was to check our emails and required as many as five clicks. The accelerometer left us with mixed feelings, really. It works adequately and turns the screen with a hardly noticeable lag at times, but sometimes it´s rather the opposite. For an instance, there is an option in the main menu that turns the screen to your left or right and fits the image on the screen. This, however, cannot be done if you are into your messages – it can only be turned to your left from there (counter clockwise), not to mention the accelerometer fails to work adequately in this case, which is an apparent software issue.

Despite the fact we are really pleased with the interface, we happen to have a few gripes. It´s really great that almost all your actions are accompanied with smoothly playing animations and transition effects, the thing is they are sometimes followed by severe lagging, like opening the calendar that takes about 6 seconds. We think it would have been much better if there was an option to switch off the fancy looking effects sometimes - say, you happen to be in a hurry, so the last thing you want is to wait, watching the rollers of the settings spin around. 

Contacts:

Your contacts store up to 1000 numbers and adding new entries no longer feels like a proper torture (as it does with the LG Renoir), because you can see more info fields on the screen. Moving up and down between them feels adequate and you just need to get used to minimizing the keyboard if you want to go ahead. We hit the “go back” icon several times and ended up losing all entered information. Each contact entry comes with quite a few info fields – picture (here you can crop an image and assign just the part you like), personal number, email, group, ringtone, website, home address (with many options for cities, countries etc), company, position with it, office address, birth date, anniversaries and a short note. All groups can be customized with unique ringtones and pictures, plus backup copies of your contacts can be saved on the phone memory or sent to another device via Bluetooth.



Searching in your contacts is performed by both parts of the name. Entering digits in the search panel filters contacts as well, say 6-3-6 leads to both Neo and all phone numbers containing the digits (not possible on the LG ARENA KM900). Scrolling through them makes the letter you have gotten to appear on screen. Still, it would have been much comfier if the alphabet was visible as it is on the iPhone or the Samsung Pixon, so as to provide easier navigation to any letter.



There are two different options for those of you who need to quick-dial favorite contacts. We have already mentioned about the first that is available through the home screen. The other one is the “quick dial” function that allow up to 9 numbers to be assigned to dialing screen keys. Unfortunately, there is no way for you to restrict incoming calls and prevent intrusive fellows from bugging you. Voice command functionality is also unavailable on the phone.

A relatively large contact picture appears on the screen of the LG Viewty Smart GC900 when you get an incoming call (and if the contact doesn’t have one assigned, a spinning cube would pop up instead) with a small slider just below it. You can accept the call moving the slider to your right, while sliding it to your left will show a previously compiled list of messages that can be used to excuse yourself for being unable to pick up. So, why don’t you add something nice here, such as “Bugger off, watching football and boozing beers!”

Organizer:

The LG ViewtySmart GC900 delivers pleasing organizer functions that are enough tomeet the needs of ordinary customers. Let´s get started with the alarm clock.In its “standard” mode you can set up several different alarms, each ofthem with its own melody and recurrence pattern. The way you do thesetting itself looks impressive – through a digital or analog clockwith background indicating whether the time you´ve just entered is AMor PM. Two rollers appear in digital clock mode that you turnseparately. You will have to wait for about 3 seconds until they getsettled and this is far from the fastest way to set up specific time,but still, it´s looks quite spectacular. Something suchlike is usedwhen setting the correct date (say, in the main menu), but you need touse three different rollers, instead of two. The quick alarm optionallows you to set up an alarm reminder about something that´ll happenwithin the next hour. Our only gripe is that you turn off ringingalarms by tapping a single key and it´s quite possible you get yourselfan unplanned late morning, especially when half-awake. We cannot waitto see alarms that switch off by themselves when the phone registersyou have been through your morning exercises.


Calendar(named organizer) offers a variety of modes – whole month, week,timetable (showing filled-in timeslots for a specific date and yourtime allocation) or a list of all entered events. You can add detailedschedule events that are classified in three major categories (meeting,anniversary and birthday), each one with its own subject, location,start and end dates, additional note and recurrence pattern.Unfortunately, they are not assigned alarms to remind you, meaning theycan easily go unnoticed unless you keep an eye on the calendar all thetime. The last event type (our favorite) is marking a period of time asbank holidays. The mode allows you to color one or more days in redwhich means you won´t have to work on these dates. Is there any way ofmarking the remainder of this year in red? Just like your contacts, youcan save archive copies of your schedule and task list onto the memorycard or send it via Bluetooth to another device.



The list of organizer optionsof the LG Viewty Smart GC900 is supplemented with simplified notes(limited to 1000 symbols per entry), chronometer that records lap timesand incredibly beautiful calculator with scientific mode that managedto get our hairs stand on end (all of us are gifted mathematicians). Wedid have tons of fun with the unit converter, because the preset valueof the dollar against the euro is 2, while at the time of this reviewthe exchange rate was 0.7 EUR. Correct values can be entered manually,although not synchronized over the internet, which is far fromconvenient. You also have a world clock (appears as a showy Globe) andthe option to track local time in six cities around the world (of yourchoice). Voice notes can be recorded in two formats – one is suited forgeneral use and the other for being sent in an MMS, but either way,voice quality is below par. Unlike the LG ARENA KM900, the LG Viewty GC900 doesn’t have FM transmitter.




Messages:

Like we said in our review of the LG ARENA KM900, the messages menu has gone through major changes alongside of versions found on previous models and is really comfy to use. Getting in takes you right into incoming messages, grouped by date. A button at the top sends you to your outbox, where you can browse sent messages or follow up conversations in a threaded style. You can directly reply to an incoming message from your inbox and there´s a separate button to get down to typing your response. A nice, well conceived icon located in the bottom right corner allows you attach files in a snap. The largest size of a file we managed to attach was about 1 MB (video with length of 1 min 34 sec and resolution of 176x144 pixels) and pictures get automatically resized to acceptable level (up to 300 KB).



Setting up email accounts is easy, especially if you happen to use a mainstream, web-based email providers like Gmail, Yahoo etc., because all relevant settings are preloaded onto the phone. Unfortunately this doesn´t hold true for personal email servers like ours that is only handled by strictly business oriented BlackBerry devices. In contrast to MMS messages, the photos, taken with the camera, do not resize automatically and since each one is about a 1MB in size, they cannot be sent with a message. The good news is the Viewty Smart supports Microsoft Exchange server to sync emails, contacts and calendar.



The vertical keyboard of the LG Viewty Smart GC900 is OK, especially if you use it along with T9. We do recommend that people who tend to get the needle easily stick with it rather than use the landscape mode, because the latter makes keys way too small and slow to press and even then, a number of mistakes is made.




Connectivity:

The LG Viewty Smart GC900 is a quad-band GSM (850/900/1800/1900) and dual-band 3G (900/2100) device and the latter limits its usability in the US. The maximum download speed is 7.2Mbit/s, but it´s only attainable if your carrier supports it. Just like other decent, top of the range devices, the phone has Wi-Fi and you can enter your own IP settings.

The built-in browser of the LG Viewty Smart GC900 renders pages well and is controlled through multitouch. Yes, just like the iPhone. The difference is that there is no double tapping to zoom in on the image and you need to do that by stretching away your fingers against the display, or image spanning. Unfortunately, this is always followed by severe delays and you just don’t know if you have zoomed in enough, because you can´t see the picture getting nearer in real time. In a nutshell, this is how using the browser typically goes – stretch your fingers against the screen, wait for 4-5 seconds until the picture gets set to find out you are not where you want to be, slide you finger to where you need on the picture, wait for another 1-2 seconds and you are a go. It gets even worse. You need to almost literally get your nose into the phone to click on links, because text is not formatted so as to fit onto the screen and hyperlinks often overlap with underlying text and page elements. As a whole, the browser feels disagreeable to use, unless you get down to it to see simple web pages only, meaning you won´t have to use the zoom function. What a shame, we expected much more.



Bluetooth 2.1 provides local connectivity and supports the following profiles - HSP, HFP, DUN, FTP, OPP, GAP, SPP, SDAP, SDP, BPP, GAVDP, A2DP, AVRCP, SAP, AVDTP, AVCTP and PBAP. Aside from it, you can simply connect the device to your computer with the USB 2.0 cable. When you do so, you will have several options – set the phone as a Mass storage device, for audio synchronization, connect through PC Suite or iSync (used with non-Apple devices on Mac computers). The former two don’t require additional software, while you would need to install LG PC Suite to use the third. It allows you to synchronize phone contacts, calendar and notes, upload music, pictures, videos, programs or download messages, emails etc.

Camera:

As we mentioned, the original Viewty was the first touch sensitive screen phone with serious ambitions in high quality videos and snapshots. Its successor, the LG Viewty Smart GC900 gets ahead on the idea, housing 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and flash. The hardware specs are less impressive than all functions the manufacturer has equipped it with.

The phone features almost the same interface like the LG ARENA KM900, but there are several additional extras to make it stand out. First, starting it takes about 3 seconds, while focusing only 1. Unfortunately, there is no way to turn off the picture preview, popping up right after you take a  snapshot, meaning interface needs another 3 seconds to load again. A single photo is taken for about 7-8 seconds on the whole, so there is no such thing as getting quick snapshots here.

Other than that, we are pretty pleased with the variety of options available. You can switch between shooting modes from the screen and they are automatic, portrait, landscape, fast motion, night mode and Intelligent Shot. It´s the first time we have seen something like the latter on a cell phone. The function sets your camera depending on environment (sunny, at night) and objects the device is directed towards (group of people, portrait or landscape). When you activate it, several charts appear in the bottom right corner that show the objects the phone is turned to, but the device needs several seconds to accurately recognize them. The whole point to this particular mode is to deliver the best image quality attainable – say, a picture of people who are in focus with the light coming from behind them fittingly compensated and background properly exposed. If turned on along with face detection, the mode allows proper focusing of up to 5 faces, although way too slowly, which in reality renders using both functions at the same time virtually pointless, especially at parties and the like, unless you promise people some big cash to get them waiting this long. We are going to pass our final judgment on the Intelligent Shot function further below.


The other manual options are exposure, flash mode (automatic, red eye removal, on and off), automatic and macro mode. Additional functions are available through the wheel-shaped digital camera menu. You can switch between video call and main camera, change the resolution (from 120x180 to 3263x2448), add effects (sepia, negative, single color), set white balance and self-picture timer (limited to no more than 10 sec delay). The additional modes are plenty as well – fast capture (up to 6 snapshots with resolution of 640x480 pixels), smile detection, one called “Beauty shot” that removes flaws and another to take pictures with artistic value (image resolution in the latter three is pegged to 1280x960 pixels) or panoramic ones (at lower resolution). Does anything strike you here? What are all these limitations for, not to mention on the LG top camera phone for 2009? This really ruined our mood and even seeing ISO can be set to 1600 couldn’t make us feel any better. Anyway, such a high setting is virtually unusable with mobile phones, because it creates way too much noise and the same goes for image stabilization. Focusing can be standard, on faces or manual and the latter is rare to find on cell phones. The other functions are the usual – screen rulers, geographical tagging, image quality and preferred content location.


Now, that is enough with the extras. Let´s see what the quality is. After finishing several photo shooting sessions, the one for Playboy we cannot share, we have come to the conclusion that you must know perfectly well when to use the Intelligent Shot. In most cases it really ruins the overall image quality, which is far from impressive to begin with. Colors are not saturated enough, don’t look realistic and pictures lack enough details quite often. Macro mode pictures were the only that managed to impress us, thanks to the very good focusing on objects. Intelligent Shot adds noise and its only use is to even off light coming from behind the object (with the object itself in contre-jour). We recommend you to keep away from the mode with indoor snaphots, because they will be excessively noisy. Camera flash is a weakling that doesn’t help things at all. As a whole, the LG Viewty Smart GC900 is a mediocre performer and most options fail to deliver better quality than the LG Renoir KC910.






You switch to video capture with the slider on the right hand side of the phone. Its interface is poorer in terms of available options and aside from setting the resolution (up to 720x480), you can add effects, change white balance, capture quality, size and whether or not to record sound. Modes known from previous models of the manufacturer, such as fast and slow motion shooting are also here. Unfortunately, despite the fact the device is a top ranging cameraphone, videos are captured at QVGA resolution only. All told, overall quality is not impressive, even if videos are smooth, thanks to the 30 frames per second capability of the phone. Still, people who were more than half a meter away are really hard to hear in the clips and everything is way too dark if shot indoors.

LG Viewty Smart GC900 sample video at 720x480 pixel resolution.



You can navigate fast from the camera interface to the phone Gallery that is really comfy to use. It unifies all your pictures and videos and content can be easily sorted by date, file type, name or depending on what you would like to see – only pictures or videos, your favorites, ones saved on the memory card etc. Things get truly beautiful when screen is in landscape mode – gallery turns into something quite similar to the iPhone Cover Flow with images pouring down spectacularly. You better take a look at our video review to relish the effect in all its beauty. Aside from this, zooming is implemented through image spanning thanks to the multi-touch technology.



Multimedia and Software:

The music player is an odd bird, but you´ll eventually get used to it in time. It´s not trail-blazing, but it´s not a clone of the iPhone either. This is good, since we are all fed up with seeing clones. In portrait mode the player appears in between tracks and scrolling means you lose the relevant album art and effects from sight, because they get in the background. You can, however, start or stop playback with the control keys below. In horizontal mode audio player takes up about a third of the screen and somehow doesn´t go with the rest of the interface, plus here you don’t have access to neither the Dolby Mobile function, nor the one that allows you to define a song as one of your favorite. We must say that we do like the particular way of browsing albums – they appear as a list, divided by artists with the masterpieces visualized as separate CDs. We do love such small, beautiful things.




What we also love is good sound… in other words we enjoy listening to music on the LG Viewty Smart GC900. Loudspeaker is a bit weak, but the crackling noises, typical of many cell phones, are missing even when volume is pumped up to its maximum setting. Audio quality through earphones is very good, despite sound tends to be somewhat sharp. All told, audio at full blast may definitely cause hearing problems. Turn it down a bit (say to 80-90%) and you will get awesome playback that is pleasing listen to even for prolonged periods of time.

The original Viewty was one of the first feature phones, able to play DivX content. Its follow-up copes with Xvid. There is bad news we were served with when we first saw the LG ARENA – movies can be only played if they have been coded at resolution not exceeding CIF (352x288 pixels), at less than 30 frames per second and bitrate lower than 1 Mbps. This is as disappointing as it gets, especially given the original device was able to play 640x480 pixel resolution videos without a hitch. This really degrades the video capabilities of the device, since you just won't be able to download movies from the Internet and watch them right away. Like it or lump it, you will need to convert videos – and while you are at it, you might as well go for MPEG4 to make sure they are playable on all modern devices. MPEG4/H.263 and H.264 videos can have resolution of up to 720x480 pixels, bitrate under 3Mbps and be coded at no more than 30 frames per second. Image quality using the above mentioned settings is passable, although artifacts are still visible. They are very small in Xvid videos and don’t ruin the experience, but way too obvious and irritating in DivX content. Still, if watching videos on your cell phone is your cup of tea, you better go for the Samsung OMNIA HD i8910 or the iPhone – you will still need to convert content for the latter, but its 3.5-inch screen delivers awesome image quality.



If you are still up to creating a piece of art after taking the severe blow with the video playback, you can make a short video using snapshots. The functionality is nothing to write home about – add pictures, pick a melody, choose underlying effect, set the other in which pictures will appear (random or sequential) and you are game. Unfortunately, subtitles cannot be added as, say, on the Samsung OMNIA HD and the total video length is limited to the one of the melody. You will need quite a few pictures to come up with a proper video clip using a song with standard length though (3-4 minutes). Still, you can achieve some really entertaining results, despite your creation will be saved at QVGA resolution.



Come to navigation, what you have is JAVA version of Google Maps, which is actually up to the task. The built-in GPS managed to surprise us with its speed – pinpointing our exact location took just 5 seconds even after hardware restart.

The LG Viewty Smart GC900 comes with several preloaded games and fun applications. The former have not been specifically designed for the high resolution screen it´s equipped with and pixels are clearly visible. We were pleased to find out some applications make use of not only the accelerometer, but the device microphone as well – for an instance, in Bubble Blower the small balloons that you need to collect and then burst will only appear when you have blown at the mike. You also have the option to install more JAVA apps to your own liking.

Performance:

Using the LG Viewty Smart GC900 to talk feels pleasing. We tested it in a variety of environments and conditions, including in extremely windy weather and we didn’t have a problem catching onto what was said. Voices sounded somewhat monotonous, but were really loud. People on the other end rated in-call quality as one of the best they had ever experienced, with voice sharpness as easy to fix as turning volume down a bit. They also claimed the loudspeaker was operating almost perfectly for them, although we couldn’t hear almost anything at the time.

The phone also comes equipped with a robust battery that, according to the manufacturer, should provide up to 6 hrs of continuous talk time and no less than 15 days in standby.

Conclusion:

The LG Viewty Smart GC900 is a device with modern and pleasing overall look that comes with amazing set of functions to meet the needs of ordinary customers (although not nearly enough to replace smartphones to business people). The S-CLASS 3D interface itself is beautiful, feels comfortable to use and despite its few drawbacks, such as menu lagging and uncomfortable keyboard in landscape mode, we do like it better than the Samsung´s TouchWiz. In-call and audio quality is high and videos look quite well on the 3-inch screen, although you will have to convert content to the supported resolution, which renders DivX and Xvid support virtually pointless and degrades the multimedia capabilities of the device.

What we are most disappointed in is the mediocre camera performance of the phone. The new functions are interesting, but they either have limitations or affect image quality pretty badly, which is below par to begin with. Snapshots taken with the LG Viewty Smart GC900 look unappealing even on social networks, where the 2-megapixel camera of the iPhone seems to perform much better.

As a whole, if you are looking for a modern cell phone that offers variety of functions, appealing interface and you do not to care about the camera that much, the Viewty Smart is a good option. We would, however, recommend that you consider the LG ARENA KM900, because it delivers the same functionality, comes with a different (but not worse) design, extended built-in memory and 3.5mm jack. Those of you who need a capable camera phone will be better off passing on the device and we would advise that they opt for the Samsung OMNIA HD, the Pixon or the INNOV8 or rather wait until new, 12-megapixel models roll out.

LG Viewty Smart GC900 Video Review: