Video playback

Following the Viewty tradition, video capture quality is a notch or two above most other mobiles. It can shoot in maximum VGA (640x480 pixels) resolution at up to 30 frames per second, so footage plays back clear and smoothly.

Alternatively, you can shoot in slow motion mode (120 fps, QVGA resolution) for a neat slo-mo playback effect, or on another setting capture slow moving images (5fps) for time-lapse style playback. Footage can be easily uploaded to YouTube too, courtesy of an option in the recorder software.

Thanks to the large display, video playback looks good onscreen. That 8GB card can be used to store video as well as music, and it's easy enough to view videos copied from a PC or downloaded over the air via Wi-Fi or mobile connectivity.

DivX and Xvid are both supported on the Renoir, and there's a TV-out option to plug and play back video on a bigger screen.

Enhanced music player

The music player on the Renoir benefits from the addition of Dolby Mobile audio processing technology, which has been developed to enhance mobile phone music playback quality.

Here it works very well, boosting certain frequencies - including thumping bass - and creating a wider soundscape, giving a very pleasing audio experience. Again, the music player works efficiently with a decent, intuitive user interface.

While not as sophisticated as Apple's iPhone, the tune-player does a capable job for playback quality.

Headphone connections

LG hasn't though included a standard headphone 3.5mm jack socket on the phone body – something that we like seeing on any phone serious about music. Instead, it boxes a 2-piece headset which has an in-line 3.5mm adapter socket.

This isn't the most elegant solution, but it means you can add your own better quality headphones to maximise the phone's audio performance; the in-box LG earphones are fine, but nothing special, so you can make a real difference with a decent set of ear-wear.

The lack of a separate 3.5mm headphone socket means you can't use the LG USB/charger/earphone connector for charging while listening to music or video content or using TV-out, which can be a pain if you don't want to run your battery down.

Alternatively, you could invest in a set of Bluetooth headphones. The earphones still need to be plugged in, however to listen in to the phone's FM radio.

Although the phone only has 70MB of internal memory, the 8GB MicroSD card supplied gives ample out-of-the-box room for music, video, high res images and other content.

Location services

Location-based services are becoming de-rigeur on high-end mobiles now, and the Renoir has its own A-GPS technology packed inside.

A suite of Google software can come pre-loaded on the phone (though not every mobile network operator version of the Renoir carries it), which includes the useful Google Maps application.

Google Maps can be used for spot-on location finding, mapping, route-finding and searches. It's not full-blown Sat Nav voice guided software, however, and there was no other Sat Nav mapping onboard our review sample – just a Jogging Buddy A-GPS assisted application for monitoring and recording running performances.. While that worked well enough, and the A-GPS was zippy enough getting a fix, we felt LG could have made more of this feature.

The absence of a smartphone operating system means the sort of sophisticated Sat Nav software packages available for Symbian S60 and Windows Mobile devices can't be added.

As it is, GPS can be used for geo-tagging photos – adding location details which can be used to display on a Google map or other mapping service the exact position where snaps have been taken.

Online phone services

With Wi-Fi and HSDPA, the phone's well geared up for online activity. As well as fast upload options for image to Blogger accounts, and video clips to YouTube, there's a full web browser that works well.