LG has already made a pretty successful entry into the high-resolution camera phone market with the LG KC910 Renoir; a touchscreen phone which we believed gave the iPhone a run for its money with an eight-megapixel camera and slim size to go with it.
 
The KC780 is another phone with an eight-megapixel camera, but targets the mid-range market with a traditional slider design.

The first thing that you'll notice if you’ve experienced phones with this type of camera before is that it's suitably slim for anybody’s everyday purposes. It’s not exactly ultra-thin, but for most people this can easily fit into a pocket without any trouble. The same goes for the weight - at 119g, it's featherweight for such a highly-specced handset.

There’s nothing particularly extraordinary about slider design, but that’s fair given the fact that it is being sold as a no frills handset compared to the KC910 Renoir. There is also nothing there which gives it away as being a phone with a particularly high spec camera which most would consider a good thing. Yes, it’s not a headturner by any means, but it has a solid and reliable construction which compares well with any other slider out there
 
The main selling point about the phone is the camera, and happily, the KC780 lives up to its description on the box that it 'takes good pictures of people'. It carries some particular nifty features, such as a Schneider Kreuznach lens, autofocus, image stabiliser, red eye reduction and face recognition tracking. It also carries a ‘smile shot’ and ‘beautification mode’, just as the KC910 Renoir does.
 
LG claims that many of the camera’s technologies were built with the face in mind, and that’s probably a smart move when you consider that the main use for mobile phone pictures is for portraits and ‘Facebook style’ pictures – (drunk or otherwise).
 
The camera was tested in difficult surroundings- a drum and bass club night with flashing lights and difficult to judge lighting. And the camera performed reasonably well, though it did have trouble with physical movement. Overall, the majority of portrait pictures were excellent in quality. It also carries a video camera which saves in DivX format, but has nowhere near the number of features that the camera has.
 
The display of the KC780 is fairly standard, with a 2.4-inch screen widescreen LCD. The menu system is also fairly typical of phones of this price-range, but it does offer a cool-looking moving wallpaper as well as texts which is clear to read as well as looking more ‘solid’ than they do on phones from brands like Motorola and Sony Ericsson.
 
Call quality is comfortable, working well and clearly in all situations.

However the web browser is average, lacking 3G and only offering quadband GSM and GPRS/ Edge connectivity. The browsing experience is also quite clunky and fairly typical of what you might have expected from a mid-range slider phone.
 
There's the possibility of downloading applications like Google Mail and Maps to make browsing less than a chore, but the Internet experience was obviously never a priority when the makers were putting their thoughts into the phone’s design.
 
However, there are a number of other features which makes the KC780 feel a little more advanced than other sliders in this price-range. It has a range of advanced Bluetooth options such a Bluetooth Webcam option which allows you to connect the phone to your PC and use it as a webcam. An FM radio and voice recorder are also extra features which some might find an added bonus.
 
Sound quality is pretty good and offers a louder than usual loudspeaker option which while won’t be the source of a party, is better than usual than other phones of this type. For files and downloads there is also a fair amount of space with 140MB of internal space and the option to upgrade with a microSD memory slot.
 
The phone does offer some handy entertainment features. Using its built-in accelerometer, whichwas also been offered on handsets including the KC550, there are preloaded M-Toy motion-based games.
 
The LG KC780 is a solid slider phone, with many of the options you would expect and a few more that you wouldn’t. The thing that lifts the KC780 above the competition is the advanced camera, which doesn’t weigh it down but offers picture quality of a standard which most casual users will be very happy with. 

The LG KC780 is among the first wave of 8-megapixel cameraphones arriving in the UK market, and is pitched as a more affordable alternative to higher-end models such as LG's own Renoir KC910, Samsung's Pixon M8800 and i8510, and Sony Ericsson's C905.

The camera is capable of shooting images in maximum resolution of 3264x2448 pixels, so you can get detailed, good quality regular prints of images should you want to, or get finely detailed photos when blown up on a PC screen.

Unlike the Renoir and Pixon, the KC780 doesn't have a touchscreen-based user interface, relying on its more modestly-sized 2.4-inch display to frame and view images. Its camera user interface is operated more conventionally, using a combination of the phone's D-pad and softkey buttons to negotiate the clear onscreen menu options.

The KC780 has a more extensive set of camera features than most mobile phones, however, including some of the gadgetry found on the flagship Renoir. It has an autofocus system, but additional focusing options including a Macro mode for close-up shooting, Face recognition mode for automatically detecting and focusing on faces in shots, and a Smile shot option - when you press the shutter button, the camera will only take a pic when it detects the subject in a shot smiling.

The KC780 does have a flash built in for low light illumination, though it's an LED flash rather than the more powerful and precise xenon flash you get on standalone cameras and a few higher-end cameraphones.

A typical side-mounted camera button on the KC780 fires up the shooter, which takes around 3 seconds to come on. The easy-to-follow user interface includes a column of five shortcut icons ranged down the right hand side of the screen (Album, Video, Capture, Flash (on/off/auto), Macro (on/off)) which you can use or select with the D-pad controls. A softkey Settings options pulls up a more detailed selection of options for aiding or fine-tuning your camerawork. These are arranged in two large, straightforward to use lists, which you can tab between or scroll down using the D-pad.

Settings options
Among these, you can change the resolution, with 7 options ranging from the 8-megapixel max to low res QVGA (320z240 pixels), enabling you to save phone memory or capture smaller-sized image files when the highest resolution settings isn't necessary (such as for picture messages or snaps you want to email).

Several Shot modes are available, including Smile shot, a continuous shot multi-burst option, and panorama, though the latter are automatically shot in low resolution settings. Users should be aware that the camera may stay on a lower resolution setting even after a shot has been taken in one of these modes and the camera has been switched off and on again. It's worth checking so you don't end up accidentally shooting in low res.

Exposure value can be tweaked up and down too, while standard White balance settings are included for basic indoors and outdoors lighting conditions (auto, daylight, incandescent, cloudy, fluorescent). ISO settings for light sensitivity can be changed from the auto setting, with five options ranging from ISO 100 to ISO 1600.

Normal self-timer options (3, 5 or 10 seconds), colour effects (sepia, mono, negative), and Quality levels (super fine, fine and normal) are offered too.

Additional options include an Image stabiliser, to reduce hand-shake blur, Face recognition, and Smart lighting - a way of improving lighting and exposure of shots in difficult high contrast lighting conditions. Unfortunately, this automatically changes resolution down to 1mp and can't be used with  a higher resolution setting.

Other regular camera options allow for such things as memory location (phone or card), shutter sounds and hiding onscreen icons.

Performance
The LG KC780 is able to produce some excellent pictures that are very impressive for a cameraphone. In daylight conditions, the camera can achieve detailed images that are sharp and clear, with good automatic exposure control and fine handling of high contrast lighting conditions. Macro shooting is very good indeed, and you can get a pleasing amount of detail in close up shots.

Colour handling is generally very good too. In bright conditions, colours are vibrant and punchy, but the camera is also able to handle subtle changes of tone - for example in cloudy skies - very well. In duller conditions, colour performance was less punchy, but overall it does well in decent light.

In lower light indoors, the flash doesn't offer the same high quality you get from the bet xenon flash-equipped cameraphones; it doesn't fill in with enough subtlety close up or fill rooms with enough natural looking light. Images tend to be more grainy indoors and more susceptible to movement blur.

The 2-step autofocus system works well, enabling you to compose shots with the subject you want in focus. But the camera does normally take between 1-2 seconds to capture an image after the camera button has been pressed, so isn't that responsive for quick snaps or moving subjects.

Overall, though, in the right condition the KC780 is capable of producing some high class cameraphone shots.