Camera Phones Plaza

The year 2007 represented a serious knockdown for every phone manufacturer, mainly because of the iPhone launch. Since then we have seen so many supposed competitors of the iPhone, from all the manufacturers. Even now, in the end of 2009, none of the phone manufacturers successfully launched a serious competitor. Even so, with the launch of so many mobile phones, some good and some bad, you can certainly find a late 2008, early 2009, touch screen phone with excellent features, acceptable interface, and a small price tag. If you are looking for a semi cheap phone but nice looking and not yet retiring, you should look at LG KC 910 Renoir.

This is a solid phone not only in build quality but also in hardware specifications, since the LG KC 910i Renoir (announced in February 2009 and released in May 2009) sports the same hardware configurations with smaller improvements but higher price than KC 910 Renoir. The KC 910 Renoir was announced in 2008, and released in late November, 2008. Even so, you might be surprised to find out, what excellent features this phone packs.


Therefore let's have a quick look at the key features offered by KC 910 Renoir, such as 3 inches touch screen TFT display, 8 megapixel camera (including the xenon flash and other important features like face tracking), video recording n excellent format, great connectivity, multitasking enabled, Office document viewing and editing, handwriting recognition, and the DivX / XviD video playback.

The main disadvantages of this phone includes several small details as no video streaming within the Wi-Fi connection, stylus included in the package but no stylus compartment onboard the KC 910 Renoir, and the "love it or hate it" design. As you can notice, LG successfully created a market success, this being the reason for which KC 910i Renoir was launched (it would have been even better if the KC 910i Renoir would have packed 12 megapixels camera than the 8 megapixels camera from the KC 910 Renoir).


In the design department, the Renoir, both first and second generation sports a merged design between the conservative looks and the stylish design. In my opinion this kind of merged design should be more often used by manufacturers, since it offers the phone a higher value than it might actually has. This phone is made out of high quality materials, the front cover being made out of glossy material (fingerprint magnet and scratches magnet), while the back cover is made out of metallic looking materials.  On the front side of the KC 910 Renoir you can find above the display beside the "LG" logo and the earpiece the second digital camera for enabling the video calls, and a light senor for a better screen brightness adjustment.


Below the 3 inches display you get only three physical keys, including the launch / task manager application, the call key and the end call key (which also includes the power on and off function). On the right side of Renoir you can find the volume controls (with the down key also featuring the mute function), the lock / shutter key (for turning off the touch screen), and the camera dedicated key. On the left side of the KC 910 Renoir, LG included the universal connectivity port (with computer connectivity, recharge function, and headset adapter) covered by a plastic cap. Also covered with a plastic cap on the left side is the memory card slot. On the back side, Renoirs sports in the upper left corner a nice designed 8 megapixel camera lenses with the Xenon flash.


This camera also includes lens cover, which may seem hard to open, depending on the occasion (sometimes works flawlessly, and sometimes you won't get to open this lens cover until the third try). Both top and bottom sides of the Renoir lack of any ports, slots or buttons. To complete the design LG also added some really nice touches, such as the stainless steel frame surrounding the Renoir. With a height of 10.78 mm, wide of 55.9 mm, deep of 14 mm, the KC 910 Renoir weights about 114 grams, making this phone average in terms of portability.


Overall, in terms of design this phone looks very good with its conservative looks rolled within a stylish finish, while in terms of construction this phone is really well build, Samsung quality even. If you were wondering, under the back cover of the Renoir, LG included a standard Lithium Ion battery with 1000 mAh, capable of 264 hours in standby time, and about 3 hours in talk time. These values should mean for an average user about three (or maximum four) days of autonomy. Even more, if you use your phone less than others, or the Renoir is your second phone, you should get up to six days of autonomy. This phone will run in both 2G network with GSM 850 / 900 / 1800 / 1900 quad band version, or GSM 900 / 1800 / 1900 tri band version, and 3G network with both HSDPA 900 / 2100 and HSDPA 850 / 1900 (the American version of Renoir).


LG included within this phone a 3 inches TFT resistive touch screen with a resolution of 240 x 400 pixels, capable of rendering up to 256000 colors. LG also embedded an accelerometer sensor for auto rotate. Even more, the ambient light sensor does its job and successfully adjusts the brightness level within the light conditions in every environment. Therefore, you should have no problems using this phone under direct sunlight. However, the reflective angle might be annoying since the front cover of this phone is glossy, making the light reflect from the case. Unfortunately, this display is only resistive and doesn't sport the capacitive technology. Therefore, the all day carrying of a stylus might be annoying.


Beside the nice display, LG also included a great Dolby Mobile speakerphone which provides a nice quality sound, and even a lower bass level. The onboard memory has a value of 100 MB, expandable if using the micro SD memory cards, or Trans Flash memory cards with a 16 GB value. The connectivity is ensured by EDGE< GPRS Class 10 (with 4+1 / 3+2 slots) with a varying speed from the lower 32 Kb per second to the upper 48 Kb per second, HSDPA with 7.2 MB per second, Wi-Fi with 802.11 b/g profile, Bluetooth version 2.0 with A2DP, and USB connection. At a first glance you might be tempted to say that Renoir is a multimedia oriented phone.


In part you might be right. However, it would be a shame not to recognize the Renoir's business features, including the multitasking, the Office document viewer (including all the Microsoft Office 2003 and 2007 file formats, Words, Excels, Power Point, and even PDFs), solid phone book with a lot of customizable contact information, strong messaging and telephony functions. The music player and video player are also included with a lot of features. Beside the common by now rendering of MP3 files and AAC files, Renoir also is capable of playing MP4 video files, and DivX / XviD file formats.


Even more, this phone is shipped with an excellent user interface. It maybe not the latest LG version (like the one found on the KC 910i Renoir), but it still provides with excellent customizable features, adequate speed, really nice animations (Apple iPhone comparable), and the widgets, which are not number limited like in the LG Prada II. However, a common feature with the Prada II is the pre installed theme pack, which makes this user interface even more customizable. LG included into this phone an excellent 8 megapixel digital camera with a maximum resolution for the still photos of 3264 x 2448 pixels.


The optics is ensured by the Schneider Kreuznack, sporting both manual focus and auto focus, and the Xenon flash. As it was to be expected, this camera includes within its settings menu enough features for any amateur photographer to be satisfied including the face detection feature and the geo tagging feature.


Also, the video recording mode is excellent providing two possible resolutions, the VGA with 30 frames per second, and the QVGA with 120 frames per second. Both resolutions offer good videos with excellent detail rendering and fluidity within the 120 frames per second videos. The retail package of Renoir is strictly market dependent since it is shipped worldwide. However, you should find within its package the mandatory charger, the stylus, the USB cable, a stereo headset with remote controls (which includes a 3.5 mm audio jack), CD software and an 8 GB micro SD. Overall, LG knows Renoir is a success; otherwise it would never have created its small upgrade, KC 910i Renoir.

This phone is great in every way you might want to look at it, great multimedia features including an 8 megapixel camera, full connectivity package, excellent design, for an average price. However, the only true disadvantage is the resistive touch screen technology which involves the use of a stylus. If this is something that you can live with, then KC 910 Renoir or even KC 910i Renoir might be the phone for you.