Screenshots

I had dreamed of a 5-megapixel cameraphone when I first laid my hands on the LG Shine earlier this year.

I wanted the form factor, and LG Shine is just perfect for this. As a serious photographer, I also wanted a real camera that enables me do what I could do on a digital SLR, without the feeling of holding onto a brick when I speak across the airwave.

My wish was answered, barely six months after reviewing the LG Shine, and in fact with more features than I had dreamed for. Even a pro photographer will be delighted to have one... Welcome to LG Viewty LU990, 5-megapixel, l touch-screen and 120fps on videos!

(LG Viewty was inspired by an entry in urbandictionary.com for 'viewtiful', meaning "beyond cool, often stylish; excellent". It's a derivation from Atsushi Inaba's video game, Viewtiful Joe.)

Viewty preview

LG Viewty is a 3.5G phone that taps into the standard fast speed downloads and uploads over the mobile network. Or in techynical lingo, it handles three radio bands: HSDPA (3.6Mbps), WCDMA (3G), and Tri-band (GSM/GPRS/EDGE)

If you viewed the video I put on DailyMotion, here's a brief rundown of the features:

1 ) It's a professional-level camera phone, with features found on many high-end stand-alone cameras
2 ) It comes with a Xenon flash
3 ) There's a manual focus option for distinct shots
4 ) There an image stabiliser to mitigate blur images due to shaking hands
5 ) There is an array of options of ISO settings -- 100, 200, 400 and 800 -- for indoor or night shooting
6 ) It records video at up to 120 frames per second (fps), the highest frame speed ever for a handset camera
7 ) Videos can be edited and uploaded directly to YouTube
8 ) It has a 3-inch, 262K TFT-LCD touch screen powered by Mobile XD™ engine -- wider and more vivid display
9 ) There's a camera manual focus that acts as a jog wheel for scrolling and volume control on phone & MP3 modes
10 ) It's a full touch-screen, with a retractable stylus
11 ) Key-in can be doen on simulated keyboard and OCR recognition even for Chinese characters!
12 ) On-camera editing that allows users to digitally “write” on photos and edit their own files

The official launch of LG Viewty for Asia was held November 13 in conjunction with the GSMA's Mobile Asia Congress at the Venetian, Macao.

Bo Choi giving this blogger a demo of live upload of YouTube from LG Viewty

Mr Bo H. Choi, Vice President/Team Leader (Asia, Middle East & Africa Business Team) of LG Mobile was there to take my pictures and videos and upload them live to Google's Blogspot and YouTube, using the KU990..

I will write a detailed review when I get back.