LG KC910 Renoir Review-LG camera on a phone

LG is the third phone maker that released 8MP cameraphone, right after Sony Ericsson and Samsung. The LG KC910 Renoir is taken as the rival to Sony Ericsson C905 and Samsung M8800 Pixon which is also provides 8MP camera on their phone. And to be differentiating it from other 8-megapixellers, LG claim it is the slimmest one on the market. However, I don’t think a 1-3mm thickness will affects people to buy it, but the features will. So let’s go through this review to see what lies beneath LG KC910 Renoir.

Design
The LG KC910 Renoir is measures 107.8 x 55.9 x 14 mm and the weight of 114 g. Maybe it is true that LG KC910 Renoir was once to be the thickest 8MP cameraphone on the market. But this record has been break by the released of Samsung M8800 Pixon which with the thickness of 1.8mm. But I think 0.02mm thickness is nothing to worry about.

Like other huge touchscreen phones, the design of LG Renoir has no surprising-the 3.0 inches TFT touchscreen on the front with the 3 button for calling and accessing application shortcuts. beneath it. The screen resolution is 240 x 400 pixels and can display 256K colors, which we’ve found sharp and colourful and extremely easy to use. And above the screen host the video calls camera and the earpiece. The rear of the phone houses the Schneider-Kreuznach camera lens and Xenon flash which has a mechanical lens cover on it. There is a button on the right-hand side of the phone dedicated to shutter release, and you can also use the up and down scroll buttons on the same side to zoom.

Camera
As expected on the high resolution phone’s camera, it is features autofocus, macro mode, face detection, Digital image stabilizer, Xenon flash and the ISO stretches from 100 to 1600. There is no optical zoom here but you still can go digital zoom up to 16x. With the assistance of A-GPS, a geotag image is allowed. What I surprising is I can click the shutter using a button on the earphone cable. This is help a lot in taking shake-free photos. The photo quality is very, very good. The photo that taken is clear and sharp, but still can’t make a perfect shoot in a low indoor light condition.

As for video file formats, the phone shoots VGA video at 30fps, QVGA at 120fps. These videos can be played back on the large touchscreen available on the phone or they can be played through the aforementioned TV output feature.

Music and Video
The Renoir also comes with a multimedia player that supporting MP3 and AAC music formats and MP4, DivX and XviD video formats. In order to boost the mp3-playing capabilities, the phone comes with Dolby sound support which is making the music quality even better. Beside of that, LG Renoir also allows you to listen to the radio station through a built-in FM radio. What turn the Renoir down LG had not bothered to build a 3.5mm headset jack into the handset. It is a big disappointment for a music lover, like me.

Connectivity
Access to the internet is practically mandatory on a cell phone these days. So LG included the built-in Wi-Fi and HSDPA 7.2 Mbps in KC910 Renoir. And the EDGE and GPRS is also present as a handy back-up for browsing in areas where 3G network is missing. To connect to other devices, USB and Bluetooth is your selection. What all these mean is that connectivity for this phone is going to be really high.

GPS Surpport
LG Renoir also supports GPS system, except to do geotagging of photographs, there is also an applet called Jogging Buddy which takes advantage of A-GPS to track your distance travelled and will also monitor time and record calories burned.

Conclusion
In final words, the LG KC910 Renoir really dose it job to become a dedicated cameraphone. However, it is still isn’t up to what you’d get from an 8-megapixel dedicated digicam. Furthermore, there is still having other excellent 8-megapixellers on the market right now, though they are not too much. The LG KC 910 Renoir’s camera was decent, but not much better than the competition.

Click to view the specification and video review of LG KC910 Renoir