The 5-megapixel camera on the LG KU990 Viewty is so easy to use that you could well find yourself snap-snapping away at length. It meets all three ease of use requirements in this respect: it is fast to switch on thanks to the side button that gets the software going, easy to flick between video and stills modes thanks to a side-mounted slider switch, and easy to use the various settings and features thanks to touch screen buttons.

When you’ve finished making settings, tapping the screen at any point that doesn’t offer a settings option turns the whole screen into a sideways on landscape viewfinder, with tiny icons reminding you what settings you’ve made – is the macro mode in use, is the flash on, what is the ISO and where are your photos being saved to (handset or memory card) for example.

The Xenon flash makes shooting indoors a bit more pleasant than it is with a normal LED flash, though you won’t always get the quality of images you might be used to if you have a dedicated digital camera.

Outdoors the camera does fairly well, though on duller days we found some photos looked a little washed out.

Once your photos have been taken and are stored in the phone there's a neat viewer which can show a sequence or random shots full screen. You can use the wheel that surrounds the camera lens to zoom. When you are zoomed in a thumbnail is displayed in the bottom right corner of the screen and tapping this moves the zoomed area around – or you can just pull the zoomed picture around using a finger on the screen.

Photo editing software is provided and you can use this to crop images, add text, stamps and handsfree drawing, apply frames and use a range of effects. There is also a studio for creating photo slideshows and joining movies together, complete with playback to music.

Finally, it is a pity there is no lens cover for the camera. With a camera as good as this one is, you might find that over time a scratched lens becomes a real nuisance.