LG GC900 Viewty Smart S-class act

LG GC900 Viewty Smart S-class act - There goes the next of them exciting imaging gadgets waiting to be put in play. We've got a bit of catching up with the LG Viewty Smart to do since our first rendezvous. But let's quickly review the basics. Whether you call it an LG Arena with a beefier camera or a Viewty on S-Class, we guess we're happy either way. Oh, you can also call it Viewty2, while we go on and check if it's 2 good 2 miss.

Sweet waistline and slick packaging, the Viewty Smart carries quite an impressive feature set including a 3" capacitive touchscreen, 8 megapixel autofocus camera with loads of options and the high-flying S-Class Touch UI. The Viewty is not smartphone kind of smart but the inspired interface and the sharp gadgety looks do give its name some credence.

LG GC900 Viewty Smart key features

3" 16M-color capacitive TFT touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
S-Class Touch UI
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE support
3G with HSDPA (7.2 Mbps)
Wi-Fi and GPS receiver with A-GPS
8 megapixel autofocus camera, Schneider-Kreuznach optics, LED flash, manual focus, geotagging, image stabilization, multi face detection (up to 3), smile detection
D1 (720x480 pixels)@30fps, VGA@30fps, QVGA time-lapse and slow-mo video recording
1.5GB flash storage, microSD card slot (up to 32GB)
Hot-swappable microSD card slot
USB Mass Storage, TV out
Bluetooth 2.1 with A2DP
Accelerometer for screen auto rotate
Multi-touch input
DivX and XviD support
FM radio with RDS
Dolby for Mobile audio enhancement
Office document viewer
Smart dialing

Main disadvantages:

Poor screen sunlight legibility
Below average image quality
No voice-guided GPS navigation software available
No standard USB port and no inbuilt 3.5mm audio jack
Records video in 3GP format
Email attachment size limit is 1MB only (both ways)
Limited DivX/XviD video support
All-plastic build

LG GC900 is not just another cameraphone but one worthy of bearing the name of the original Viewty. For a bit of household drama, the Viewty Smart will be rightfully expected to outdo another strong performer like the Renoir. And to make the family tree even more intricate, comparison with the Arena will be inevitable. That said, the Viewty Smart sure has style and quality of its own. The feel and looks, the upgrades and the performance sound like a good enough reason for a proper in-depth review.