LG's KC 910, nicknamed Renoir, follows hot on the heels of the best-selling Viewty from the same manufacturer

Mirroring the development of dedicated digital cameras, mobile phones seem to have sensors capable of capturing more and more Megapixels: after a wave of 5 Mp phones, the Renoir joins a growing band of 8 Mp phones.

Nevertheless, it seems unlikely that a cameraphone will ever be able to compete with a 'real' camera, even if it does match it pixel for pixel.

Fortunately for LG, the Renoir has plenty of other functions alongside its 8 Mp camera that might help convince you to ditch your regular compact.

It comes with a large touch screen and plenty of photo options are arguably as complete as those found on a good compact digital camera.

Alongside these features, there are WiFi, HSDPA and Bluetooth connections, a GPS chip, a multimedia player and 8 GB of storage.

Shiny!

The Renoir has an incredibly glossy screen, and you can easily see your face in it when it's switched off.

The usual downside of so much shininess is that it's very easy to get greasy finger marks on it, and that's very true here. 

There's not a lot around the outside of the phone, with just three buttons on the front underneath the screen: a green and a red button for answering and rejecting calls, and a shortcut button to show a list of the applications you're currently running.

On the back, a sleek slate gray panel reminds me of a hologram, picking up different reflections depending on the ambient light.

In general, the Renoir is a solid phone; easy on the eye and well turned out with quality materials, our only criticism would be that all the plastic looks a little cheap.

If we're being picky about appearances, the lens cover is a little bulky too.

Shortcut buttons along the side of the phone give direct access to several useful functions like volume settings and locking the touchscreen to avoid unwanted gestures.

Unfortunately, the headphone jack is proprietary, but LG do provide an adaptor so you can use it with headphones that connect to regular 3.5 mm mini jacks.

This plugs into the same place as the charger though, so you can't listen to music while the phone is charging.


As well as using your fingers to control the touchscreen, you can also use a small stylus which comes in a pouch which is attached to the Renoir by a length of string--it's visible in the photos above.

It's a fairly useless addition, though, as we could use all of the features we tried without getting the stylus out, and the extra bulk of the pouch is a pain when it could just as easily be stashed in the side of the phone--or done away with altogether.

Interface: Widget-tastic

The version we tested was running an interface supplied by Orange France that was hardly the most attractive we've ever seen, although the menus are easy enough to understand when you first get hold of it.

Following the current trend, the home screen is dominated by a series of widgets which provide up-to-date information like a weather report or the number of unread messages you have.

Installing them is easy enough, as all you need to do is drag the ones you want out of a folder onto your home screen.

However, the selection offered on the version we tested was rather limited, which is a shame: if widgets are really going to take off, there needs to be a good choice for users.

But Is It As Good As A Real Compactt?

The $64, 000 question with cameraphones like the Renoir is whether or not they stand up to a comparison with regular digital cameras with a similar spec, and the answer has to be 'no'.

It's a different story when you compare it to its direct competitors, though, where it does very well indeed.

For instance, we were very impressed by the number of features available via the easy-to-use touchscreen interface, which is not far removed from a real compact.

Image stabilization is turned on by default, but after that you can choose speeds of up to 1600 ISO, face detection, smile detection and a whole series of special modes like anti-redeye.

Everything is intuitive and using the camera is no harder than any of the phone's other applications.
Another point in the Renoir's favor is its autofocus, which is both quick and reliable.

Once you've taken your photos, a built-in piece of software allows for basic retouching.

It's easy to use and offers some fun features like producing black and white photos.

Looking back at the photos isn't difficult, and a neat interface allows you to scroll from one photo to the next as if they were on a roll of film.

More irritatingly, though, you sometimes have to wait a few seconds before photos and videos are opened.

Photos are usual good quality, especially in daylight.

Our test shots showed plenty of detail, and accurate colors, even if some shades lack a little precision.

The 16x digital zoom is useful but it can't work wonders.


Image Problem

Let's have a quick look at some of the more disappointing elements of the Renoir's camera.

Activating the camera is pretty quick, but you have to wait a shade too long in between one photo and the next for our liking.

The delay that occurs when releasing the shutter also has a detrimental effect when you're trying to photograph difficult subjects.

When you're inside, in poor light conditions, the Renoir reaches its limits.

Images rapidly become engulfed by noise, despite the best efforts of the flash to add some light to the stituaiton.

White balancing is not accurate enough, and a lack of detail in dark areas combined with too much contrast combine to give blurry photos.

Like most of the phone in its class, the Renoir can record video, too.

The images are of decent quality, but the microphone is designed primarily for making calls, rather than shooting film clips, so voices of people more than a few meters a way are distorted.

While it is technically possible to connect the Renoir to your TV to look at your photos and videos, but you'll need to buy a proprietary cable from LG, who don't supply one with the phone, disappointingly.

Communication

Thanks to its good reception, using the Renoir for callings and SMS is great.

Writing text messages using its virtual keyboard certainly takes some getting used to, and certainly isn't as easy as it is on either the iPhone or a Blackbery.

The Renoir doesn't provide push e-mail, either, although it is possible to simulate the functionality by having it check your inbox every few minutes--just expect to pay for it with your data plan.

Surfing the web isn't exactly a treat either: the browser works, and you can find what you're looking for, but the interface could do with a few tweaks.

For instance, the zoom function, which provides a slider to zoom in on certain parts of the page works well but is just too slow; the more browsing we did with the Renoir, the more annoying this became.

On the other hand, it does support Flash, and you can open Word, Excel and PDF files as attachments to your e-mail.

We were also pleased to see the introduction of a very simple feature that plenty of other manufacturers would do well to follow: a voice memo recorder.  

It's a very basic idea, but very effective.

And Finally

All of this functionality has a negative impact on battery life, as with just nine hours of playback time for audio and just two days of average use (calls, SMS, WiFi …), it's going to need a lot of recharging.

We weren't able to test the Renoir's GPS functions as they require the support of an additional subscription with your network that wasn't available from Orange France.