Over the past few years, LG has significantly stepped up its game when it comes to mobile phones. We’ve had the Secret, Arena, Renoir and Viewty: all impressive, feature-packed handsets aimed at style-conscious consumers.
That trend continues with the Viewty Smart, a more powerful sequel to the original Viewty. Its predecessor was – as the name suggested – designed with snap-happy mobile photographers in mind and boasted a high-quality 5 megapixel camera.
The Viewty Smart naturally trumps this by rocking an 8 megapixel variant. And while imaging experts continue to inform us that megapixel size isn’t everything when it comes to photo quality, we were blown away by the snaps produced.
Not only are the images pin-sharp and packed with detail, but the colour balance is excellent. We feel that this phone will comfortably oust your dedicated point-and-shoot digital camera from its coveted position in your jacket pocket.
It’s not just the standard of the snaps that impresses either: the range of options available is also noteworthy. Several different shot modes are available, including one that promises to make all of your photos beautiful (although the success of this procedure naturally depends on the initial attractiveness of the subject matter – don’t go shooting a pig and expecting a work of art).
Putting aside the photographic prowess of the Viewty Smart, the phone exhibits the typically high standards showcased by pretty much every handset that comes out of LG’s factories these days.
The design is slim, light and robust – a world apart from the chunky Viewty Mk1 – although we have to admit we were slightly disappointed to discover that the back is plastic, though it appears to be brushed metal.
The front of the device is dominated by the 480×800 capacitive touchscreen. The only other feature is a single button which works very much like the Home key on Apple’s iPhone. External controls are kept to a bare minimum and this imbues the Viewty Smart with a sophisticated and uncluttered look.
LG’s S-Class interface – which made its debut with the Arena – makes a return, albeit in a slightly nippier guise. It’s still not quite as swift as we’d like, but the delay when switching between menus is less pronounced: clearly this phone is packing beefier hardware and RAM under the bonnet.
If we were going to pick fault with the Viewty Smart (and, to be honest, that’s what we’re here for) then we’d question the wisdom of producing a phone that can take 8 megapixel photos, display DivX movies and play music, but then giving it just 1.5GB of memory. Needless to say, that storage isn’t going to go very far, although there is the option to augment it with a microSD card, at least.
Another issue is the lack of a 3.5mm headphone jack – one of our constant bugbears with pretty much every mobile phone we seem to review these days. To be fair to LG, this isn’t being marketed exclusively as a music phone, but the tiresome use of proprietary headphones still annoys us.
However, such problems fail to dampen the resoundingly positive feeling we got from the Viewty Smart. This is a sexy, powerful and versatile mobile phone produced by a company that is truly hitting its stride at present. With product like this, it’s little wonder that LG happens to find itself being held in such high regard by consumers.
LG’s incredible run of quality continues with this ultra-desirable successor to the Viewty; if you’re looking to upgrade your phone but also want to avoid lugging a digital camera around, then this is highly recommended
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Manufacturer: LG
Price: from around £350 unlocked
Pocket Picks Score: 
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