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If you've never played with a cameraphone from LG but love camera settings, then you're in for something of a treat with the GD900 Crystal, and that's not even with the myriad of scene options you get on the Crystal's cameraphone sibling - the Viewty Smart.
We'll get to the picture quality itself in a moment (thought we have to warn you, it's not half great) but the sheer amount of options on board will surely impress the novice photographer.
We're talking auto focus, macro mode, manual focus, face detection, colour and white balance, variable ISO settings - and that's not even getting onto the sheer amount of quality options on board to make your pic that much sharper.
However, picture quality on the GD900 Crystal is not as good as you'd hope for compared to other 8MP offerings, and certainly not as good as our Olympus SP-565UZ camera.
We've also placed the same photo from the Nokia N86 8MP phone in there for comparison, so you can see the difference in what's possible from a cameraphone.
In good light with a variety of colours, the LG GD900 actually performs well against the fancy Olympus and the Nokia N86:
LG GD900 Crystal
Olympus SP-565UZ
Nokia N86
In strong light, the GD900 struggles to pick out any other detail, while both the Olympus and the N86 perform well:
LG GD900 Crystal
Olympus SP-565UZ
Nokia N86
For some reason, when using the phone indoors with a well-lit scene, the LG suffers terribly from washed-out colours, while the other two use it well to pick out detail:
LG GD900 Crystal
Olympus SP-565UZ
Nokia N86
The digital zoom mode on the LG GD900 is also slightly poorer than the rest, although the Olympus optical zoom is similar in quality to the Nokia N86's digital version:
LG GD900 Crystal
Olympus SP-565UZ
Nokia N86
Video camera
Despite giving us an average camera, LG has thrown a decent video recorder in with the GD900 Crystal. There's the usual low-res QVGA option, but also DVD-quality VGA at 30 frames per second, as well as the same in a widescreen option.
For those of you who like messing about with slow motion effects, there's a slo-mo option that takes 120 frames per second, so you can a) analyse things like your golf swing in minute detail or b) take a video of you punching your mate on the arm over and over again in slow and precise glory.
