LG GC900 Viewty Smart (sometimes also called Viewty 2) is making a run for it as the next LG flagship. What can we say, when you're blue-blooded, some things come au naturel - the snappy and quite thumbable S-Class UI, the 8 megapixel camera, Wi-Fi and GPS all hide behind a 3-inch touchscreen lodged into a body that's only 12.4mm thick. We don't know about you, but by our books all that gadgetness calls for a proper inspection.
As rumors have it, the LG Viewty Smart is set to start its European tour as early as May or June, despite the fact that it has only been officially announced two weeks ago. Well, it's true, LG did tease us with a prototype back at the MWC 2009 in February, but it's only now that we get to hold it in our hands and see it in good working order. And pleased we are...
LG Viewty Smart official photos
LG GC900 Viewty Smart at a glance
- General: GSM 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, UMTS 900/2100, HSDPA 7.2 Mbps, EDGE class 12
- Dimensions: 108.9 x 56.1 x 12.4 mm, 102 g
- Display: 3" 16M-color capacitive touchscreen TFT of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
- Memory: 1.5GB flash storage, microSD card slot (up to 16GB)
- User interface: S-Class Touch UI
- Still camera: 8 megapixel autofocus camera, Schneider-Kreuznach optics, LED flash, manual focus, geo-tagging, image stabilization, multi face detection (up to 3), smile detection
- Video recording: 720x480@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
- Connectivity: Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP, Wi-Fi, TV-out, USB port, GPS receiver with A-GPS
- Misc: Accelerometer for screen auto rotate, Multi-touch input, DivX/XviD support, Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement, FM radio, office document viewer
- Battery: Li-Ion 1000 mAh
- Retail price: N/A
The LG GC900 Viewty Smart unit we received is still a pre-production one, but well functioning one - we've seen enough to tell. But still, we don't deem it ready for a full review, so instead we've prepared the following quick preview to give you some live scoop of what the Viewty 2 is all about.
LG GC900 Viewty Smart at ours
Unfortunately, the Viewty Smart name is a bit misleading. The Viewty 2 is a smart handset indeed but only design-wise. From the inside, it's not a smartphone or anything, no matter how much we would have liked that. Instead it's a regular full touch feature phone, but one with a really polished UI and top-notch imaging capabilities.
LG Viewty Smart finally in our hands
LG GC900 Viewty Smart 360-degree spin
The LG GC900 Viewty Smart has a pleasant design with an almost all black front and a silvery brushed metal back. The back panels are in fact plastic but they have the stylish faux brushed metal finish that's so trendy these days.
A version with an all-silvery design will also be available, but the one we got (and the one that's probably going to be available to Orange) has the black/silver combo.
The usual suspects
The Viewty 2 measures 108.9 x 56.1 x 12.4 mm, which makes it almost a millimeter larger in all directions than the LG Arena. The Viewty Smart, of course, has a higher-res camera, but has lost the 3.5mm standard audio jack and the FM transmitter. Perhaps a 3.5mm adapter will be available on the headset supplied with the retail package.
The heritage of the now elderly LG KU990 Viewty doesn't seem as obvious on the comparative shots. You can hardly tell that the elegant Viewty Smart is the successor of the thick and boxy Viewty 1.
LG GC900 Viewty compared to the original LG KU990 Viewty
We couldn't help but snap a few comparative shots of the Viewty Smart with some other, more recent full touch handsets. Almost all of them are either larger or thicker when compared to it.
LG Viewty Smart compared to LG Renoir, Apple iPhone 3G and Omnia HD
Design and construction
The LG GC900 Viewty Smart front panel is all about the 3" 16M color capacitive touchscreen display. Even though it uses the TFT technology as opposed to the AMOLED one on latest Samsung handsets it still provides excellent picture quality. The brightness and contrast levels are top-notch, comparable to the best examples in the class. Sunlight legibility however again suffers from the mirror-like finish as on a number of other LG phones.
The front panel is dominated by the large 3" capacitive touchscreen display
At the top of the Viewty Smart front panel is earpiece, the video call camera and the ambient light sensor used for automatically controlling the screen brightness.
Unfortunately, the regular receiver keys at the bottom are gone in favor of a large Back key that goes from side to side. It's actually only the central part of the button strip that can be pressed and it hardly provides an adequate press feedback. But we should remember that's a pre-production unit we are talking about here.
The large Back key at the bottom is symmetrically recreated at the top as well
The right side of LG Viewty 2 features the LG proprietary connectivity hidden under a protective cap. The port is used for connecting a charger, a USB cable, headphones or a TV-out cable.
As we already mentioned, the Viewty Smart lacks the 3.5 mm audio jack that the LG Arena has, so the connectivity port here is where the headset plugs in.
The right-hand side also hosts the volume rocker and the camera shutter key. For some unexplainable reason, the camera key launches the camera only if you have the phone on the standby screen. Pressing it while you are digging through the menus, won't do a thing.
The left side accommodates the USB port, the volume rocker and the camera key
On the left-hand side of the Viewty Smart are the microSD card slot (cards up to 16GB) and the Cube launcher key. The Cube is a spectacular 3D element of the S-class user interface that represents the four available homescreens as four sides of a on-screen 3D Cube.
The microSD card slot and the Cube launcher key at the right side
The bottom part of the LG Viewty Smart is perfectly plain, featuring no controls whatsoever, but the top hosts the On/Off key, which quite comfortably now also doubles as a lock key for the screen.
Bottom side is pretty bare • the On/Off key is also used to toggle the device in and out of Standby mode
The back side of the LG GC900 Viewty Smart hosts the 8 megapixel camera and its Power LED flash. The lens doesn't have any protection at all but is sufficiently lower than the surrounding surface so that it doesn't get scratched when you put the phone on a flat surface.
As we already pointed out, the back of the Viewty Smart looks quite the part with its brushed metallic finish, however in reality it's all plastic.
The LG GC900 Viewty Smart back panel is all plastic despite the deceptive metallic look
Viewty Smart comes with S-Class user interface
We've already put the LG S-class user interface through its paces back in our LG Arena review and we are pleased with the snappiness and visuals of the new thumbable UI. The LG Viewty Smart runs the same S-class thing and is identical to what we saw on the Arena.
LG has got it quite right and the visuals of the new interface are spectacular - everything from homescreen to dropdown menus rolls, sweeps in, unfolds and revolves extra smoothly with a responsiveness that implies some heavy graphics acceleration.
There are four homescreens and they break down the homescreen UI to four easily manageable chunks: widgets, contacts, shortcuts and multimedia.
No matter which homescreen you choose the UI never skimps on eye candy - smooth animations, reflections, 3D spatial effects, motion blurring - it's all there for your viewing pleasure.
The four homescreens - Shortcuts, Widgets, Contacts and Multimedia
Not very practical, but surely eye catching interface feature is the Cube. The Cube is an interactive 3D element that has the four aforementioned homescreens as its sides. Selecting a side, zooms it in nice and smoothly until it fills the screen.
To start the Cube interface, you only need to press on the dedicated left side key.
The sides of the cube are the homescreens
The Viewty Smart main menu is accessible via the dedicated shortcut on the home screen. It has an unusual layout of four rows of menu items, which are scrollable horizontally. That way almost all menu items are accessible simultaneously without jumping from tab to tab.
Even better, if you turn the phone sideways, the menu items are all visualized with smaller icons fitting the screen perfectly with no need for scrolling (but with no text labels as well).
The Viewty Smart main menu in portrait and landscape mode
LG Viewty Smart again has a multitasking menu (a basic task manager). The active apps are signified by the respective icon bouncing up and down in smooth animation. To start the multitasking menu, you need to keep the Cube launcher key pressed for a little longer.
Pressing and holding the Cube key launches the multitasking menu
Inputting text is easy on the fingers
Quite naturally, the LG GC900 Viewty Smart offers an onscreen alphanumeric keypad in portrait orientation and a landscape QWERTY thumboard. The QWERTY keys are smallish but each symbol you tap is clearly marked by iPhone-style pop-ups.
Truth be told we got used to typing on the QWERTY keyboard quite fast despite the general criticism by many users. More than often it's even more accurate than the iPhone
one when used on a daily basis.
The alphanumeric and QWERTY keyboards
Moving your cursor through the text is also a breeze. You can either tap on place of the screen where you want your cursor, or if you need more precision, a longer press over the cursor activates a virtual loupe that allows you to move it around more accurately character by character (think iPhone style).
Copying and pasting is always available.
Gallery is impressively 3D all the way
LG Viewty Smart offers two gallery modes depending on the handset's orientation. In portrait mode images and videos are displayed in a grid while in landscape mode one image is displayed in the center and two more by its side in an impressive 3D spatial view.
The S-class 3D gallery
The Viewty 2 also supports multi-touch, so you can zoom in images with the pinching gesture well known from Apple's handset. A note is due here though, LG have still not got the fluidity of the pinch zooming as far as Apple.
Dolby enhanced music playback is just fine
The LG Viewty Smart music player is accessible both from the Cube interface as well as from the main menu. The homescreen music player is rather basic but it does the job of quick access to the playing music.
The tracks are displayed on a rotating reel and get visualized with their album artwork "printed" on virtual vinyl records.
The simpler one of the two music players aboard in on the homescreen
The full-featured music player sits in the main menu. You can sort tracks by artist, album, genre and your rating. The current track's artwork, name, album and artist are displayed in the screen's center while the next and previous track are visible at the top and bottom of the screen.
The main music player is excellent
There are tons of equalizer presets (all non-customizable, though). Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement is among them. With Dolby Mobile selected the sound gets more spacious and richer - it's best perceived on headphones.
Video player is a letdown
The LG Viewty Smart comes with a relatively large touch screen (especially for a device of that size) measuring good 3". That, along with the DivX/XviD video support turns it into a potentially excellent portable video player - especially considering the good track record. The LG Renoir, for instance, managed to play every desktop XViD/DivX video we threw at it.
Unfortunately, that's not the case with LG Arena or LG Viewty Smart as it turned out. The only DivX videos we managed to play where those converted through the DivX converter on the supplied CD and they have a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 pixels (QVGA).
Unlike the LG Renoir, with the LG Viewty Smart the Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement can be turned on during video playback as well.
8 megapixels still sound exciting on a mobile phone
The Viewty Smart comes with the revamped camera interface seen on the updated LG KC910i Renoir and the LG Arena. Access to all the camera settings is via the left taskbar in the viewfinder. There you get virtual buttons for Scene mode, exposure compensation, flash, focus mode (auto/macro) and advanced settings. This left task bar hides automatically (or manually if you set it up) and is brought back as an overlay when you tap on the screen.
Viewfinder and still camera settings screenshots.
The Viewty 2 Advanced settings camera menu is a clever rotating dial (digicam style) with the available options for each setting displayed as a list on the right. The interface is very handy, neat and usable.
There's another bar on the right hand-side of the screen. It offers a virtual shutter key plus exit and gallery buttons. This bar is fixed and is not a overlay of the viewfinder - instead it's permanently laced there to get around the wide aspect ratio of the LG Viewty 2 screen.
Compared to the LG Arena viewfinder interface, there are some new features, while some features such as Touch focus are not available.
The new stuff about the interface is that now there's a way to switch
between still camera and camcorder straight from the viewfinder itself using the virtual shutter key. Back on the Arena you had to exit the still camera and only then start the camcorder - weird, we know.The second new thing is the manual focus that lacked as an option on the LG Arena. Much like on the LG Renoir, it's operated by dragging a virtual slider on screen.
Then there's the auto rotation of the interface itself. Thanks to the accelerometer, you can have it in either portrait or landscape mode - and it's all automatic. But it only works for the still camera interface, the camcorder one does not rotate.
Portrait and landscape still camera viewfinder
And finally, there's the new Intelligent shot mode, which picks the best scene preset according to the shooting conditions and the subject. It's the first time that we see a feature like that implemented on a mobile phone.
Intelligent shot preset scene mode and its viewfinder showing the currently determined best scene preset
Our beta unit of LG Viewty Smart produces photos with good resolution and correct, pleasant colors. The only complaint we have about the image quality is that the noise reduction routines are not tuned yet and sometimes they just blur the fine details. This of course should be fixed in the final version and we expect the image quality to be at least on par with LG Renoir.
LG Viewty Smart camera samples - full resolution
LG Viewty Smart camera samples - downsampled to 1024x768 pixels
Getting to grips with video recording
The LG GC900 Viewty Smart is capable of capturing video of up to D1 (720x480) resolution at 30 fps. Overall video recording quality is average. The level of detail could have been much better, it looks like the allocated bitrate is insufficient - we could live with bigger video files, if this means less compression artifacts.
Camcorder viewfinder • choosing recording mode • picking video resolution
The outdated 3GP video format used both by the LG Arena and the Viewty Smart didn't earn our appreciation either. The LG Renoir, for instance, used the superior AVI file format with DivX encoding.
Slow-motion QVGA clips shot at 120 fps can also be captured by the LG Viewty 2 and the device also offers time-lapse videos (otherwise known as Fast videos).
With the right subjects those shoot modes can be quite fun. Unfortunately, the output videos are still limited to QVGA resolution. The Samsung S8300 UltraTOUCH for example already shoots fast motion videos at VGA resolution with enviable quality.
Final words
The Viewty Smart has a gorgeous display and a best-of-class user interface. But we've already seen that stuff on the LG Arena so our brief experience with the Viewty was hardly a revelation.
Instead of bringing any revolutionary upgrades, the LG Viewty Smart is there to simply expand the LG S-class portfolio in a camera-centric direction. The LG Arena has quite a nice camera as well, but a 5 megapixel sensor is no longer flagship stuff these days.
Since the LG Viewty Smart retains almost the same compact dimensions as the LG Arena, fitting the bigger camera module, called for a certain downgrade of the other features. In this case, it was obviously the 3.5mm audio jack and the FM transmitter that got axed.
Still, the LG GC900 Viewty Smart certainly has the potential of becoming a bestseller and we really hope to see more of it, once it gets to the final production stage.
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