LG KG920 5-Megapixel Cameraphone

Permalink: LG KG920 5-Megapixel Cameraphone by Franz Bicar

Some people won’t want to bring a digital camera all the time. In fact, if you are like me, then you would want to have a device that could do everything - and not bring one unit for every thing that you want done. Well then, if that’s the case, then the LG KG920 5-Megapixel Cameraphone is just right for you.

I’m confident in saying that this phone’s built-in camera is definitely something that you would want to keep. Although not perfect, in fact there are some things that I don’t really like about it, I’d still stick to what I said.

However, the camera is the only thing that is great with the KG920. The other features, I leave that up to you.

The KG920 looks like a box full of buttons. One thing I can say about it, is that it is ugly. Under the screen the numberpad is pushed over to the left, with the right occupied by a navigation button. This latter is marked with tiny icons indicating that pressing each of its four points has specific functions.

The bottom part of this button takes you to the phone’s phone book, the left edge goes to the profiles, the right part takes you to a four way scrolling menu where you can choose to go to voicemail, messaging, calendar and the device alarm. Lastly, the top edge drops you into a listing of nine favourites actions, which you can then invoke using the numberpad.

Other parts of the phone include three softmenu buttons sit above the numberpad and navigation button. To the left of the screen are two pairs of buttons. The bottom pair launches the calendar software and music player. The upper pair is used with the camera’s zoom feature. All these front buttons except the Call and End buttons have an orange backlight which pops up whenever you press anything. Call and End are green and red respectively, as expected.

The left and right edges are pretty busy areas too. On the right are slots for a miniSD card, headphones and mains power and all are covered. On the left are volume buttons and the camera button as well as a slider for the mechanical lens cover.

The LG KG920 delivers a 240 x 320 pixels and 256,000 colours. You can swivel the top and bottom sections of the KG920 around so that the camera lens is either sitting on the back of the phone or lodged under the screen. Whatever the position is, the screen acts as a viewfinder, and this arrangement makes it as easy to take photos that of yourself as it is to take those of what you can see.

The camera produces a maximum image resolution of 2,592 x 1,944 pixels. This however can be customizes to the users preference. You can choose between five other resolutions down to MMS quality. There is an autofocus, which can be set to either concentrate on the centre of your image or use multiple points – quite a sophisticated feature for a handset phone. There is a sequence shot mode that can take up to six shots in quick succession

The phone also features capturing pictures with black and white, sepia and negative filters, redeye reduction and settings for close-ups, portrait, landscape, sports and dusk shots.

After mentioning the best thing about this phone, let’s go to the disappointing part. One of this is that there is no optical zoom. Then if you want high quality video then look elsewhere as the only resolutions on offer here are 176 x 144 and 320 x 240.

The phone does have a xenon flash and it does work fairly well indoors.

Another feature worth mentioning is the phone’s MP3 player. It’s tiny speakers disappoint prospected buyers but its provided headset improves things greatly. It has inline controls, and while it uses a proprietary connector to the handset it has a 3.5mm jack off the inline control unit.

The phone is provided only with an 8MB memory - which is a total disappointment. That is why, playing music and using the camera, you will need a miniSD card inserted in its slot. LG provides a reasonably sized 256MB card with the phone to get you started.

Other than these features, the LG KG920 provides a so-so amount of functionalities. Other extras include a calendar, voice recorder, email support and an alarm clock. Overall, though, the KG920 is at the lower end in terms of non-camera and music functions, and while you can use it in USB mode for file sharing with the provided cable, which could prove handy, you can’t synchronize calendar or any other data.

To sum it up, the KG920 is a bulky phone to carry around all the time. It measures 108mm tall x 50mm wide x 18mm thick and weighs 130g. All it has to offer is its camera and a few features here and there. It does justice with the images it produces though, so you won’t feel slighted buying this phone as a phone and a camera/music player built as one.

Sources:
http://www.mobileburn.com
http://www.itreviews.co.uk
http://www.3g.co.uk