LG Renoir review

You can adjust the exposure and ISO, up to 1,600. There's also a panorama mode, but it doesn't compare with the Samsung i8510's automatic panorama, which we were extremely impressed with. As if all of that weren't enough, the camera also records video at up to 120 frames per second, so that you can play it back in slow motion.

Our only disappointment with the Renoir's camera is its performance in low light, which we thought would be good considering there's a xenon flash. The flash provided less illumination than we expected when we tested it out in our dark room. We also found that at close range there was a bluish hue to pictures.

Back to the rest of the Renoir's tricks -- there's plenty more left to play with. As with the Viewty, the Renoir supports DivX and Xvid files, so you can view films and video clips, stored on microSDHC cards up to 8GB. If your digital media isn't formatted in a compatible codec, the software in the box lets you encode video files into DivX.

The Renoir is packing HSDPA for fast mobile Internet, and built-in GPS that can be used alongside Google Maps for navigation purposes or to geo-tag your pics, so that later on you can plot them on a map. There's also a jogging app that tracks how far you've run and how long it took you, similar to the Nike + or Nokia's Sports Tracker.

If you're curious about what it's like to text on the Renoir's touchscreen, we can report that although it's not perfect, it is pretty good. Whether it's an SMS or a Web page you're writing on, the Renoir pops up a traditional mobile keypad with predictive text or a full Qwerty keypad, depending on which way you hold it up.

Performance
Video looked good on the Renoir's screen and it's definitely large enough to enjoy sitting through a film. The audio quality during music playback definitely benefits from Dolby Mobile, which adds width and bass to otherwise flat-sounding tracks -- it's not just an equaliser. Call quality was loud and clear.

We're disappointed to see that the Renoir doesn't have a built-in 3.5mm headphone jack

LG rates its battery life at 350 hours standby and 220 minutes talk time. We'll update this section when we've completed our real-world battery-use testing.

Conclusion
As interfaces go, the Renoir's is usable but lacks the openness of other platforms, such as Android or Symbian. As a camera phone it performs well in daylight, but we think it could do better in the evening. The music player sounds good, but we wish there was a built-in 3.5mm headphone jack.

Overall, we found the Renoir to be a competent camera phone, but we're not convinced it's LG's best touchscreen phone to date. It's a logical upgrade from the Viewty, but compared to when the Viewty came out, we're not as impressed with it relative to the current competition.

With a few tweaks, such as a slightly more responsive screen, a 3.5mm headphone jack and an open platform such as Android, we think LG could really shake the market up. Fingers crossed we'll see this push forward from LG soon.

Edited by Nick Hide