LG KC910 Renoir

The LG KC910 has a moniker that sends out a bold and clear statement about talent. Packing a whopping 8 megapixel camera and top-of-the-line video recording, the LG KC910 Renoir is all about capturing the moment, leaving an impression. While this alone should be enough to assert an identity, the Renoir just won't stop there. With the full touch user interface and the portly 3" display, everything is a mere touch away. Wi-Fi, HSDPA and GPS are all aboard to add the last bits of oomph to the feature-loaded LG Renoir.

The exciting facts and figures from the Renoir specs sheet however won't really give away its real-life performance and this is where we step in. We already had the camera performance of the LG Renoir to bits in our 8 megapixel cameraphone shootout but it's time to move up and look at the bigger picture.

It certainly took us quite some time to bring this review forward. Perhaps we even pushed it over the peak of your anticipation, but we didn't mean to get you starved so you like the meal better.

Our better-late-than-never department - duly sent to the corner, by the way - has finally prepared a full-featured, action-packed and hopefully eye-opening review of one of the best imaging mobile phones this year - the LG KC910 Renoir.

Key features:

Quad-band GSM, HSDPA 2100 MHz

3" 256K-color touchscreen TFT display (240 x 400 pixels)

8 megapixel autofocus camera, xenon flash (geo-tagging,

face tracking, blink detection, touch focus, manual focus)

Video recording in AVI format, VGA@30fps, QVGA@120fps, time-lapse QVGA videos

Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP

Wi-Fi

GPS receiver with A-GPS support

TV-out

100MB internal memory

Hot-swappable microSD card slot (ships with 8GB card)

Accelerometer for auto screen rotate

DivX/XviD video playback

Dolby Mobile music enhancement

FM radio with RDS

Office document viewer

Multi-tasking with a real task manager

Handwriting recognition

Excellent touch optimized image gallery

Direct video uploads to YouTube

LG Renoir is among the few 8 megapixel cameraphones that are already on the market and chances are you have been eyeing it big time for this year's holiday shopping - especially if you are into big touchscreens.

It builds on the Viewty popularity but does walk its own path, adding a number of innovations to the equation. The feel and overall experience is different - and better - with LG Renoir.

We guess we're looking at one of the most obvious rivalries in the game. The main competitor of the Renoir full-featured multimedia package is no other than Samsung Pixon. Both share the touchscreen form factor and will probably appeal to the same kind of users.

Choosing between them is a tough call. The Pixon has more camera-centric looks and is certainly a match for the Renoir imaging skill. Both have similar price tags and, while the Pixon lacks Wi-Fi connectivity, it makes up some with slightly bigger screen estate, better widgets, WVGA video recording and quad-band GSM support (which most Renoirs on the market reportedly lack).

Design and construction

LG KC910 Renoir has a subdued and conservative styling, which however looks and talks shop. The high-quality materials used and the sharp shiny finish add to a really nice first impression.

Almost the whole front panel of the LG Renoir is taken by the 3" touchscreen with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels. It has a subtle mirror finish and is generally the same as the one in the LG Viewty. That means it offers nice picture quality but visibility suffers under direct sunlight.

Above the display there is a video-call camera and an ambient light sensor that allows the Renoir to dynamically adapt screen brightness to the ambient lighting. There are two camera controls on the LG Renoir, placed on the right hand side of the device. The shutter key also starts the camera, while the image stabilization key does its gimmick in low light situations. The "daily" purpose of the latter is to lock/unlock the screen and keypad.

Generally, digital image stabilization is way behind the efficiency of its optical counterpart, so we find that a rarely used feature that hardly deserves its own dedicated shortcut key. We would have preferred it if it started the Macro mode or toggled the Scene presets instead.

The shutter key is a pleasure to use, with soft but distinct half press. The irregular bulge makes it very tactile. The volume rocker, which is all the way up on that right-hand side, is equally user-friendly.

On the left side of the Renoir there is the universal connectivity port and the microSD slot. Both are covered by plastic caps to keep dust off. The connectivity port is used for all your cabling needs, while the location of the hot-swappable microSD card slot grants hassle-free access.

We tested the LG Renoir with a 8GB microSD card and it worked flawlessly. User reports suggest it's capable of handling 16GB cards too.

The only thing lacking in terms of connectivity is a 3.5mm standard audio jack, but the provided headset adapter takes care of that. You can use your favorite headphones with the Renoir, while still getting to keep the mic and the Send/End key.

The back of the Renoir is where it gets more interesting. The camera lens is right in the middle of an impressive bulging ring that really looks the part. Unlike the LG Viewty, there is no multi-functional slider here. Instead, you rotate the outer part of the ring to open or close the camera lens cover.

Safeguarding the high-quality lens is a really practical decision, but it's implementation might have been better. For example, the ribbed ring provides way too little grip and you can easily find yourself struggling with it to open the lens cover.

The Renoir sports manual focus too, but it's operated via a software slider on-screen instead of the lens ring. That may as well be irrelevant, as we find both solutions equally uncomfortable to use on a regular basis.

Next to the camera lens there is the xenon flash and a focus assist light. There is no LED flash to use as video light or a torch. It's no biggie, point-n-shoot cameras lack that too.

Unfortunately, as it turned out in our 8 megapixel cameraphone shootout, the Renoir xenon flash is a bit underpowered and there are issues with automatic exposure when you use it.

The bottom and top part of the LG Renoir lack any controls at all. On the top however you can spot the back cover release key dead center and the lanyard eyelet right on the edge. Removing the back cover reveals the 1000 mAh battery and the SIM card bed. As to battery performance, LG commit to 264 h of standby time and up to 3 h of talk time.

Despite complaints with poor battery life by some users, our Renoir managed 6 days in standby mode on a single charge - used quite sparingly, of course. In serious use - intensive but still no extremes - you're looking at 3 to 4 days of power.

Generally, the battery life of the Renoir seems pretty much identical to LG Viewty.

Interestingly enough, we also noticed that heavy use of the camera tends to drain the battery more quickly than anything else.

Phonebook is the usual good quality stuff The phonebook capacity offered by the LG Renoir is up to 1000 contacts (2000 on the Pixon), each with its own set of details. You can organize your contacts into caller groups, and you can also assign them a personal picture and a ringtone.

There is a bunch of available fields for each contact on your list - you start off with twelve fields, but once you enter a number, an additional number field becomes available. The same goes for email, etc.

You can also add a note to a contact and when you enter the birthday field, you can also have the phone save the date as a reminder to the calendar (unlike the Pixon).

Scrolling the contacts list is fluid and friendly. In fact, LG have done a great job with scrolling throughout the user interface so it's almost as enjoyable as on the iPhone. By the way, scrolling is equally nice on the Samsung Pixon.

If you don't want to go through all the contacts for reaching those which start with "Z" for example, you can either use the search box at the top or you can drag the side scrollbar, which allows you to jump letters alphabetically (just as on the Pixon).

Superb multimedia performance

LG Renoir comes with 100MB of internal memory much like the Viewty and of course it's expandable via the microSD memory card slot. Hot-swapping a memory card is easy. We can also confirm that 8GB microSD cards worked fine on our unit. Some users claim that 16GB cards are handled trouble-free too, but we haven't tested that out.

File browsing is generally fast but when you have a memory card inserted, each time you open the file browser it needs to refresh the image thumbnails. If you have a lot of images it can really get annoying, as the whole thing will take up to a good 5 seconds. Other than that there are no noticeable lags in file browsing.

Another drawback is that no matter what file sorting you opt for (date, type, name), the files on the memory card always get listed first. While that doesn't sound like a big deal, it should have been up to the user to decide, not software engineers.

The LG Renoir file manager appears as the My stuff item in the menu. It includes separate factory-preset folders for different file content. The Renoir had no problem reading custom folders off the memory card, unlike some midrange LG phones.

Image gallery

LG have vastly improved their image gallery with the LG Renoir and now it offers a great touch experience. Flicking through images feels so natural, this may as well be the first time we see a manufacturer get it fluid enough to compete with the Apple iPhone.

Music player

The Renoir has the same Music player as LG Viewty. You can filter tracks as with any other up to date music player - by artist, album, genre, and recently played. User-created playlists are also an option.

Naturally, the music player can run in the background. If you want you can control the music straight on the home screen with the dedicated widget.

There are still no equalizer settings, but there is Dolby for Mobile sound enhancement, which does seem to make a difference.

Video player

The LG Renoir video player is among the most attractive features of the handset due to the still not so common DivX and XviD support.

It successfully played every DivX and XviD movie we threw at it. In comparison, the Samsung Pixon, which also has DivX and XviD support, didn't manage to play all of the test videos due to unsupported resolution or bitrate.

Thanks to the widescreen display, wide aspect videos are a treat in fullscreen landscape mode. The semi-transparent control overlays disappear in a few seconds so they don't get in the way.