As a rule I don't like to review products, but this one had such potential and left me so deflated that I had to write:

 

I was persuaded to take an LG KC910 Renoir (http://uk.lgmobile.com/web/web.product.RetrievePhoneInfo.laf) as a contract upgrade from 3.  I was told it was the very latest and top of the range and that for me they'd wave the £148 charge to have it on a special tarrif rate.  After first being sent to the wrong address and collected by a kindly neighbour that remembered me, I eventually got my hands on it and started playing with it today.

 

This 'upgrade' was to replace my Nokia N95, but after today's experience I think I'll be going back to it and selling the Renoir on eBay and end up just paying extra for my 18 month contract.  I would have returned it to 3 but the only way I could get the bad experience was by actually using it, not just flicking through the menu options.

 

OK, so it's a fancy touch screen with A-GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and Quad band with an incredible 8M pixel camera plus an 8GB micro-SD card and Dolby Mobile for your music.  It even came in 'Titan Gun Metal' colour, (that's dark grey to you and me!) So it's got all the right components but then it only runs Java applications so Google Maps is hideously slow and Skype won't even start!

 

Physically, it's nice - small, light and sleek, but then they go and put the propriatory headphone socked on the side so it sticks out like a prevervial sore thumb!

 

I was firstly taken by suprise at how aggressive the auto 'Power Save' setting is. Not being used to the UI or using a touch screen phone I wanted to take my time over using the device, but it timed out, blanking the screen every 5 seconds and you have to press the unlock button on the side to reactivate it!  So I turned the power save feature off since there was not way to adjust the timeout period that I could find.

 

Whilst on the subject of a touchscreen, I have to say that text entry is a real pain!  If you have a combination of letters and numbers (in a password for example) then you have to cycle though the keypad modes (letters->numbers->symbols->letters etc) to make your entry, rather than just being able to hold a key down to get the number as I've been used to on the Nokia.

 

The camera is very nice, but the picture editing software is clearly where all the effort for this phone has gone. It's completely over the top, but then I guess that's why it's called a Renoir.  You can do very fancy editing and picture composition with this stuff, but why do it on your phone when you will do it better and faster on your PC / Mac?

 

The music player claims to play WMA's but I can't get it to even recognise a WMA music file let alone try to play it.  This is going to cause me years of pain and frustration.  What a senseless waste of human life is the continuous conversion of data formats...  Worse than that it only lists tracks in alphabetical order and if you want to listen to them actually in track order (for example for an audio book) then you have to create a playlist.  But hey, it plays DivX movies and has mono Dolby Mobile, so why should I care?

 

The menu navigation lack customisation and I think all the things are in the wrong places, it's just not intuitive.

 

One of the reasons I stuck with 3 (and this will probably be the last time) was that they have an app that allows you to synch lots of different email accounts over the air.  Multiple hotmail (sorry, Windows Live) accounts, Google mail, yahoo! mail and your SMS messages all end up in one nice common UI and it even pushes new messages to your phone.  But alas, this app is not available for the Renoir.  So that means I have to use the browser and the mobile web UI's on the Renoir.  My first port of call then is Windows Live mobile homepage.  All is going well so far and even after trying to type in my mail password using the onscreen keyboard for which my fingers are way to large to use so you have to use the stylus which is such an after thought as it is supplied in a little pouch to dangle from the corner of the phone rather than fitting into a secure integrated slot in the phone itself!!, oh sorry, where was I? yes, after entering my password I successfully logged into my mail account.

 

Now the Renoir browser is a bit odd in that it seems to display a micro overview of each page as it's downloading and then it suddenly leaps to full size so you can view it.  With the inbox page, alas there was not leaping.  So, I refreshed the page. Still no leaping. OK then, I'll use the zoom feature and zoom in.  Well, MSN and LG need to talk to get this to work.  When I eventually zoomed in to 80% I could read the subject titles and click the links, but alas, the 'read mail' page didn't go to full screen either, plus while doing all of this the 3G connection kept dropping - something that never happened with the Nokia!  It made hotmail impossible to use! Total rubbish!  Well done LG, 3 and Microsoft!

 

The KC910 (KC stand for Komplete Crap, I've concluded) has so far proven completely unusable for me.  I can't get my email, I can't download any podcasts, it won't play my music, it's difficult to use, it's slow, it's got a stupid stylus, it turns the screen off too quickly, half the display is replaced with stupid navigation keys whenever a Java app runs (eg Google maps or Skype or any of the games), it doesn't even stay connected to the data services and won't let you change connection for HSDPA to Wi-Fi without closing the app and loosing where you were.

 

Argggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!

 

I guess I'll be keeping my N95 alive for another 18 months.  Right, eBay here I come....

 

Maybe I'll try the built in 'jogging buddy' application tomorrow.... lol