LG Viewty Snap GM360 review

Can a featurephone still cut it against the budget Android brigade?

The definitive LG Viewty Snap review
The definitive LG Viewty Snap review

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LG viewty snap review

Taking decent pictures is the LG Viewty Snap GM360's ostensible niche. To help with that is the Optic-all zoom. As we said at the start of this review, however, it's not an optical zoom. In fact, it isn't even a zoom feature as we would usually understand one.

Optic-all zoom is a software feature that results in improved image quality as you zoom in on the phone. It doesn't function on images over 1MP in size, even though the camera shoots at up to 5MP.

Presumably, that's because of the technical resources needed to implement the improved zooming quality. Regardless, it isn't worth writing home about.

There aren't many photographic bells and whistles – just a Macro mode; a choice of three, six or nine continuous shots; a range of colour effects; White Balance settings for cloudy, incandescent, sunny and fluorescent lighting conditions; and a self timer. It's all fairly standard fare, even on much lesser handsets.

Still, the camera does shoot pretty decent photos and benefits from having a flash.

LG viewty snap gm360: test camera image 1

This shot reminds us of the glorious sunny September day on which it was taken. The definition is good and the sky really was that blue and cloudless.

See the full size version here.

LG viewty snap gm360: test camera image 2

The camera struggled a little with this photo, because the foreground was in shade and that bridge on the left of shot was painted bright white, giving it a lot of variation in brightness to deal with. Still, it is a passable photo.

See the full size version here.

LG viewty snap gm360: test camera image 3

Zoom into this photo of an information board and it is perfectly readable, although there's obvious pixellation as you go further in.

See the full size image here.

LG viewty snap gm360: test camera image 4

The Macro mode enables you get so close to an image and no further. We were only a couple of inches from these blackberries and, as you can see, the photo's a bit blurry. This did not show up on the handset itself, though, and the colour reproduction is excellent.

See the full size image here.