LG GM360 Viewty Snap and GT400 Viewty Smile review: One for everybody

Music player

The music player leaves little to be desired – you can filter tracks by artist, album and so on, the Snap shows track info on the homescreen, while the Smile offers alternative visualizations when there’s no album art.

Another feature that the Smile has but the Snap doesn’t is the music recognition service. Both phones have equalizer presets.

The Music player on the LG GM360 Viewty Snap

We tried out the video players too – but they only managed low resolution 3GP and MP4 files. There’s no DivX/XviD video support and playing of videos with resolution higher than the screen res.

The Music player on the LG GT400 Viewty Smile

Audio quality

The LG GM360 Viewty Snap did reasonably well in our audio quality test, achieving some good readings. The GT400 Viewty Smile was also decent, but its stereo crosstalk is so bad that it is an actual deal-breaker. Even when you use it as audio source for external amplifiers (such as a car or home stereo) and there is no resistance applied, it fails to separate the two channels big time. There's little doubt that the microUSB port used for its audio output doesn't help either.

Anyway, bear in mind we have pre-production samples here, so retail units may have that pesky issue solved.

The GM360 Viewty Snap doesn't have similar issues although its stereo output worsens a bit when headphones come into play. Still, it's a solid performer.

And here go the results so you can see for yourselves.

Test	Frequency response	Noise level	Dynamic range	THD	IMD + Noise	Stereo crosstalk
LG GT400 Viewty Smile	+0.06 -0.89	-90.2	90.2	0.0076	0.067	-12.5
LG GT400 Viewty Smile (headphones attached)	+0.17 -0.61	-90.4	90.2	0.020	0.309	-12.7
LG GM360 Viewty Snap	+0.16 -1.29	-87.7	81.4	0.017	0.131	-85.8
LG GM360 Viewty Snap (headphones attached)	+0.16 -1.20	-87.5	81.4	0.017	0.198	-54.0
LG GT540 Optimus	+0.17 -1.56	-85.8	87.7	0.029	0.196	-83.1
LG GW620	+0.25 -2.92	-86.3	87.7	0.035	0.165	-83.2

LG GT400 Viewty Smile and LG GM360 Viewty Snap frequency response graphs

You can learn more about the whole testing process here.

The web browsers - EDGE vs. HSDPA

The web browsers on the two Viewties are nice – the page rendering is very accurate and text remains readable at fairly low zoom levels. There’s support for up to two tabs, you can save pages for offline viewing, search on page, toggle fullscreen and landscape views. The LG Viewty Snap adds text reflow – it reflows the text to fit the screen from side to side at any zoom level, which improves readability.

The browsers are pretty good • the Snap offers text reflow

If you do get the Snap though, be warned – loading large uncompressed pages over EDGE is rather slow. You might want to consider installing Opera Mini. The LG Viewty Smile with its 3G and HSDPA goes noticeably faster.