Well then, here i am writing my personal review of the LG KU990, better known as the LG viewty.
I purchased my LG KU990 last August with o2 on pay as you go. Great i thought, this phone is EVERYTHING i could ever wish for, great spec. camera, music player, funky looks and design.
The packaging of the Viewty is all very cleverly put together and has a reassuring quality about it, from the way the outer sleeve hides the small but perfectly formed box, which, ok call me sad, i found a joy to open. Upon opening the box, and seeing the pop-up near life size version of the Viewty, one is again met with the reassuring air of 'oh this is a quality product', and to be fair, on the whole i think that it is. Contained in the box is all the usual assortment of items you would expect to come with a phone these days, charger, headphones,
instruction manual and set up CD-ROM, again all nicely packaged into neat separate compartments within the outer box. Its a nice touch from LG not to have the typical array of small plastic shrinkwrapped bags containing such items, and almost a year on, i still have the box with all the pieces inside, all still in good condition.
So, getting my hands ON the actual phone, well, its chunky yet compact, stylish without having to 'shout about it'. With the battery in situe, it still remains lightweight, which is a plus because nobody would want a brick in their pockets these days! Now, my first fault with the phone is that it SEEMS to take ages to turn itself on, i can remember sat in anticipation watching the screen take what seemed like forever to change from the LG welcome screen to the neat little Red arrow graphics. Once up and running however, i found the VIEWTY to be a very good phone, taking a little bit of time to get used to the functions, such as texting, but trust me you do learn to cope without buttons!
The user interface is all simple enough to use, and i found it nice the way the home screen was simple and uncluttered with just 4 touch buttons at the bottom of the screen, as well as the two arrow graphics above, upon which touching brings up a simplified condensed version of the main menu, for quick access to essential items, such as the calendar function (a function i would be LOST without!).
After faffing about getting used to the touch screen, i decided to try out some of the main selling points of the phone, the main reason i bought the product being the 5Megapixel camera. This proves to be a VERY good part of the phone, although the results given in not too perfect lighting can be slightly disappointing. All of the camera functions are easy to use though, and on the Video mode, there is a rather nifty option to shoot footage in 120 frames per second, which i can tell you caused hours of amusement! Sliding the function button down once more takes you to the 'gallery' menu, allowing you to view all your photos and videos. This can be awkward at times, for example if you exceed a certain number of images then the function refuses to work. In addition i found it quite slow at scrolling between images, not so good when you're looking for that lost snap of last friday night in a hurry to show friends one morning!
Moving on, to another reason i bought the phone. The music player. OH NO...what a disappointment i found this :( I do enjoy my music and find that it has to be listened in the best sound quality. the headphones supplied i found do not give a good level of sound, and the fact that there is no equalizer on the phone means that songs can sound a bit flat tonally. Even when using my more expensive 'X-tra Bass' headphones, i found the sound quality to be of a poor standard, not what i expected from something i had paid a premium price for.
The set up disc for the computer was intreguing. Not what i expected....the disk is more mini disc sized than compact disc sized, and this quirky little addition made me smile. I presume this is LG's answer to being environmentally friendly as i can see no reason for the disc being that small other than for ease of packaging? But, a good idea i felt as it contained all the correct information for setting up on the computer.......HOWEVER i must admit, i changed the phone mode to Mass Storage Device, and just take all pictures/add music onto the memory card by dragging and dropping from the source into the destination folder using My Computer, this i found much quicker than having to wait around for the LG system to load up, and being honest, i found it a little too complicated, and also INFURIATINGLY slow.
Writing messages on the Viewty is actually easier than i anticipated, although like i say it does take some getting used to. LG have included a vibrate mode for when a button has been touched on the screen, to simulate the ACTUAL touch of a button, and this works well, and there are settings to determine the ferocity of the vibration, from no vibration up to a full on whole hand vibration mode!
i guess i'll draw this to a close! well done for getting this far.
Overall i do think the Viewty is a good phone, great camera and nice interface etc. BUT pleaassse sort the disappointing music player out LG.
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