LG GC900 Viewty Smart review

LG’s Viewty Smart follows on from the popular Viewty, with an 8-megapixel camera and a high-resolution 800×480 touchscreen.

It uses the same underlying interface as LG’s GT505, but with four main screens that you can personalise with apps, widgets, contacts and photos. A button on the left side shrinks these screens to a cube for faster switching, as scrolling through them by swiping your finger across the screen is hit and miss.

There aren’t many installed apps, so you’ll probably want to find some more. There are websites that specialise in Java apps, and most social networking sites have their own mobile version. We successfully downloaded and installed a Facebook app from www.getjar.com, and the process was relatively painless.

We loved the Viewty Smart’s high-resolution screen, which was bright and vibrant. Its touch sensitivity wasn’t perfect, but was better than that of other phones we’ve tested. Scrolling through Google Maps was quick and smooth, for example. Support for DivX movies and the inclusion of Dolby Mobile make it ideal for watching movies. The only downside is the proprietary headphone/charging socket, but LG provides a 3.5mm adaptor with remote control.

Despite its 8-megapixel sensor, the camera is a disappointment. Colours were unnatural, and there was more noise in our low-light test than on cameras with 2-megapixel sensors. Fine detail was lost in dark areas, and JPEG compression artefacts were evident. On the plus side, its battery life in our light-use tests was the best in the group at well over 40 hours.

You can add email accounts from webmail services or Exchange, but you can’t synchronise your contacts and calendar automatically with online services, which makes the Viewty Smart seem less smart than the competition. It’s still a good-looking phone with great multimedia capabilities, and a much better-value Java phone than the GT505, but Samsung’s J??©t is a better buy.