LG's Viewty Smart shipping this month, 12MP smartphone "later this year"

We've yet to see anything roll across LG's official wire, but oodles of legitimate UK sources are now reporting that LG's hotly anticipated Viewty Smart is making its way out to Orange shops. Strangely, it seems as if pricing details are still being held captive (really? at this point?), but we fully anticipate at least a small premium for 8 megapixels in a phone. Oh, and if you really needed any more affirmation that a 12 megapixel smartphone was in the works from this company, LG also took the opportunity to nod its head and promise one for "later this year." Goodie, goodie.

[Via Pocket-lint]

[GoGoGadget @ May 14th 2009 8:03AM]

*yawn*
WINMO7FTW!!!

[Templarian @ May 14th 2009 8:20AM]

I can't tell form the photo, but I really hope that has a shutter of some type.

[Templarian @ May 14th 2009 8:20AM]

from*

[Phoenix @ May 14th 2009 8:22AM]

do you mean like a shutter inside, or a lens cover?

[darkmax @ May 14th 2009 8:33AM]

he means a lens cover. And no it does not. I sold my last viewty because of the potentially dangerous scratch situations it puts itself in, and then came the R.... shucks. And now they are back without a lens cover.

[Templarian @ May 14th 2009 8:50AM]

Yea, not a camera person, I meant a lens cover. It's a large surface to accidentally scratch a key against.

[Gregorian @ May 14th 2009 8:23AM]

12MP! phones! cameras! cliche! cliche! feigned outrage!
WinMo! Smartphone! Derision and LoL!

I think that covers the usual stuff.

[TT @ May 14th 2009 8:48AM]

And ofcourse the usual iPhone ones.
But meh, don't really care for this one, I've got a regular Viewty and a TyTN II, and I almost never use my Viewty, only for when I forget to charge the battery on my TyTN...

And the 12MP smartphone?
You've got me interested!
As long as it's using Tegra APX2600 (Android, APX2500 is for WinMo, though that'd be fine as well), and has a nice and big capacitive screen with a good resolution (How about 854x480?).

[superhobo @ May 14th 2009 9:01AM]

sensor size! noise!

[Aaron @ May 14th 2009 8:28AM]

I'd rather have the Samsung i8910 HD. 8MP + HD video recording. :)

[Shinigami @ May 14th 2009 9:44AM]

I'd rather have Nvidia Tegra phone, but yet again, none are out yet and there are no news/rumors of them coming, only Nvidia's "will start shiping in H2 2009".
Omnia HD does not support HD video recording.
Try and you'll understand why I say so. The best video recording it supports is 720x480 @ 30 fps. Anything better is made by using more where there is nothing left: running the battery dry in 30 minutes (means you need a separate battery for video recording), having a low framerate (you'll notice the frames being torn) and HORRIBLE SOUND QUALITY (don't trust the videos where the sound is OK, they re-made it and now its totally horrible, ask Samsung why).

Other than that Omnia HD is a great thing. Just a bit too expensive. I won't be surprised to see $1000+ price.

[Dragonfly @ May 14th 2009 4:14PM]

Can't for the life of me understand why anyone would want HD video recording on a mobile phone?! I spoke to one of the Sony Ericsson reps today at work and he told me that recording video in HD would consume an estimated 17MB per second?! (to be honest not too sure if thats factual) If that figure is in fact true, then that would chew through memory like crazy!

[darkmax @ May 14th 2009 8:34AM]

At least now the battery cover is easier to remove. I wonder if it still does that thing with the SD cards of a greater capacity?

[Anticrawl @ May 14th 2009 8:51AM]

SDHC?

It'd be stupid of an 8MP camera to not support them.

[franceinshirts @ May 14th 2009 8:40AM]

Well, does someone has facts on LG cameras ?

[Shinigami @ May 14th 2009 9:31AM]

LG Secret camera made decent pictures in broad daylight, being a 12mm slider its a considerable result.

[franceinshirts @ May 14th 2009 8:42AM]

As I very doubt the qualitty of LG...


Chris
------------------------------
http://www.franceinshirts.com

[Mavoric @ May 14th 2009 10:20AM]

Lets hope that the user interface is better than the the orginall viewty and that the screen is better, had to send mine in for repair 4 times because of marks under the screen (including after fixing it) which btw would still be a problem if I hadn't got trading standards involved!

[pika2000 @ May 14th 2009 10:38AM]

12MP, yet not even a lens cover. Great for blurry noisy pictures. *sigh

[TT @ May 14th 2009 10:48AM]

That's not the 12MP phone...
It's the Viewty Smart, 8MP.
We don't know anything about the 12MP one yet.

[Paul @ May 14th 2009 10:51AM]

What we really want is XENON flash & Smartphone software (win mobile 6.5 or android) NOT lgs own software, there are virtually no apps to install on there software, 3.2/3.5 inch screen NOT another 3inch screen please, dont really care about mega pixel size as long as it is at least 5 mega pixel.

[mattergenocide @ May 14th 2009 12:04PM]

this phone is amazing imo, just what ive been waiting for

[daniel B @ May 14th 2009 1:12PM]

I dont understand why engadget a supposedly technologically literate site is taking such a stupid consumerist attitude to things. Why are you saying"goodie. goodie" to a higher megapixel count which just leads to noisier, less detailed images on chips this size? Are you encouraging manufacturers to dupe consumers?

[Dragonfly @ May 14th 2009 4:07PM]

I happen to work within the mobile phone industry and have actually played with this handset. All I can say is the camera/picture quality is fantastic! You can actually feel the lens vibrate while it pulls images into focus. The rest however, is pretty much more of the same stuff you expect from LG.