There are two camera centric keys on the LG Renoir and they are placed on the right hand side of the device. The shutter key also starts the camera, while the image stabilisation key activates the digital image stabilization for situations where there are low levels of light.
The microSD memory card slot and the proprietary LG connectivity port are on the right side of the device. The LG Renoir we received comes with a 8GB microSD card and it worked flawlessly.
When you turn the LG Renoir over, you will see that the camera lens are hidden behind a mechanical protective cover, unfortunately this isn’t automatic or else this could be a major feature to dwell on! Sliding the ring like structure around the lens will open and close the cover, this in turn also activates the camera automatically. This partially protective feature is great for those who are abit more careless than others (I can name a few people I know already!), keeping the precious lens protected this way on the Renoir is a must have brilliant idea.
Unlike the slide wheel used on the Viewty, you can’t use the wheel around the lens for anything else besides opening the lens cover. The manual focus function is not operated with it, but is instead commanded by a virtual on-screen slider.
As we mentioned earlier, LG have done considerable work updating the user interface that many of you will know from the LG Viewty. Scrolling is much smoother and makes you think a lot of the Apple iPhone’s, but in my opinion LG still needs to work on this for future releases.
But the UI does work in a quite a similar manner to the iPhone. One example that suggests this is when you scroll to the bottom of a list, the items don’t just stop scrolling, but they react to your swipes with elasticity as if they are almost physical. Like the Viewty, every touch is accompanied by a short vibration and a tone by default, but this can be changed through touch settings. Though this wasn’t exactly my cup of tea, some of our team did like the feeling of having touch feedback and actually felt that the screen was more sensitive than the iPhone’s because of this.
However, like the Viewty, the UI still tends to be sluggish but only slightly when loading applications or widgets, I wouldn’t say this was a major issue in any way.
Another update to the user interface is that the main menu items are no longer fixed, there are animations and when pressed longer, a circle surrounds the icon and you can move the icons around, reorganising them – this reminds me of that in the iPhone OS which wriggles about for the same purpose.
LG have also updated the home screen widgets, now you have a wider choice of those and they are easier to control. Among those there is a Weather widget, which periodically retrieves information about your local weather. There is also a Contacts widgets, which offers image-based quick dial pad. I suppose the major drawback of this new widgets system is that the activated widgets need time to load up and delay when you really want it to appear on the home screen each time you wake up the device. Again, dragging out the widgets and activate them from the menu in the first place isn’t a smooth scroll, this should improve in the future without a doubt.
Here are more screenshots of the new user interface (both white and black themes come built in):
Here are just a few last screenshots showing the SMS / messaging and email interface:
So this is the end of part 1 of our LG Renoir KC910 review, in part 2 we’ll be taking a look at the Renoir’s camera functionality, showing you some sample photos and videos. So look out for that to be published right after Christmas!
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