LG Renoir (LG KC910)
We first saw the LG Renoir last month under the rather less sexy name of the "KC910". LG have now announced some more details about the Renoir, although there's very little to add to the previously
stated technical specifications.
Just to recap, this is a touchscreen phone with a 3" 240 x 400 pixel widescreen display, an 8 megapixel camera, 3.5G and WiFi support plus GPS. The camera has dual LED flash and autofocus, and can use the LG Renoir's GPS receiver to geotag photographs automatically. The LG Renoir has impressive stills and video capture capabilities, and very comprehensive media playback support including an FM radio and several video codecs preinstalled.
We now know that the LG Renoir weighs 110 grams, which is pretty good considering the impressive feature set. Measurements are 108 x 56 x 14mm, which is larger than a standard phone but still pretty "pocket friendly". The 1000 mAh battery can provide up to 3.5 hours talktime or 14 days standby time on 3G.
The LG Renoir should be available in Europe during October, followed by Asia, Latin America and CIS countries in November, then Africa and the Middle East in December followed by China in January 2009. The standard colour scheme is "Titan Black", although we expect that other colours will become available too.
It isn't a cheap phone - one of LG's sources quotes a recommended SIM-free retail price of around €485 or £390. We would expect real-world prices to be cheaper than that, and of course if you take the LG Renoir with a new contract then you should get a very substantial discount indeed.
LG have also given a heads-up about an 8 megapixel slider phone called the LG KC780 due for release in October, but no further details are available from them at present.
LG KF350
We have seen a steady stream of very high-end touchscreen phones
from LG recently, so the LG KF350 is a bit of a refreshing change. At first glance, the KF350 is a conventional looking clamshell phone with a squared-off look that looks a little like the attractive Japanese-style phones that Panasonic were making a few years ago.
On paper, the KF350's main technical features are straightforward and somewhat unexciting. This is a tri-band GSM phone with a fixed focus 3 megapixel camera, a 2.2" 240 x 320 pixel display, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, microSD expandable memory, a multimedia player and an FM radio.
However, if you look closely at the KF350 you can see a semi-translucent cover that conceals a 5 x 23 pixel LED display that can do a variety of things, including showing the time or displaying incoming numbers. We have seen this on a few phones before, but it is still quite uncommon and it is a rather nice feature. The case itself is available in a pale blue or pale pink colour, and we must say that it does look rather attractive and quite unusual.
At 101 x 51 x 15mm and 102 grams, the LG KF350 is a little on the large size.. you would probably expect it to be a 3G phone, but it isn't. The large size is used to create a well-spaced and uncluttered keypad, which is one of the main advantages of a clamshell phone.
At present, the only confirmed availability of the LG KF350 is in Russia, the Ukraine and Kazakhstan where it should retail SIM-free for about 7600 roubles (around €220), but hopefully it will be available in other markets too.
LG KC780: 8 megapixel slider
Eight megapixel camera phones are still pretty rare, so you would expect a manufacturer to make a song and dance about a new model. Not so with the LG KC780, which has had a very low-key launch from its manufacturer.
As with the new LG Renoir, the camera capabilities on the KC780 look pretty awesome. The 8 megapixel camera has autofocus and comes with a Schneider-Kreuznach certified lens. The camera has low-light sensitivity and can also compensate for scenes that are too
brightly lit. Although LG don't mention a flash, it does look like there might be one on the back. The camera also has advanced face detection, image stabilisation and picture manipulation features. LG say that the KC780 can also capture D1 "DVD quality" video, which should mean a minimum of 640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second.
There are some clever Bluetooth 2.1 tricks with the KC780 - you can use it as a webcam via a Bluetooth connection, or send and receive text messages through your PC.
There is also a multimedia player, FM radio, web browser and email client plus a microSD slot to expand the 140MB of onboard memory up to 8GB. Multimedia playback looks good with support for all popular media types, plus Divx movies. The KC780 also has a document viewer which supports most common file types.
As you can see from the photos, the LG KC780 looks like a conventional slider from the front, but more like a camera from the back. In fact, the design of the camera reminds us a little of the old sharp 902. The display is a 2.4" 240 x 320 pixel panel, which is fairly standard these days.
So far, so good.. but the LG KC780 has a couple of serious drawbacks - the main one being that it doesn't support 3G, and WiFi support would have been nice too. You might remember that we criticised the motorola zine zn5 for being a brilliant camera grafted to a pretty ordinary phone.. and the KC780 suffers from the same weaknesses (except that the ZN5 did at least have WiFi). Remember though that the LG KC780 isn't a flagship device.. but it is a somewhat mismatched combination in our view.
Talktime is up to 6 hours with a maximum of around 18 days standby time. At 119 grams and 107 x 52 x 14mm, the LG KC780 is perhaps a little on the heavy side.
LG say that the KC780 should be available in Europe during November, followed by the CIS and Asia Pacific markets. There's no indication on price, but we expect it to be a lot cheaper than the new LG Renoir.
