Viewty updates

This entry was posted on December 9, 2007

After looking through my site’s stats, I’ve noticed a fair few people coming here after searching for various Viewty-related phrases. Hello, fellow Viewty users! Do not worry - I feel your pain.

The Viewty delete button

As many of you know, the Viewty has a touchscreen interface. This implies that all the buttons are on the screen, no? No! There are in fact three buttons on a Viewty : the green button, the red button, and the white button. The green button has a phone on it and is used mainly for answering calls. The red button also has a phone on it and means “no / cancel”, so you can use it for cancelling whatever you’re doing, and for hanging up phone calls. The white button has a “C” on it and is used for cancelling smaller things, such as mistakes in text messages.

You would not believe how long I was staring at my Viewty after I made a mistake in a text message. Surely I wouldn’t have to delete the whole thing and start over? Surely not! Yes, that’s what the “C” button does. No more fretting now, you can easily “undo” anything you’ve just done with this lifesaving button.

Typing numbers during a phone call

“Welcome to O2 voicemail. Please press 1 to hear your new messages.”

I can’t press 1! My phone has no buttons! Damn you O2 for needing me to be able to press buttons! Unfortunately the “C” button cannot come to the rescue in this situation, which I found out the first time I checked my voicemail. I thought I’d discovered a pretty serious design flaw right there. Surely my trusty Viewty wouldn’t let me down?

Nope. The Viewty’s too good for that. When you’re making a phone call, there are three small touchscreen buttons. Touch the middle one of these, and it’ll bring up a keypad for you, enabling you to “press 1″, “press 2″, and press all the other buttons you’ll need.

The LG Phone Software

At some point, you’ll want to plug your Viewty into your computer. The Viewty comes with software for such a purpose, which is (to be honest) a pile of poop. It’s the one downside to the Viewty. Not only does it come with a mini-sized disc which makes people too scared to put it in their Mac, the software isn’t useful for much. Sure, it looks like it’ll do the job - open it up and you’ll get funky things such as “backup” and “image editor”, but click any of these and your computer will soon start making a “bong” sound to let you know you’re trying to click the unclickable.

That leaves us with two options, each with their advantages and disadvantages.

  1. Bluetooth. If your computer is Bluetooth-enabled, you can connect your Viewty that way and transfer everything across. Unfortunately, my computer isn’t Bluetooth-enabled.
  2. Memory card. The Viewty takes a Micro-SD memory card, and I currently have one on order from Amazon. Once it arrives, I can put it in the Viewty (it goes underneath the battery for some bizarre reason), change the USB connectivity to “mass storage device”, and use my Viewty like a memory stick, transferring everything in “My Computer”.

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Viewty, you beauty!

This entry was posted on November 28, 2007

I’ve been wanting a new phone for some time, and after much consideration I finally settled on the LG Prada. It had everything I was after : music, camera, document viewer - all on a phone!

And then I found the LG Viewty. After reading Lil’s blog entry about it and doing some research, I promptly changed my mind and went for the Viewty instead. It’s a spiffy touch-screen phone that I like to describe as “better value for money than the iPhone”.

The LG Viewty may not be an iPhone killer, but that’s because it’s being marketed in a completely different way. The iPhone is basically an iPod with phone capabilities, which also has a camera. In that respect, the Viewty is basically a camera with phone capabilities, which also has music features.

I pay the same amount per month for the Viewty as I would for the iPhone, except I get three times as many minutes, five times as many texts, and I didn’t have to pay £269 for the handset. Not a bad deal, I don’t think.

The Viewty comes with a 5 megapixel camera (that’s only 1MP less than my actual camera!), and the touch-screen is more fun than any phone I’ve used before. I haven’t had any trouble hitting the wrong buttons or having the buttons be unresponsive. In fact, I wish all technology was touch-screen. I wonder if I can get a touch-screen (or touch-key) keyboard for my computer.

So far I’ve only encountered one problem with sending text messages, and that is that I can’t find the delete button! If I make a mistake, I have to wipe the whole thing and start fresh. That’s a serious usability issue right there. Luckily, I don’t find many mistakes. There probably is a delete button somewhere, I just can’t seem to find it.

If you’re after a new phone, I definitely recommend the Viewty! If you’ve got a new phone recently, or are planning on getting one that isn’t the Viewty - what put you off?

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