LG KC780 Review

Introduction:

Do you recall the times when VGA camera phones were the cream of the crop of what people could buy? Well, it´s been a while since then. The period has seen camera megapixels increase to as many as 8 now, the best you can get as of now. The thing is phones with similar cameras come with a rather steep price tag. What if they were inexpensive? We present you the LG KC780, the successor of the KC550. This is the cheapest device with 8-megapixel camera on the market that targets people who are on the lookout for a decently performing camera phone that you won´t need to break the bank to buy. It doesn´t sport impressive specs, other than the camera itself, although the phone offers passable multimedia capabilities, including DivX support. Now, let´s cut to the chase.

Design:

The KC780 won´t exactly cause people to turn their heads your way as, say, the shiny Arte does, but is far from being ugly as well. It has nicely looking round shape, but the hump on its back, where the camera is, is hard to miss. Well, it´s not like the hunchback of Notre Dame, but just a small bulge really. Remember our review of the 5-megapixel Motorola ZINE ZN5? The ZN5 had the exact same thing, but a bit more pronounced.

Looking the LG KC780 in the face reveals a rather small as per today´s standards 2.4-inch QVGA screen with 262k colors that sports the same specs as its little, angular brother - the KC550. Display delivers decent image quality with enough contrast and nice colors, although they are not as saturated as we would have liked. Taking the phone outdoors doesn´t render the screen unusable and details remain discernible. 




You can compare the LG KC780 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The standard 5 directional D-Pad is right below the screen, along with the send, end and back buttons. They are all easy to press and won´t give you any troubles, but we wish the latter wasn’t jammed in so close to the D-Pad, which makes pressing it somewhat uncomfortable.

You will have to rely on older input methods to enter text, i.e. on the hardware, numeric keypad. Like the other buttons, it is comfy plus the slightly curved key rows makes the keys easy to find by touch.


The microSD card slot is on the right hand side of the LG KC780 along with the most important button, the camera shutter, while volume rocker and charger port that also provides data connectivity are on the opposite. We wonder if the manufacturer will ever chuck up its own, unique solution and switch over to a standard microUSB port. And if yes, when exactly?



As a whole, the phone features nice design that, even if not impressive, makes the device pleasing to behold and use. Read the following pages to find out what is under the cover of the LG KC780.

Software:

Normally this is the time when we go about the home screen, main and contacts menus etc, but today we are skipping this part. You wonder why? Interface of the LG KC780 is virtually the same as the KC550, still looks upbeat, modern and as easy to use as ever. So let´s get straight to the things this phone has been designed for, namely camera and multimedia. If you still want to know more about the interface, please read our review of the LG KC550. And yes, we almost forgot - there is only one new thing the KC780 brings out in terms of interface – pressing the back button while at the home screen causes a small app to appear on screen. The phone comes with only three of these – clock, calendar and gallery. To make sure most people find these apps appealing, the manufacturer provides three different skins, so you can switch to the one you like most.



Multimedia:

Even if not brimming with extra features, audio player looks cool and offers almost everything you might come to need. It provides filtering by artist, album and genre or simply displays a huge list of all songs you have on the phone. Once you´ve started listening, you can access the equalizer menu and choose one of the ten presets to best suit your taste. If you feel like surfing the Web while the audio player is running, you don´t need to turn it off since it also works in the background. Unfortunately, there is no option to visualize album art.

In case you feel tired of listening to all the same music over and over again, turn the FM radio on; just remember you need to plug the earphones in. 



Now, let´s get to videos. According to the spec list, the LG KC780 should be able to support DivX files, although our particular unit failed to recognize them, no matter if the file was in .AVI or .DIVX format. Then we tried out an H.264 video, we were even more unpleasantly surprised to find out audio was good, but the video stream was missing. In desperation, we decided to have a shot at an H.263 video file and guess what - video content with resolution up to 720x304 pixels ran smoothly with no issues whatsoever. When we get the LG´s response on our findings, we will update the review.



Camera:

Now, we´ve just made it to the part that has surely made most of you start reading this particular review. In other words, the camera. As we mentioned at the beginning, it´s 8-megapixel one that, aside from the stunning resolution, also features autofocus, LED flash, image stabilizer, manual focus, face detection and a bunch of other options. Erm, did we mention you could take panoramic snapshots? In this particular case they consist of three smaller pictures. The right hand part of the first shot appears on screen as soon as you´ve snapped it so as to help you align and take the second and so on. Promising, isn´t it? Unfortunately, camera interface is one of the slowest we have ever seen to date. Pictures are finished in no less but 6-7 seconds after you press the shutter. But this is not all.  You need another 20 seconds until the picture is finally saved and you get to the next one. Needless to say, this is extremely annoying and we do hope a software update comes out soon.



Don´t worry, we are getting to the image quality, no need to get pushy. Camera provides enough details to outdoor pictures, although colors in some of our test shots were a bit blurry. Situation gets much worse when you take the phone indoors. Almost nine out of ten pictures had so much image noise that we thought we had inadvertently put a filter in front of the camera, since they looked like they were taken in a fog. The level of details remained decent, but the above issue makes using the camera indoors pretty pointless.




The LG KC780 can capture videos with maximum resolution of 720x480 pixels at 15 frames per second. As a whole, they are usable, although lacked enough details. Have you seen “Time warp” on “Discovery channel”? They use fast motion cameras and then show you how things look in slow motion. The KC780 can do that too, but it´s a shame the maximum resolution is limited to just 320x240 pixels in this case, meaning they are only watchable on cell phones or YouTube.

LG KC780 sample video at 720x480 pixels resolution

Performance:

LG KC780 is a snappy phone that almost never gets sluggish while navigate around menus. It´s only camera that is so maddeningly slow it makes you feel as if you were driving down a road with speed bumps all over. Still, we are pretty happy with the overall responsiveness of the phone. After all, whether or not menus respond in 6 or 7 milliseconds is not an important thing in our books. How it fares when it comes to calls though, is. The KC780 put on an admirable performance with this regard. During our tests people were able to hear us loud and clear, although voices sounded a bit muffled and sharp on our end. Still, we were able to understand what we were being told with no problem at all. The phone has a built-in speaker, but this hardly comes as a surprise. To have one is nice indeed, although we would´ve felt much better if it was actually usable. Truth be told, audio quality is pretty good, the thing is sound lacks enough punch and you will find yourself unable to understand people in even not overly noisy environment.

Conclusion:

As a whole, we are content with the device. Unfortunately it failed to perform properly in both key areas, namely camera and video playback. The LG KC780 should be capable of DivX playback, but its software couldn´t even find the video files. Snapping a shot takes about 25 seconds, while picture quality is not even at par with what the competition offers. The good news is all these issues are easily addressed and fixed with a software update. As of now, the KC780 is offered at pretty much the same price as the LG Renoir, Samsung Pixon or Sony Ericsson C905, so we would advise you to research your options. They seem to be much better!

LG KC780 Video Review: