Our LG Renoir Review

LG Renoir Front

Design

The LG Renoir‘s is definitely a piece of art. We thought it was properly named after the great Renoir with its smooth, refined look. Its glossy grey exterior gives off an industrial mood and its curves a modern social networking look. We found it to be quite similar to the iPhone with its touch-screen and general frame. The design is quite minimalist focusing on one element: the screen. It would’ve used some finishing touches, as its exterior looks rather cheap lacking the lustre and class it brings to the market.

Screen

At 3.0 inches, the LG Renoir‘s screen boasts a 256,000 colours at a 240x400 resolution. The pixel density is stunning and makes the images alive and on fire. The touch screen is responsive and easy to handle, a definite plus for it over other competitive handsets. It has a built-in accelerometer that automatically switches orientation with you turn the handset to type in a message, browse, or watch videos.

LG Renoir Front

User Interface

The LG Renoir‘s user interface is filled with lively animations and smooth scrolls. The user interface is similar to that of the LG Viewty but improved with new performance features. The home screen widgets are easy to handle and remove and save time to get to your favourite applications. Re-arranging the icons is as easy as pressing for a few seconds and moving the icon. On the downside, the more widgets you have, the more it takes for the handset to start. It can get a bit slow with a plethora of applications and widgets.

The improved user interface switches smoothly between Java and other applications without freezing or slowing down. The settings and profiles can be easily accessed from the main screen.

Keypad

The LG Renoir cleverly utilizes its large screen by transforming it to an on-screen QWERTY keyboard for typing. It suffers slightly from the size of the virtual buttons, as you could easily press the wrong letter. We found the three main control buttons in the lower bottom to be quite responsive and minimalist.

Camera Lens

Camera & Multimedia

The LG Renoir sports an impressive 8.0 megapixel camera with a simple, easy to access interface. We loved the autofocus, not to mention, you can easily press on the object you want to zoom on with your finger. The face tracking focus technology is a great addition enabling you to shoot more clear photos. The blink prevention feature isn’t as handy as we expected it to be, as it warns you of blinking after the photo is taken making it more of a trial and error thing. Browsing your images is done with ease and exceptional smoothness expected from a touch-screen handset.

For after effects, a reliable image editor is available with interesting features such as the face beautification tool that acts like a mini-Photoshop filter clearing blemishes, red eyes, and adjusting brightness.

The media player isn’t as impressive as its camera. It lacks any equalizer profiles or music enhancement tools, but the sound offered is definitely a Dolby Sound quality. It resonates clearly with different music pieces. The 3.5 mm sound jack was nowhere to be found – a must-have feature for such a handset.

Video playback and recording is stellar in the LG Renoir. It shoots AVI videos with ease at 30 frames per second. The videos look great and snappy. Playback support includes DivX and Xvid movie support.

LG Renoir KC910 Back

Connectivity & Battery Life

The LG Renoir is a truly high-end handset with its connectivity options. It lacks 3G integration, but we weren’t disappointed by its web browsing experience. It supports GPS, Bluetooth, WAP 2.0, and WI-FI without slowing down or draining the battery life. The web browser loads the page instantly and zooming is done via the touch screen.

Battery life is average at best. It was disappointing for the handset is packed with great multimedia. A heavy multimedia user should expect to recharge his handset on a daily basis depending on how many applications he runs simultaneously and whether the Wi-Fi is turned on./p>

What We Liked

We liked the impressive 8 megapixel camera, great connectivity integration and GPS.

What We Disliked

The lack of a 3.5 mm jack and general user interface speed performance.

Our Final Verdict

The LG Renoir is winner both in performance and design. It competes head to head with Apple’s iPhone. Its camera and multimedia integration compete with the Sony Ericsson’s Walkman series. If you want a mix of the two, you have the LG Renoir: dynamic and affordable.

Compare Handsets

	Read Review
	LG Renoir
General
Form Factor	Candybar
Dimensions	105 x 54 x 13 (mm)
Talk Time	200 mins
Standby Time	350 hours
Weight	114 g
Quad Band	Yes
Photo and Video
Integrated Camera	Yes
Camera	8.00 megapixels
Camera Flash	Yes
Video Player	Yes
Phone
Vibrating Alert	Yes
Polyphonic Ringtones	Yes
Smart Phone	Yes
Internal Memory	50MB
Memory Card Type	micro (max 8GB)
Messaging
EMS	Yes
MMS	Yes
Predictive Text	Yes
Video Messaging	Yes
Screen
Colour Screen	Yes
Touch Screen	Yes
Handwriting Recognition	Yes
Screen Resolution	240 x 400 pixels
Screen Colour Depth	256K colours
Connectivity
3G	Yes
Bluetooth	Yes
Email	Yes
GPRS	Yes
HSDPA	Yes
WAP	Yes
Web Browser	Yes
Wi-Fi	Yes
GPS	Yes
Music and Radio
MP3 Player	Yes
MP3 Ringtones	Yes
Additional Content
Downloadable Content	Yes
Downloadable Games	Yes
Downloadable Ringtones	Yes

LG Renoir Full Specification

General

Photo and Video

Phone

Messaging

Screen

Connectivity

Music and Radio

Additional Content

User Comments

Images of the LG Renoir

LG Renoir Front

LG Renoir Front

Camera Lens

LG Renoir KC910 Back