Product Face-Offs
| Specifications | |||
| Camera sensor | 8 megapixels | ||
| Weight | 102 g | ||
| Dimensions (mm) | 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm | ||
| Talk Time | 5h | ||
| Standby Time | 350h | ||
 See all specifications | |||
| Internal memory | 1.5 GB |
| Memory Card | microSD 32 GB |
| SAR Level | 0.974 W/kg |
 Hide specifications | |
Updated: August 26, 2009 - Test date: July 30, 2009
Slightly on the sensitive side, the voice quality is good, as long as the volume is not up too high.
Although the keyboard is imprecise for entering text, dialing a number is fine.
You can list your contacts so as to access your favourites directly from one of the available virtual panels. You can attach a photo to the contact listing. Once you’ve selected the contact, you can call, send a text or modify the contact information.
Direct access then – a practical thing – with additional information accessible by clicking on the network status bar, at the top on the left hand side of the screen. A rolling menu allows you to turn on Wi-Fi or Bluetooth and see if you have any messages.
With its attention grabbing phones, sometimes chic and paired down and sometimes tending towards bling, LG has forged a rep for designs: whether you like them or not, LG takes a good deal of care when it comes to the look of its phones. Following in the steps of the Shine or the Chocolate, the Viewty Smart is no exception: with an ultra-thin casing in brushed aluminium and a bare front (no flashy buttons), this is a very elegant phone.
Practical, easily accessible and yet discrete, the button that gives access to the main menu is positionned just under the screen and above the casing. From the back, like the LG Renoir but thinner, you might easily mistake it for a digital camera. It's well finished and fits into your pocket without any problem.
A word on the quality of the screen. It has good definition and colours are generally fine, but it doesn’t match up to what you get from the AMOLED screens on Samsung’s most recent top-end devices (Jet, Galaxy, Player HD) Moreover in full sunlight, it is very hard to read, a fault that unfortunately isn’t unique to the Viewty Smart.
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Korean trio: Samsung Galaxy, LG Viewty Smart, Samsung Jet
The Viewty Smart on the Samsung Jet
When it comes to the look of the phone everything depends on your tastes, but on the practical side, is it better to go for the Arena, that came out several months ago, or this new Viewty Smart? Using the same closed OS – which means that this phone is not in the smartphone category but rather the multimedia one as you cannot add applications – and with a nice new interface, known as the S-Class 3D, the two phones are not greatly different. We refer you to the Arena test to get more info on the interface.
The 3D cube: practical but you can’t always personalise each face
The difference comes rather in responsiveness and here, the Viewty Smart is a little faster than the Arena that sometimes suffers the odd slowdown. Even just the time needed to switch it on is a nice surprise: in 20 seconds, your phone is operational (the Toshiba TG01 takes more than a minute and the Samsung Jet, 23 seconds ).
There is however no change when it comes to the virtual keyboard: it lacks precision and even if you manage to overcome this or rather adapt yourself to it, it is nowhere near as comfortable as the iPhone or even the Samsung Jet.
Better adapted to the internet than the Arena?
On testing the Arena, we saw that the internet experience was not really convincing enough to make us want to use it regularly. Unfortunately there hasn’t been any improvement with the Viewty Smart: the zoom feature, which nevertheless uses multitouch functionality, is no better (see the video above) and the page display still just as slow.
Focussing is fast overall, although it does struggle at times. The camera gives quite a few options such as intelligent shoot (analyses the environment so as to better reproduce it), or face detection (sometimes capricious). In optimal lighting conditions, it delivers nice results, even if the photos lack a little sharpness and contrast. Management of electronic noise is slightly disappointing. It does however give better results than the LG Renoir, that has an equivalent sensor but not as good as the Samsung Jet, that is only at 5 Mpixels. Take a look at the face-off to see for yourself.
Video (resolution: 720 x 480 px, 3GP recording) gives good results for a mobile phone.
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When it comes to watching films, the Viewty Smart is like the Arena: while the Renoir didn’t need a conversion tool, the Arena and the Viewty Smart do. Again, this is a real shame.
As an audio player, the Viewty Smart is pretty standard: you should replace the headphones as soon as possible; the sound is ok, up to standard for the mobile phone category. The interface is still not as conducive as it could be to listening to music and the audio out is not standard: to change your headphones, you’ll need to fix it to the hands-free kit adaptor. Also the Viewty Smart does not have an FM transmitter, unlike the Arena, but it does still have an FM receiver (that you can listen to over the headphones).
The device has a GPS but is not supplied with GPS software. Check with O2 or Orange for their navigation software.
Battery life with the Viewty Smart was good and we didn’t need to recharge it until well through the second day.
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Minimalist design / Finish
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Nice interface and good navigation in menus
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Photo options
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High video playing quality
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No standard audio out / miniUSB
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Poor internet navigation
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Doesn’t play DivX
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Sound and video recording
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No FM transmitter
