LG KC780: 8 megapixel slider

Available now (Europe)
9th October 2008
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Eight megapixel camera phones are still pretty rare, so you would expect a manufacturer to make a song and dance about a new model. Not so with the LG KC780, which has had a very low-key launch from its manufacturer.

As with the new LG Renoir, the camera capabilities on the KC780 look pretty awesome. The 8 megapixel camera has autofocus and comes with a Schneider-Kreuznach certified lens. The camera has low-light sensitivity and can also compensate for scenes that are too brightly lit. Although LG don't mention a flash, it does look like there might be one on the back. The camera also has advanced face detection, image stabilisation and picture manipulation features. LG say that the KC780 can also capture D1 "DVD quality" video, which should mean a minimum of 640 x 480 pixels at 30 frames per second.

There are some clever Bluetooth 2.1 tricks with the KC780 - you can use it as a webcam via a Bluetooth connection, or send and receive text messages through your PC.

There is also a multimedia player, FM radio, web browser and email client plus a microSD slot to expand the 140MB of onboard memory up to 8GB. Multimedia playback looks good with support for all popular media types, plus DivX movies. The KC780 also has a document viewer which supports most common file types.

As you can see from the photos, the LG KC780 looks like a conventional slider from the front, but more like a camera from the back. In fact, the design of the camera reminds us a little of the old Sharp 902. The display is a 2.4" 240 x 320 pixel panel, which is fairly standard these days.

So far, so good.. but the LG KC780 has a couple of serious drawbacks - the main one being that it doesn't support 3G, and WiFi support would have been nice too. You might remember that we criticised the Motorola ZINE ZN5 for being a brilliant camera grafted to a pretty ordinary phone.. and the KC780 suffers from the same weaknesses (except that the ZN5 did at least have WiFi). Remember though that the LG KC780 isn't a flagship device.. but it is a somewhat mismatched combination in our view.

Talktime is up to 6 hours with a maximum of around 18 days standby time. At 119 grams and 107 x 52 x 14mm, the LG KC780 is perhaps a little on the heavy side.

LG say that the KC780 should be available in Europe during November, followed by the CIS and Asia Pacific markets. There's no indication on price, but we expect it to be a lot cheaper than the new LG Renoir.