| LG's Renoir, the latest iPhone-esque masterpiece? |
|
| by Alex Zaharov-Reutt | |
| Wednesday, 03 December 2008 | |
|
Page 1 of 3       
LG’s upgrade to the Viewty is here, packing an 8 megapixel camera with a Xenon lens, the newly popular “widgets” interface that lets you customise what the home screen of the Renoir looks like (as per the Samsung Omnia) and even DivX/XviD playback of video files, amongst a host of other features. Carli Wilson, LG’s Marketing Manager of Mobile Communications said: “Renoir is much more than a camera phone. It provides experiences through sight, sound and touch, combining a unique array of features including a full 3.0-inch touchscreen interface, Dolby Mobile for Music and built-in support for Wi-Fi and A-GPS.” “The name Renoir conveys the phone’s personality and level of multimedia sophistication. Like its namesake painter, who created an entirely new style of painting with impressionism, we believe we have created something unique with our new Renoir handset,” said Wilson. Promising “super-sharp stand alone digital camera quality”, purists will always argue that a stand alone camera is better (and will come with a larger sensor) but reviews online suggest that camera quality is indeed sweet, although the Xenon flash could have been made brighter for better night time shots. The camera is definitely advanced, capable of face, smile and even blink detection, which furthers the trend for smartphone cameras to truly have the advanced features most of today’s stand alone cameras offer. More of what the Renoir’s camera can do is on page 2. At 14mm thick it’s also “one of the slimmest 8 megapixel camera smartphones” in the world, with slim definitely being in when it comes to the gadgets we all love. In addition to photos, videos can also be recorded, whether at 30fps or at 120fps for that “super slow mo” effect, and both can be edited using a built-in photo/video editor that even allows video clips to be merged together and all done on phone. As LG doesn’t offer an App Store as with the iPhone or G1 gPhone, there aren’t tens of thousands of programs ready to download, although as Java is included you’d presumably still be able to get apps like Gmail and games. I’m yet to receive a review model (which will arrive next week) so I’ll find out, but as I read elsewhere it will be interesting when LG takes on something like Google’s Android platform. That said, the included widgets and functionality of the cutely named Renoir will keep most people satisfied and ensures what is included is, according to LG, “both intuitive and easily customizable, providing the perfect canvas for multimedia experiences.” Another feature is Dolby Mobile for music, giving audio an extra oomph, but it’s a shame that the Renoir, like the Samsung Omnia, does not come with a standard 3.5mm headphone socket, relying instead on its own adaptor. One day ALL phone companies will realise 3.5mm is what consumers want, and will give it to them. Also, while the Renoir only comes with 100MB of built-in memory, it can take an 8GB microSD card. Why LG didn’t allow it to take 16GB cards is unknown, it seems an oversight that might be fixed in a future firmware update, or maybe it can take 16GB cards anyway – once again I’ll find out when one arrives for review. So, what are the rest of those many features, what does it cost, and what’s one surprising caveat for consumers who buy a Renoir from Vodafone, as opposed to Optus or Three Mobile? Please read on to page 2. |
| < Next story in category | Previous story in the category > |
|---|
