LG KG920 Phone Review ( non 3G )

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Just as we’re swooning over 3.2-megapixel camera phones, LG, out of nowhere, blows the whole mobile photography race out of the water with the UK’s first ever five-megapixel handset. Gulp. 3G brings you one of the first looks at this non 3G mobile phone.
If you live in Korea, five megapixels on a camera phone is about as exciting as a VGA camera lens is over here. With eight (Samsung SPH-V8200) and 10-megapixel (Samsung SCH-B600) handsets leading the charge, we can understand the country’s blasé attitude.
But over here in the UK, five is a big deal. Having just recently been bowled over by Sony Ericsson’s impressive K800i 3.2-megapixel Cyber-shot phone and, before that, the optical zoom-loaded Sharp 903, it still feels like quite a step to be introducing five-megapixel camera phones into our lives. But, to our surprise, LG is launching the KG920 in the UK.
We say surprised because when 3G first saw the KG920 behind a locked glass panel at GSM back in February, LG reps said it was unlikely to see the light of day over in Blighty. But according to LG Europe, one man has been a major force in bringing this pixel powerhouse to the UK. Charles Dunstone, head honcho at The Carphone Warehouse, wants to challenge the imaging big guns like Canon, Nixon, Fuji at el. So what better statement of intent than to have the KG920 five-megapixel phone in his Carphone stores from 1 August. 3G managed to snaffle a pre-production sample (please note that no LG delegate was harmed in obtaining this handset) so while our handset worked perfectly, always be ready for last minute tweaks and changes.
Before you’ve even handled the KG920, it looks like a serious piece of kit. It’s the first phone we’ve witnessed that really resembles a proper digital snapper from the back. The lens area, complete with Xenon strobe flash and sliding cover, is extremely prominent, giving it some serious clout. Housing a five-megapixel lens also means size and weight will be compromised.
Initially and unsurprisingly, it feels bulky, especially with a slightly raised battery, but give or take a few millimetres and grams you soon realise it actually has the same vital stats as the popular Nokia 6680 (but you must remember that unlike the 6680, the KG920 doesn’t have 3G or Symbian smartphone capabilities ).
Having plenty of you wielding the 6680, the KG920’s girth might not be as off-putting as we first imagined. The KG920 is also solidly constructed with a sturdy 180° twisting lens for self-portraits, angled shots or tripod effect.
The phone’s most noticeable and unusual characteristic is its design and layout. The bright and crisp QVGA two-inch display seems standard enough, suitable for using as a viewfinder and clocking your photos. But its keypad layout is less familiar with the five-way navigation pad offset to the right and a line of three soft keys. It may seem strange at first but this scenario is designed to easily function in camera mode. To be honest, the new arrangement doesn’t really affect phone navigation, while the simple-to-master user interface is identical to the other LG members like the Chocolate. However, the phone’s design is a real tech-head’s dream, esoteric and festooned with buttons galore, so it may appear quite ugly to the style police.
So to the main attraction – the five-megapixel CCD camera. Like all high-end camera phones you adopt the landscape position and fire up the lens via the shutter button. Organising the settings involves using a combination of the three soft keys and the navigation pad. Although not as immediate as the Sony Ericsson K800i, you will nevertheless to grips with the camera interface relatively quickly. Just above the screen are four buttons: one dedicated to flash settings, one for timer (both keys double as MP3 player/calendar shortcuts when in standby mode) while the remaining two work the 4x digital zoom. We really were expecting an optical zoom on such a powerful camera phone, so this is a severe disappointment. The auto-focus and Xenon flash atone for this aberration, though, and both work extremely well. The photos are snapped in a 2592x1944-pixel resolution – turn over the page and you will see the result. Compared to the standard two-megapixel camera phones we’ve reviewed, the pictures are stunning.
The KG920 has plenty of memory to stockpile your pics. You can decide to save manually or automatically on the 128MB of internal memory and the supplied 256MB miniSD card with a potential 1GB card capacity available. But if you prefer not to clog up your phone with reams of photos and need space to house digital music files to spin on the KG920’s capable music player, transferring your pics onto the PC couldn’t be easier. The KG920 is recognised as a mass storage device (via a USB connection), so you can drag and drop the files into your picture folder. One gripe is how slow the photos load on the phone’s media folder. Similarly, the Bluetooth on our review sample took an age to pair but we were assured by LG that this was due to our handset being in development.
The quality of video recording was also a little disappointing. The KG920 could only muster QVGA (320x240 pixels) instead of the VGA that has been mooted on various tech websites. Video is shot in 3GP or MPEG4 format at 30 frames a second and while it’s not the best video performance we’ve seen – drag and digital noise does occur – the quality is decent enough for fun and frolics.
Let’s put the KG920 into perspective: it’s an early adopter’s wet dream. We can’t help but be impressed that a five-megapixel camera has appeared in a UK-bound phone and if Charles Dunstone is taking on the digital image sector, he’s got the pixel power to start the assault.
However, we’re still enamoured by the slicker Sony Ericsson K800i Cyber-shot camera phone for its 3G capabilities but and more compact phone orientation. Nevertheless, the KG920 clearly demonstrates the incredible leaps and bounds mobile photography has made.
Professional photographer feedback
We went out and about around London to photograph the sights and showed the results to a friend who is a professional photographer. Here is his analysis of the KG920’s performance
Despite being a little on the dark side and displaying a yellowish cast, there is certainly plenty of information here and given the limitations of such a compact/small lens, the detail seems very good.
Good-quality large prints are definitely an option, and they should still look good at A4, and even probably quite acceptable at A3. The images don’t really show any of the artefacting/compression that was evident in many of the images taken with the two-megapixel camera phones.
The KG920 looks like a serious alternative to a good-quality compact digital camera, and would be ideal for anyone who actually enjoys photography and has been frustrated by camera phone image quality up until now, or anyone who just likes printing their images poster size.
The quality of digital images depends on several factors – the sensor, the lens, and how the camera interprets the information, or ‘processes’ the image, and I think these samples show the camera phone to be slightly lacking in the latter. However this is understandable given the demands on the space available inside. As well as the yellow cast and darkness issues, all the images except the horses are somewhat flat looking and could do with some tweaking. I think all these images would benefit from at least having auto levels applied, which I have tried in Photoshop, to get rid of the casts and make the images look more natural and somewhat punchier.
If you are into your photography and have some image manipulation software then I think that you should be able to achieve some very good results with this, but if you don’t want any fuss and want to go straight to print, a good digital compact is still probably the better option.