archaeologist, tech geek, cornishman
Posts tagged review
The LG KC910 “Renoir”
Jun 11th
Recently, my contract with 3 UK came up for renewal. Since I’m a frequent Skype user, I decided to stay with them and sign up for another 18 months. Despite loving my Nokia E71, a number of phones were offered to me free with my new contract. I plumped for the LG KC910 “Renoir” purely for its abilities as a camera – if I’m heading somewhere for the weekend, I can just take one device with me if I feel like it.
I’ve had it for a couple of weeks now, and, generally, I’m getting along with it.
The camera is just superb. The 8 megapixel camera is as good as any point and shoot, and the movie recording feature works wonderfully – my favourite setting being 640×384 widescreen – the video is crisp and colours well-defined. I’m very happy with the imaging functions, and that’s remarkable given how picky I am.
The video quality isn’t bad in low light either. Here’s a video taken at dusk, overlooking a river, with some bats playing over the surface of the water:
Bats on the River Avon from Tom Goskar on Vimeo.
The rest of the phone, well, after the E71, isn’t much to write home about. The interface is a bit clunky, the browser is passable, and the Java implementation is rubbish. But, it does the job – I can make and receive calls, and stab at the screen to send texts. I would *hate* to use it for Skype chat – the interface is just hideous – but making and receiving Skype calls works well.
I’m having trouble setting up my email too, which is annoying. It receives email fine, but sending an email with a photo attachment simply doesn’t work. This is doubly annoying, as it means that I can’t send photos to Posterous, Twitpic, Flickr, etc via email. I hope that I’ll work out how to fix it, or I’ll have to contact LG to see if they can help.
Still, the camera came with an 8GB MicroSD card which is easily accessible via a flap on the side of the phone, so it’s easy to take it out, pop into an adaptor and transfer to my Mac. I managed to upload a photo to Flickr via the web browser, but it’s a fiddly process.
So what about build quality? It’s quite a chunky phone, made entirely from plastic, which is a stark contrast from the metal solidity of the E71. But it doesn’t creak or bend, and is nonetheless sturdy feeling for a plastic phone. The touchscreen is plastic, so prone to scratches, and is resistive rather than capacitive, so you need to press firmly (but not too hard) to register a ‘click’. You can of course see the touchscreen yield under your finger in the right light.
All round, it’s not bad. If I’m using my E71, I miss the KC910’s camera – but if I’m using the KC910, I miss the elegance of the E71, and it’s great physical keyboard. Any on-screen keyboard is a pile of rubbish compared to the iPhone’s implementation, in my humble opinion, this LG’s included.
Expect more opinions as I play more with the Renoir (especially if I fix the sending email attachments problem).
Nokia E71 Review: Part One
Sep 22nd
Last week I treated myself to a new Nokia E71 on the 3 network here in the UK. After suffering the crapness that is the text entry system on the 3 Skypephone, I was after something that would run Skype, but have an excellent web browser and keyboard.
I looked at many phones, but settled on an E71 for these reasons:
- Excellent battery life
- QWERTY keyboard
- Decent Skype client (provided by 3)
- 3MP autofocus camera
- GPS
- Symbian OS (smartphone goodness without Windows Mobile or Apple walled garden)
I won’t list all of the phones that I looked at, but suffice to say I looked at most of the advanced phones available today. I did settle on an N95, but the battery life would definitely have been an issue for me, being an itinerant fiddler when it comes to gadgets. If it has features, then I will use them. And I want to be able to use those features whenever I want, not think about what I can or can’t use because I want to make a call later. I talked to too many N95 users who too often looked depressed when I asked about battery life.
Anyway, I digress.
I will start my review with a summary, to save all but the ardent reader having to read any further. The phone is all that I hoped for given my budget. Visually, I think the E71 is a great looking device. I plumped for the white version, and with its steel chrome surround, and white LEDs, it’s very shiny. It feels solid in the hand, and there’s no creaking plastic to be found. It ticks all of the build-quality boxes that I had in the back of my mind.
Given that the phone has everything bar a coffee machine inside it, the battery life is phenomenal. As I write this, I have two bars of battery life left. Over the last three (yes, three) days since its last charge I have used just about every function for just about every purpose I could think of. And there’s still charge left. I have:
- Taken 60 photos
- Recorded 10 minutes of video
- Browsed the web for about 4 hours using a mixture of 3G and Wifi
- Twittered a lot
- Sent some SMS messages
- Made some calls (maybe 30 mins)
- Used the GPS for about an hour
- Used the streaming internet radio for about 30 minutes
- Listened to mp3s while surfing the web (maybe about 2 hours)
- Installed and played with 14 applications (I’ll list them in another post)
- Played about with Qik (10 minutes)
- Run Skype in the background for maybe 4 hours
Now, to me, that I have any charge left at all is somewhat amazing (actually, it’s just gone down to one bar as I write this). I’m fairly sure that it’ll last until I get home in a couple of hours to give it a charge. Now that’s what I call battery stamina.
I finally have a phone (well, it’s a mini computer really) that does the things what I want it to do, and has the battery life to let me do them.
I’ll be writing a series of posts about different aspects of the phone in the next few days, so stay tuned.
[Update - I took a couple of 3-4 minute calls on the way home, took a photo, and received a text on the 45 minute walk home. In the last call, the phone began to warn me about a low battery. When I got home I plugged it in to charge, and went to see if it was charged at about 8.30pm (Monday). I'd forgotten to switch on the charger! But the phone was still on, and had received a text! The thing seems to last forever. For reference, it had its last charge on Friday night.]
