Time for another check in with our fellow bloggers to find out what they’ve been saying about their Viewtys.

(We might have to stop doing these soon – we don’t want all the praise going to our heads and making us smug!)

Simon at Zath Games got in touch to let us know he’d written his review and it seems he is also a fan:

“the first thing that you’ll notice about the LG Viewty is just how great this mobile phone actually looks and feels in your hand – it sits nicely in the hand, not being too big or heavy”

Particularly of the camera (a common theme now!)

“The camera that comes on the LG Viewty is one of the best that I’ve seen on a mobile phone boasting an impressive 5 megapixels of detail for your photos. It has good quality flash (the first camera I’ve actually owned to have one – smartphones don’t tend to have this feature)”
…
“with the LG Viewty KU990, you’ve basically got a great digital camera with built-in phone functionality!”

The team at Know Your Mobile were almost too kind in their review of “the 5 megapixel, HSDPA and touchscreen wonder phone”

Oh you guys..

“it matches many of the iPhone’s specs and in many cases exceeds them.”
…
“the Viewty is a definite step up from the Prada not just in terms of its feature set but also its build quality. The phone packs a bit of heft with its dimensions of 104mm by 55mm by 17mm and its 112 gramme weight. But it’s a nice, solid and expensive-feeling heft”
…
“our first impressions of the LG Viewty are that it seems like an excellent mobile phone that has been saddled with user interface that is potentially superb but still has some bugs to be ironed out.”

They go on, but we wouldn’t want to brag…

Time for round two of our look at what bloggers have been saying about their Viewty’s. Everton from Connected Internet is certainly impressed with the phones features, particularly the camera.

The LG Viewty sets new standards for cameraphones by including a manual focus function, a first for a cameraphone. It also includes an image stabiliser that helps record clearer images. I shot a few shots with the camera in the States and compared them to my 7 megapixel digital camera and they were comparable.

Great praise indeed. At the end of the day Everton sees the Viewty as,

good phone that doubles as an excellent camera, rather than trying to pack the Viewty with lots of gimmicky features such as GPS

The Viewty is very much a camera orientated phone and I think everyone can agree it’s excellent in that department. However, it’s also worth mentioning that it comes with 3G/HSDPA connectivity for touch screen web browsing so it certainly has other high spec features.

So if you’re struggling to find techie present for Christmas, Everton has a suggestion,

“The Viewty is a master cameraphone without peers at the moment, and would definitely be a nice present from Santa this year.”

Secondly, James at The Mighty Gadget gave the Viewty a review and was overall also impressed with the phone. He picked up on a few minor details of the phone that might be of interest to some.

He was impressed with both the on screen keyboard and the email functionality the Viewty provided.

I was impressed with the email though; it was quite fast thanks to the HSDPA (3.5G) and was easy to read through thanks to the scrolling system.

He also noted that the loudspeaker function was “excellent”.

Riyaz’s conclusion I think sums up nicely the phone and its features.

I am a geek so I typically chose function over form and go for Symbian/WM based phones. However this phone has impressed me, it does all the functions I require out of a phone and it does them well. It is also a very good looking phone so will keep even the most style conscious person happy.

We’re really happy with the reactions to the Viewty so far. It seems that Europe as a whole is equally enamoured as we’ve sold 310,000 handsets, or about 6,300 day, since launch.

The Viewty has been out for a few weeks now and it’s been really pleasing to see some of the opinions we have got from people who we asked to review for us. Mark at Phones Review was positively glowing in his review, falling in love with the camera - at times we were blushing at how he found the phone:

Can I actually find anything wrong with this mobile phone? The answer so far is a big fat “NO”.

Moving on and last of all for this review at least is the camera and video which will have a more in depth review pretty soon, but briefly and for now must say the camera is just amazing, crystal clear images and so many options in the camera menu. The video is just as impressive especially the 120 fps bit which takes recordings and plays them back in slow motion.

Another Mark, at Tracy and Matt, has an “LG Viewty reviewty” was more equivocal in his opinion.

To review this device though, I have to look at the day to day use of it. I have been lucky enough to have used the Viewty for quite a while, and I’m really impressed with the simple usability and stability of it. From the simple, if scary, unlock button to the onscreen qwerty keyboard in landscape mode.

Mark was a little concerned about the speed of his phone, saying it takes up to 15 seconds to view a photo taken. This is certainly not the case on my Viewty, where it’s more like 1 second for a 5 Megapixel image from the internal memory, and maybe 2 for one from an external SD Card - as shown on this quick little video I’ve just made. No one else we know has picked up on this either so it looks like Mark may have had some exceptional fault with his model or his memory card.

Microsoft tech blogger Steve Clayton is also quite impressed by the Viewty with the odd caveat:

When in camera mode all the settings and controls are access by simply by tapping once on the screen with your fingertip or thumb. Pretty cool and simple access to photo settings, zoom and flash. The location of the shutter button is perfect too and I’d quite happily snap a lot of photos with this camera phone. It has an image stabilisation dedicated button and also has video recording and playback of course - with the video capture speed of 120fps being particularly impressive. Photo viewing is very nice with a Surface like application that lets you scatter photos across the screen and double tap to view the photo itself or single tap for photo details.

Steve notes that the Viewty doesn’t sync with Microsoft Outlook - this is only true for Microsoft Outlook 2007; all versions previous to it sync fine with the Viewty and we’re looking into getting it compatible with the latest versions of Outlook as soon as possible.

Dial-a-phone have done a testing session with the 5MP camera phones currently on the market – of which the Viewty is one. They’ve done three separate photographic tests of the camera’s capabilities and presented them for an easy comparison.

I’m pleased to report the Viewty comes out really well in the comparison and from this evidence looks to be consistently in the top 2 along with the Samsung G800. We have a lot of faith in the Viewty’s camera and its good to see this demonstrated in a direct comparison test.

We’re also very happy with the poll dial-a-phone have on their post. As of today the Viewty has received 72 % of the vote in the ‘which camera phone is the best’ category, which is excellent news given the strength of the competition.

You can see the results of our own comparison between the Viewty and a standard 5MP digital camera here.

We’d certainly be keen to hear of any other tests involving the Viewty to see how well the camera performs.

Stephen Fry (yes, that Stephen Fry), in his brand new “Dork Talk” column, gives the LG Viewty a bit of a whirl, and overall he’s impressed:

One neat feature: the screen can vibrate when touched, offering a kind of fingertip feedback that, once you’re used to it, improves the whole relationship. In the end, I suspect this phone will attract more females than males, but what’s wrong with that?

I came expecting to scoff, but sent it back (reluctantly) to the PR company that let me play with it rather impressed. This is no iPhone killer any more than the Prada was, but if you want a neat, cute, fun phone that leans in favour of photos and general media larkiness, you could do a lot worse.

We’re pleased that he likes it, though we’d also like to clear something up. Stephen says you can only input text onto the phone via a numeric phone keypad or handwriting recognition (which he doesn’t like). However, the phone also offers a full QWERTY keyboard which takes advantage of the large touchscreen - which you can either use with your fingers or the stylus provided. So if you are a text & email addict and want to type quickly, your needs are taken care of.

LG will soon be releasing their latest model, the Viewty. Combining state of the art design with state of the art technology the Viewty has everything. The design itself is stunning, keeping up with the LG tradition in this department. The whole phone is encased in aluminum with the back looking like a perfectly proportioned, slick digital camera and front a super stylish PDA. I’m a huge fan of way this phone looks.

So what impressed me initially? The high speed video capture technology is stand out. At present the only phone with this technology, it means you can capture anything or anyone at 120 frames per second. This gives you DVD quality playback and you can even watch videos in vivid slow motion. I’ve seen it in action and its extremely impressive. Using it for speeding cars and action shots is high on my agenda. This of course is nothing without the 5.0 megapixel Schneider Kreuznach lens for the camera which includes technology allowing you instant uploads to You Tube. Packed with all sorts of video and picture editing tools, the Viewty, much to my delight has four separate text messaging modes, including handwriting recognition software - using the touch screen - down to the standard alpha-numeric keys. What this phone can do is beginning to reveal itself.