The LG KU990 or LG KE990 (known and marketed as the LG Viewty) is a 3.5G touchscreen

smartphone A smartphone is a mobile phone with advanced computing capabilities. It typically has a touchscreen interface, allowing users to access a wide range of applications and services, such as web browsing, email, and social media, as well as multi ...

LG Electronics LG Electronics Inc. () is a South Korean Multinational corporation, multinational major appliance and consumer electronics corporation headquartered in Yeouido-dong, Seoul, South Korea. LG Electronics is a part of LG, LG Corporation, the fourth ...

, announced on August 23, 2007 and then released in Europe and Asia. A high-end model at the time of its release, the Viewty had a

resistive touchscreen A resistive touchscreen is a type of touchscreen, touch-sensitive display that works by detecting pressure applied to the screen. It is composed of two flexible sheets coated with a resistive material and separated by an air gap or microdots. ...

and was specially marketed for its camera due to its powerful camera features. The Viewty had a high gloss black look similar to the previous LG Prada, although it was also released in many other colours. In South Korea, it was known as the Beauty Phone ().

Features

Camera

A key feature of the LG Viewty is its 5-megapixel

digital camera A digital camera, also called a digicam, is a camera that captures photographs in Digital data storage, digital memory. Most cameras produced today are digital, largely replacing those that capture images on photographic film or film stock. Dig ...

with

Schneider Kreuznach Joseph Schneider Optische Werke GmbH (commonly referred to as Schneider) is a manufacturer of industrial and photographic optics. The company was founded on 18 January 1913 by Joseph Schneider as Optische Anstalt Jos. Schneider & Co. at Bad Kr ...

optics,

Xenon Xenon is a chemical element; it has symbol Xe and atomic number 54. It is a dense, colorless, odorless noble gas found in Earth's atmosphere in trace amounts. Although generally unreactive, it can undergo a few chemical reactions such as the ...

flash,

autofocus An autofocus (AF) optical system uses a sensor, a control system and a motor to focus on an automatically or manually selected point or area. An electronic rangefinder has a display instead of the motor; the adjustment of the optical system h ...

, and a digital image stabilizer. It features an ISO 800-equivalent High-Sensitivity mode for night scenery shots and "Smart Light" for bright and clear images in the dark. It allows capturing of MP4

VGA Video Graphics Array (VGA) is a video display controller and accompanying de facto graphics standard, first introduced with the IBM PS/2 line of computers in 1987, which became ubiquitous in the IBM PC compatible industry within three years. T ...

video at 30 FPS, and

QVGA A display resolution standard is a commonly used width and height dimension (display resolution) of an electronic visual display device, measured in pixels. This information is used for electronic devices such as a computer monitor. Certain com ...

at 120 FPS for slow-motion playback. According to the manufacturer, the camera's frame rate is high enough to film a

balloon A balloon is a flexible membrane bag that can be inflated with a gas, such as helium, hydrogen, nitrous oxide, oxygen, or air. For special purposes, balloons can be filled with smoke, liquid water, granular media (e.g. sand, flour or rice), ...

bursting. The Viewty also has a front camera, designed for 3G video calling.

YouTube

In addition to being able to view

YouTube YouTube is an American social media and online video sharing platform owned by Google. YouTube was founded on February 14, 2005, by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim who were three former employees of PayPal. Headquartered in ...

videos, the LG Viewty also featured the ability to upload videos directly onto the platform.

Applications

The device supports Flash Lite 2 and MIDP

Java Java is one of the Greater Sunda Islands in Indonesia. It is bordered by the Indian Ocean to the south and the Java Sea (a part of Pacific Ocean) to the north. With a population of 156.9 million people (including Madura) in mid 2024, proje ...

2.0. There are a few built-in system applications like Office and a PDF document viewer, movie and photo editor, and Obigo web browser.

Sliding disc

The rear camera has a wheel that physically rotates, which can be used for scrolling in menus, zooming in and out of webpages or changing the volume.

KU990i

An updated model, the KU990i, was later released, but only in European markets. It features a new camera module, always-on flash mode and automatic smile and face detection. However, the strobe flash is replaced by an LED, and it does not include image stabilization nor Schneider Kreuznach optics.

Limitations

The organizer in the phone could only store 100 calendar events and is not officially listed on the compatible list with the popular GooSync, which helps sync phone calendars with Google Calendar (though it does work by using instructions for LG Arena).

Model differences

The KU990 was the original Viewty model. The KE990 was released in 2008 and lacks 3G (

HSDPA High Speed Packet Access (HSPA) is an amalgamation of two mobile protocols—High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) and High Speed Uplink Packet Access (HSUPA)—that extends and improves the performance of existing 3G mobile telecommunic ...

) support, but does have a camera cover. In South Korea its model numbers were LG SH10/KH2100/LH2100.

Sales and reception

''Mobile Phones UK'' praised the device, calling it a "souped-up Prada" and commenting that the Viewty "ticks all the boxes" in terms of features. ''TechRadar'' in its review wrote that the device was stylish and praised its camera and HSDPA connection, but criticised the lack of a lens cover and the "fiddly" rotating disc. LG reported sales of 310,000 units in Europe in the first five weeks. A blog entry by UK mobile phone reseller ''Dial-A-Phone'' suggested that the Viewty was outselling the

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

iPhone The iPhone is a line of smartphones developed and marketed by Apple that run iOS, the company's own mobile operating system. The first-generation iPhone was announced by then–Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs on January 9, 2007, at ...

in the region, citing anecdotal reports of sluggish sales and Apple's reluctance to publish figures for the iPhone in the region as evidence. The pricing and featuresets of the two phones were used as an explanation. In January 2009, LG reported that the Viewty had sold 5 million units after 14 months on the market. It was succeeded by the

LG Renoir The LG KC910 Renoir is a high-end feature phone released by LG Electronics. The LG Renoir was the world's first full touchscreen 8-megapixel camera phone. It debuted on 2 October 2008 as the successor of the LG Viewty. Like the Viewty is incorpo ...

in 2008. A number of newer Viewty phones were then released: the Viewty Smart (GC900) in 2009, which was similar to the LG Arena but with improved camera capabilities, and two budget phones in 2010—the Viewty Snap and the Viewty Smile.

Specification sheet

References

External links

Official Website

TechCast Reviews the LG Viewty KU990 - with video
{{DEFAULTSORT:Lg Viewty (Ku990) KU990 Mobile phones introduced in 2007