LG intros thin 8MP touch cameraphone

LG this morning surprised the phone market with an early look at the KC910. Considered a spiritual successor to the KU990 Viewty, the new device has both LG's highest-resolution camera at eight megapixels but is still thin enough at 14mm (0.55in) to fit comfortably in a pocket. The new camera sensor is also said to lose nothing in image quality over the Viewty with full speed, 30FPS 640x480 video capture, a special 120FPS slow-motion mode and an ISO 1600 light sensitivity comparable more to dedicated point-and-shoot cameras than cellphones.

The handset has the same three-inch, 400x240 LCD dimensions as the Viewty or Prada but also has a much faster Internet connection, adding both Wi-Fi as well as 3G celluar data support via HSDPA with up to 7.2Mbps speeds downstream. Bluetooth and a microSDHC slot are also built-in.

Korea-based LG unusually declines to name the operating system for the phone; no clues have surfaced as to whether the device will use some variant on the Linux-based software at the heart of most of its other touchscreen phones or else will switch to Windows Mobile or a similar OS. LG is part of the Open Handset Alliance backing Google's Android platform but isn't officially poised to launch an Android device until 2009.

The KC910 launches in October and will support quad-band GSM, hinting at a possible release in North America rather than the Asian and European areas that limited the tri-band Prada and Viewty in the past. [via Phone Arena]

Filed under: gadgets, mobile phones
Other story tags: Google, Linux, Windows Mobile, Android, LG, Prada, Viewty