LG View KU990
The LG KU990 View has some real high-tech goodies under its screen: the 3 inch touchscreen display with resolution of 240 x 400 pixels, HSDPA 3.6 Mbps capability, stereo Bluetooth and highly intriguing autofocus camera with 5 megapixels, which is also capable of recording video at 120 fps at a resolution of 320 x 240 pixels. Feature-packed and elegant, the LG KU990 looks set on the fast track to success and I’m more than happy to get my hands on it.
Main Features
- Tri-band GSM, GPRS, EDGE, HSDPA and 3G support
- 5 megapixel camera with Schneider Kreuznach optics, strobe flash and image stabiliser
- Secondary camera for 3G video calls
- Video recording at 30 frames per second at a resolution of 640 x 480 pixels (VGA)
- Video recording at 120 frames per second at at resolution of 320 x 480 pixels (QVGA)
- 3 inch TFT Touchscreen with 262k colours
- DivX certified video playback
- TV-out support
The LG View ty measures 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm, which is around the size of iPhone or HTC Touch. It weighs 112 g, which isn’t really much looking at its performance characteristics. Designwise, it’s almost positive that people would inevitably equate it to the LG Prada. They share the same Candybar form factor, big screen and Flash UI, but are still entirely different and this time Prada has no participation in the project.
The front panel of the Viewty features only three keys – green and red Send/End keys and correction C key, which is used as either backspace or for going one level up in user interface menu. In the top right corner a secondary VGA camera for 3G video calls can be found. The left side of LG View ty holds a single port for charger, headset and universal data cable.
Under the back panel LG Mobile phone reveals 1000mAh Li-Ion battery. The SIM card slot and the microSD memory card slot are only accessible after removed of battery. As to battery life, LG claims stand by time of up to 330 hours and talk time of up to 200 min. After few days of testing under heavy duty usage, the handset lasted about 2-2.5 days with a single charge. The relatively good news according to battery life is that DivX playback doesn’t exercise any extra strain on the battery. For example, the battery lasted enough to allow me to use the phone moderately for full single day and watch a 2 hour DivX movie later on in the evening, before it was completely empty.
The KU990 is real easy to handle and the touch-centric form factor is of no hindrance to usability. It feels nice and comfortable to touch. Speaking of touch although, it has got to be noted that the KU990 Viewty has a different touchscreen display than the LG Prada. While the Prada screen only received commands once touched with a bare finger, here you can use your fingers, enclosed stylus, or a pen. The display deals pretty well under direct sunlight.
The LG View comes with an original stylus dongle, that does not plug anywhere into the phone. It is attached to the handstrap eyelet instead. That’s rather innovative and looks great, but im not convinced that it’s convenient to have your stylus dangle along the phone in everyday use.
The user interface of KU990 is based on Flash technology, Just like the one in Prada. The KU990 is not a smartphone, but it has a huge difference when comparing to the Prada. It’s that it has a task manager, that works great and all opened applications and programs such as the phonebook, messaging application, calculator, calendar and etc., are in there once you have launched them.
The 5 megapixel camera of the LG KU990 is close to amazing. It is capable of shooting images at a maximum resolution of 2592 x 1944 pixels. It uses the entire 3 inch TFT display as a viewfinder and the experience is great. Camera is controlled by 3 keys: first is the camera key or the shutter button, the second is the hardware lock key which could also be used to activate the stabilization of image and the third one is the hardware jog wheel which is used to zoom in and out of photos and also for brightness adjustments.
The camera comes along with a strobe flash. The flash does a great job and is what you can expect from a 5 megapixel camera flash. The camera also has a focus asist beam similar to the ones in professional digital cameras. There are several different imaging modes to choose from: beach, night, landscape, party, portrait, panorama, sport, high sensitive, continuous shot and frames. The continuous shot and panorama are surely worth to check out.
The video camera results are also remarkable. The LG View ty KU990 can record videos in 640 x 480 pixels VGA resolution at 30 frames per second, while at 320 x 240 QVGA resolution it can record at a frame rate of 120 frames per second. The best part about recording videos with viewty is that it encodes them in DivX format so they won’t take a lot of space.
Specifications
- Dimensions: 103.5 x 54.4 x 14.8 mm
- Weight: 112 g
- Display: 3" 262k colours TFT touchscreen
- Camera: 5 megapixels with strobe flash
- Memory: 100 MB internal memory and up to 8 GB microSD card
- CPU: 140MHz ARM9
- Battery: 1000 mAh
- Supported formats by audio player: MP3, AAC, eAAC, WAV, WMA
- Supported formats by video player: DivX, MPEG4, AVI, 3GP, WMV, H.263, H.264 at a framerate per second of 30
7 Responses to “LG View KU990”
I have been using this phone for the past 2 Yrs now, and believe me have not faced any major problems yet except for changing the battery once. I am very satisfied with the phone, its performance, its style.
This phone supports more than 2gb. I have an 8gb memory card in mine now and it works fine.
I think this phone tries to do too many things. Most people will not use that many features, so will end up paying too much for what they do use. There are other phones available that do less things, but do them better. What’s in a name, anyway? How much premium is on the logo?
In this phone , the memory is expandable upto 12GB. I am using it and works fine for me.
it’s sure one of the coolest phone i have ever used, but i am having a problem using the broswer service, and i can’t conect it to work with opera mini (4.2, 5 beta)any helps please.
i used this fone for 7mons laready and its so nice to say that this phone is great in terms of camera, a 5mp is enoughe to captured pic. and the texting is easy although this phone is touchscreen. the touch screen is very responsive. the only negative is ku990 viewty dont have wifi, its only 3g for the connection porpuses. but overall this viewty is so great!
The LG KU 990 is a perfectly dreadful phone, though it shouldn\'t be. The touch screen constantly freezes, disallowing calls on a consistent basis until it chooses to unfreeze. There appears to be no logic as to when it chooses to freeze. All in all, except for the camera and the large storage capacity it\'s a gigantic disappointment. And for $500, it\'s a complete and total rip off. LG should replace them or at least re-do the operating system. Charles