The unlocked LG Optimus 3D has a dedicated 3D button which allows you to swap between using the handset in 2D and 3D at the touch of a button, so you get the best of both worlds.

How the 3D effect is actually achieved is through a clever bit of technology called the parallax barrier.  This barrier shows your left and right eye slightly different images, which in return provides a sharp and clear 3D image in all aspects of the phone; from games, to films and even the navigation screens.

SIM Free LG Optimus 3D

On top of all this the SIM Free LG Optimus 3D houses LG’s biggest screen, measuring an impressive 4.3 inches, with a WVGA resolution touchscreen.  The handset also has two 5MP cameras on the back which let you shoot images and videos in either 2 or 3D.  The cameras also record in HD quality starting at 720p for 3D images and reaching 1080p for 2D ones.

Sharing your images and videos with friends and family is easy too, with the LG Optimus 3D unlocked, as it has multiple connectivity choices, including HDMI output and DLNA, so you can watch your 3D images and videos on your 3D TV.

Being the first handset to combine a dual-core, dual-channel and dual-memory architecture the LG Optimus 3D takes, speed, integration and power to the next level.  An aspect of this can be seen with the handset being pre-loaded with a number of 3D games and having access to Youtube 3D, allowing you to upload your videos instantly and enjoy the 3D capacity of the handset to the full.

In order to help protect this forward thinking handset, there are a range of LG Optimus 3D accessories and LG Optimus 3D cases available.

Camera:
One of the original Viewty’s strongest features was it’s camera, and LG have taken this a step further and given the Viewty Smart an 8MP Camera, with Schneider-Kreuznach optics and have improved the camera interface. As well as Video recording, (including slow motion) the camera on the Viewty Smart has advanced features such as Intelligent shot, geo-tagging, image stabilization, multi face detection, smile detection, beauty shot and ISO 1600 (allows you to take photo’s in very low light environments.)

Size:
The original Viewty was a neat compact handset, but the Viewty Smart is even more compact. Overall height and width are about the same, but with the camera now flush against the back of the phone, making it feel a lot more than just 2mm thinner!

Menu System:
I was never a fan of the menu system on the Viewty, and was blown away by the improvement LG made when they introduced the S-Class interface onto the LG Arena last month. The great news is that LG have also put this great new interface on the Viewty Smart. It is a little similar to the appearance of the iPhone at first glance, but once you get your hands on it, you’ll soon realise that its actually very different. As well as being able to customise the home screen with widgets, you now have 4 different home screens, one for your widgets, one for contacts, one for your media (music & photos) and one for short cuts – all of them are customisable.

Screen:
Another big step forward on the Viewty Smart is the screen. Resolution has gone up from 240 x 400 pixels on the original Viewty to 480 x 800. The other big change is that the screen is now a capacitive touchscreen, this means that you no longer need to use a stylus to use the phone and can control everything with your finger.

The full list of improvements is quite long, so I’m not going to go through them all, but to give you an idea on what has changed, and what the differences are with the recently launched LG Arena, I’ve listed all the key features here.

Feature	LG Viewty	LG Viewty Smart	LG Arena
Size	103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8mm	108.9 x 56.1 x 12.4 mm	105.9 x 55.3 x 12 mm
Weight	112 g	102 g	105 g
Screen Size	240 x 400 pixels, 3 inches	480 x 800 pixels, 3 inches	480 x 800 pixels, 3 inches
Internal Memory	100 MB	1.5 GB	8 GB
Max Memory Card Size	Micro SD 2GB	Micro SDHC 16GB	Micro SDHC 16GB
3G	Upto 3.6 Mbps	Upto 7.2 Mbps	Upto 7.2 Mbps
Wi-Fi	No	Yes	Yes
Bluetooth	v1.2 with A2DP	v2.1 with A2DP	v2.1 with A2DP
Camera	5MP	8MP	5MP
Video Capture	VGA 30fps, QVGA up to 120fps	D1, VGA@30fps, QVGA, Time-lapse Slow-mo	D1, VGA@30fps, QVGA, Time-lapse Slow-mo
Video Formats	MPEG4/WMV/DivX	DivX/XviD/MPEG4	DivX/XviD/MPEG4
Music Formats	MP3, AAC	MP3/AAC/AAC+/WMA	MP3/AAC/AAC+/WMA
Document Formats	DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF	DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF	DOC, XLS, PPT, PDF
Radio	Stereo FM radio with RDS	FM Radio	FM Radio
GPS	No	Yes	Yes
TV-Out	Yes	Yes	Yes
Battery – Stand by	Up to 430 h	Up to 350 h	Up to 300 h
Battery – Talk Time	Up to 4 h	Up to 5 h 30 min	Up to 3 h 50 min
Battery – Music Playback	-	-	Up to 30 h
FM Transmitter	No	No	Yes
3.5mm socket	With Adapter	With Adapter	Yes
	Viewty Full Specs	Viewty Smart Full Specs	Arena Full Specs

The Viewty Smart is available to order now. If you’ve already got one, leave us a comment below to let us know what you think of it.

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.

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.

LG KC780

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.

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.