I have been in the market for about a year trying to find a dedicated point-and-shoot camera that is compact and yet offers adequate manual controls that I need as a photographer.

But at the same time, I have been resisting the idea of toting a separate device, preferring instead to use a camera phone for those quick snapshots. In the past, I’d been served well by first the venerable Sony Ericsson K750i and later a Sony Ericsson W760i; I particularly liked the K750i for its manual controls. Indeed, some of my favorite shots were taken with that phone.

I was left without a good camera after I switched to the iPhone 3G. Into the scene entered the LG Viewty Smart GC900. In the past two weeks, I’ve been using it extensively, putting it through the paces by taking photographs and video clips of just about everything I come across.

Now that the NDA I was bound to has been lifted, and that LG Singapore has officially unveiled this device last week at CommunicAsia 2009, I am free to share with you my overall impressions about the Viewty Smart^*.

My review will be in two parts. In Part One, I’ll talk about the camera aspects of this device, while in Part Two, I’ll offer my thoughts about the Viewty Smart as a phone. I should add a disclaimer: Yes, LG did give me a free unit, but in no ways are the opinions expressed here swayed by that fact.

Update 25.08.09:

An update to the “hot pixels” problem: LG advised that the problem is ostensibly caused by a defective lens on my unit, and has since swapped it with a replacement set.

Unfortunately, the problem exists even in the new set. In casual observation, the number of hot pixels in each and every image taken seems to be even more than those taken with my previous set. Also, the hot pixels now vary in size, in a mix of some large and some small ones. On the previous set, the hot pixels were instead more consistently of the same size.

I’m beginning to strongly suspect that the problem is caused by the sensor more than anything else. I’m awaiting a response from LG, and will update this post again.

First impressions matter

As the successor to last year’s Viewty KU900, the Viewty Smart GC900 is LG’s sophomore effort in its foray into a product line of mobile phones in which the camera is the most defining feature. You can think of the Viewty product line as LG’s equivalent of Sony Ericsson’s Cyber-shot class of camera phones (‘C’ series, previously designated as ‘K’).

Perhaps the biggest initial reaction I had to the Viewty Smart was the surprise that it came from a name I don’t immediately associate “good camera phones” with. I confess my initial reaction at being invited to test an LG camera phone had been one of skepticism.

But now I am glad to tell you that the Viewty Smart has rekindled the joy of shooting with a camera phone for me; it is that strong an offering by LG. Coming from someone who has never before considered any camera phone not made by Sony Ericsson―the only folks who I personally feel take their cameras seriously―that is high praise enough.

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