Right now, challenging the iPhone for touch-screen supremacy seemingly rests entirely on the shoulders of LG’s Viewty KU990.
On paper, this flagship handset’s features spank the Jesus Machine into next week and beyond but can it match its rival’s sensitivity when it comes to touch navigation?
Sadly, the answer is no. While the Viewty does have mechanised call keys, the three-inch touch-screen is the central navigation star. There’s no doubt this display is an absolute stunner, brimming with crisp detail and rich colour while it’s very responsive to your taps, giving off a vibrating pulse to signal your command. But try scrolling through menus and web pages and the Viewty will test your patience to breaking point. It’s no surprise to see LG now bundling a stylus to alleviate this thorny problem and this admission of help clearly hands the ticklish touch-screen trophy to the iPhone and its intelligent multi-touch slickness.
The Viewty’s stylish design is clearly based heavily on the Prada phone, but is buffed up to accommodate a stellar feature line-up: a five-megapixel camera, rapid HSDPA downloads speeds and VGA quality video capture at 30fps just makes the touch-screen headache even more frustrating.
A sizeable lens gives the Viewty a real camera pedigree and with autofocus, a bona-fide Xenon flash and all the photographic settings (including an 800 ISO mode to help out in low lighting conditions), this camphone is capable of giving the Sony Ericsson K850i and Nokia N95 sleepless nights. It delivers picture quality vivid in colour and sharp focus.
What the Viewty does have over its five-megapixel adversaries is an accomplished video performance. It matches the N95 in the recording department, serving up VGA-quality footage that’s low on the judder while it’s the very first handset to feature a 120fps slow-mo setting for replaying those fast and furious moments. It’s also worth noting the Viewty is the first phone in the UK to support DivX video playback, so in theory you can watch recorded TV programmes, re-encoded in this format, on the handset.
If the Viewty had just an ounce of the iPhone’s touch-sensibilities it would be up there for phone of the year. If you can work with its skittish touch-screen then go for it; its feature cast is sensational. But you have been warned.
Verdict
The Viewty may be an ultra-stylish camera and video virtuoso but its fickle touch-screen raises usability issues. Approach with caution.
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