Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009
One of LG’s most successful handsets was the Viewty. Launched back in July 2007, the Viewty was released at the same time as the original iPhone, but with much higher spec – two years later and the Viewty gets a make over and becomes the Viewty Smart, but what’s changed? Apart from the obvious cosmetic changes, the Viewty Smart has been pretty much rebuilt from scratch, with an improved camera, a better menu system, improved battery life, more storage and a load of new features. If you’re considering getting the LG Viewty Smart, this quick guide will point out the key changes.
(more…)
Loading ...
Wednesday, April 22nd, 2009
To keep your new LG Arena safe and working to its full potential you’ll need to get yourself a few accessories for it, but what should you get? To point you in the right direction we’ve put together must have accessories for the LG Arena.
LG SDT-120 Desktop Charging Cradle:
What better way to show off your brand new LG Arena, than to have it sitting proudly on your desk in this stylish Desktop Charging Cradle. Not only does the Desktop Cradle connect to your Mains Charger, but it can also connect it to your PC to transfer media to your phone. The SDT-120 can also be connected to your TV using the LG TV-Out Cable allowing you to view all your photos and videos on the big screen. For the keen photographers out there, the SDT-120 also has a tripod connection.
LG CCL-240 Leather Case:
This premium leather carrying case has been designed to perfectly fit your LG Arena, giving you added protection against everyday knocks and scrapes. Its Microfibre lining helps keep your phone looking its best by wiping away finger marks everytime you insert/remove your phone.
16GB Micro SDHC Memory Card:
Although the LG Arena has 8GB of internal storage, it will soon fill up if you’re using it as your MP3 player or storing videos on it. A memory card will increase the amount you can store on the device. 16GB is currently the largest card available and will take the total amount of storage on the phone to a massive 24GB.
MPS-300 Portable Speakers:
If you enjoy listening to your music when you’re out and about then these lightweight portable speakers could be just what you need. They’re colour matched to your LG Arena, and not much bigger. Thanks to some clever thinking from LG, these speakers will also work with your iPod, MP3 player or any other 3.5mm device, with out the need for loads of different adapters. Instead, just use the one reversible cable to connect the speakers to your device.
Bluetooth Headphones:
As you’ve got yourself one of the latest multimedia handsets, I’m guessing that you like your gadgets and like to be able to enjoy your music and videos where ever you are. A set of Bluetooth headphones will let you listen to and control your music from your phone with out the need to un-tangle your headphone wires, and will work upto 10m away from your phone.
Genuine LG Car Charger:
Make sure your Arena is always charged and ready to go. Simply fit it into the cigarette lighter port in your car and plug the tangle proof cable into your phone. Great for long journeys!
Loading ...
Monday, October 27th, 2008
Barely a month goes by with out at least two handsets going head to head. Over the last year or so, most of the battles have been against the iPhone, with manufacturers trying desperately to out perform it. 
Interestingly, Nokia haven’t yet taken it on with a touch screen device, but its on the cards with the launch of the Nokia 5800 XpressMusic. I don’t know about you, but I’m almost fed up of reading about "this phone’s better than the iPhone", so I thought I’d pay more attention to a more serious battle thats about to commence between Sony Ericsson, LG and Samsung. The Battle for the best 8MP Cameraphone.
Samsung have the edge here, they were first to release an 8MP camera phone, the INNOV8 i8510. The i8510 is full of features and comes with either 8GB or 16GB of internal memory. In terms of the phones design, its not really anything we’ve not seen before. It looks like a more stylish version of the Nokia N95, and runs the same operating system. I’m not going to focus too much on the spec, I’m more interested in the camera, so for detailed information on what all of these phones can do, head over to the
comparison page. The i8510 has some cool camera features such as
geotagging,
automatic panorama shooting,
face detection,
smile detection, and
blink detection. Face detection means that the camera will keep the faces in focus, while smile and blink detection will only take the photo once everyone is smiling and their eyes are open. Clever stuff.
The Samsung i8510 is available now in both 8GB and 16GB versions and is priced from around £500.
Over the next few weeks, we’re going to see 3 more 8MP cameraphones make their appearance – The Sony Ericsson C905, LG Renoir and the Samsung Pixon.
The LG Renoir is a touchscreen device that builds on the style and popularity of the LG Viewty. As with all of the phones mentioned here, the spec is pretty impressive with high speed internet and a flashy touch based interface. The camera is good, but feature-wise, hasn’t got as much on it as some of its competitors. The interface is the same as was on the LG Viewty, but with the addition of a few new features and a Xenon Flash. One of its best features is the touchscreen focus. This allows you to focus on any object in your image, simply by touching the screen of the phone. The LG Renoir has smile and face detection, but unlike the i8510, its single face only, so group shots are a no go. It also features Blink Detection, but again, not in the same way as the others, rather than not allowing you to take a photo if the eyes are closed, the Renoir will warn you after you’ve taken the photo that someone blinked. I can’t really see the point of this though.
See the LG Renoir full specification.
The LG Renoir is expected to be released towards the end of October for around £360.
The Samsung Pixon is closer in specification to the Renoir than it is the i8510. From the back it looks more like a camera than a phone, but to be honest, although the camera is great, it’s not an all singing all dancing phone like you might expect. The user interface is the "le croix" menu system that is found on the Samsung Tocco and F490, so its pretty simple to use. Its not a high spec phone like the i8510, so if like me you’re a gadget lover who wants your phone to do everything, then this may not be the phone for you. The camera works really well. It has a similar focus system to the Renoir, where you just touch the screen to focus on the object you’re taking the photo of, and like the i8510 has face detection, smile detection, and blink detection. In addition, the Pixon also has a nifty little feature that most facebook users will be familiar with – the ability to tag people in the photos! By tagging the people in your photos to the names in your address book, you can text or call them while looking through your photos. Its different, and probably of limited appeal, but is an extra camera feature over its competitors.
See the Samsung Pixon full specification.
The Samsung Pixon is expected to be released towards the beginning of November for around £370.
The Sony Ericsson C905 for me is the best of the bunch. The joint venture between Sony and Ericsson is really starting to bring some major advantages to the Sony Ericsson Cyber-Shot range. The imaging censor in the C905 is the same as the one used in a Sony Digital SLR Camera, and you really can tell. The images are clearer and sharper than the other 8MP handsets, and some of the camera features can’t be beaten. For night time shots, the C905 excels as it is one of the few cameraphones on the market that features a Xenon Flash, this gives much better lighting at night, more accurate colours and allows photo’s to be taken at a greater distance than an LED flash. All cybershot phones feature Bestpic, where a series of 7 images are taken in quick succession, allowing you to save the best. The C905 now lets you use the flash when taking photo’s using BestPic. A new feature for the C905 is Smart Contrast, without getting too technical, this is where the camera will take an image, and combine with an under exposed and over exposed version of the same image to create the best possible photo. Another cool feature that the C905 has is support for DLNA which in simple terms allows you to playback your photos over a wireless network to any other DLNA enabled device such as TV’s or Laptops. The C905 has Face Detection, geo-tagging and supports panoramic photos.
See the Sony Ericsson C905 full specification.
The Sony Ericsson C905 is expected to be released towards the end of October for around £400.
All of these handsets seriously raise the bar when it comes to camera phones and all of them could easily replace your existing digital camera. If I had to choose just one of these handsets, then without doubt it would be the Sony Ericsson C905. The i8510 is an excellent phone, but if you don’t need all the bells and whistles and the extra functionality on it then the C905 will suit you perfectly. As anyone here will tell you, I’m an Apple fan, and rave constantly about my iPhone, but as much as I love it, the C905 is the one handset that would tempt me away from it – and not just for the camera. Its well built, the software on the phone works well and is the tried and tested Sony Ericsson menu system with a few extras. I’d miss the touch screen, but not for long as the ability to take excellent photo’s will easily compensate.
Sample photo’s will be available here soon.
Loading ...
Tags: 8 mega pixel, 8mp, blink detection, c905, cyber-shot, cybershot, face detection, i8510, lg, LG KC910, LG Renoir, Photo, pixon, renoir, samsung, Samsung i8510, Samsung Pixon, Sony Ericsson C905,
No Comments
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008
Here we go again! It looks like phone manufacturers just can’t keep their new handsets a secret any more! This time its the turn of LG to have one of their next handsets to be leaked to the world.
Rumours have it that this handset from the Korean manufacturer is going to become the KC 780, a slim slider with an 8 megapixel camera.
LG are about to launch the KC910 Renoir, a Touch screen handset with an 8 Megapixel Camera. Earmarked as the replacement for the popular LG Viewty, LG are hoping that the KC910 will take on the likes of the Samsung Tocco, Samsung Omnia and even Apple’s iPhone.
Specification of the KC780 is still unconfirmed, but if the rumours are true, the handset will feature:
- Quadband GSM, GPRS/EDGE connectivity
- 8 megapixel camera with autofocus, red eye reduction, face recognition
- 30fps video recording
- 140 MB of internal memory
- MicroSD memory card slot
- Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0
The KC780 has already passed FCC testing, which suggests an official announcement on this handset shouldn’t be too far away.
Loading ...
Monday, April 7th, 2008
This weekend I decided to take a break from my Nokia N82 and spend a little time with the LG KF600.
The KF600 is the latest handset from the Korean manufacturer and is trying to change the way that we use our phones with the introduction of its “InteractPad”.
The phone looks stylish, is a decent size and weight and feels well built. The one thing you notice immediately is the lack of keys on the front of the phone. The KF600 is a touch phone, but with a twist. Rather than having a large touch screen display that drains battery power, the screen has been split into two parts, the display and the InteractPad.
The InteractPad is a unique way of using your phone, from the standby screen you have 6 touch sensitive keys, and as you move through the different screens of the phone, these buttons move and adapt to suit the application you’re using. In some cases I found the InteractPad to be a bit awkward, but in other applications it works really well.
I tend to use my phone mainly for photo’s, music, email, internet and texting rather than making calls. The camera on the KF600 is a 3 megapixel and has an LED flash. Photo’s come out clear and pretty sharp, and if you print them out they will be of a decent quality at 6″ x 4″ size. The flash is ok for taking photo’s in low light close up, but if what you’re taking photo’s of is more than a metre away, it probably won’t be much use.
The KF600 works really well as an MP3 player. There’s a dedicated shortcut key on the side of the phone for quick access and I found it easy to transfer tracks to the phone using Bluetooth or the data cable and software that came with it. The music interface is probably the best use of the InteractPad, you have the usual play/pause, forward and rewind, as well as a track progress bar. Normally these just scroll along with no purpose, but with the interact pad you can simply drag the slider to get to the part of the track you want – great if you want to skip sections of podcasts.
Email and texting works well too. Predictive text meant writing messages is quick and easy, and setting up POP3 email was very straight forward. The only thing I found to be not so great here was the handwriting recognition. In theory it sounds great, but in reality, writing with the end of your finger just isn’t accurate enough, and for hardcore texters, you’ll be able to text using the keypad a lot faster.
Internet access on the KF600 is pretty standard, it runs off a GPRS connection, so a fairly slow connection, but if you just want to check the odd train time or find out what’s on at the cinema then it does the job with no problem at all.
Overall the KF600 is a good all round handset. It will take a little getting used to with the InteractPad, and for the first few days I can guarantee you’ll be touching the top half of the screen and wondering why nothing is happening, but give it a week and you’ll be flying through the menus, but once you’ve got used to the interact pad, you may struggle to go back to a conventional phone.
Good Points:
- MP3 Player
- User Interface
- Adjustable haptic feedback (vibrates on key press)
|
Bad Points
- Small Screen
- Have to remove battery to get to Memory Card
- Have to use adapter for 3.5mm headphones
|
Loading ...
Tags: battery, Bluetooth, kf600, lg, Nokia, phone, Photo, power, review, screen, software, sound, touch,
No Comments
Subscribe to feed
