This is a Coffee House Test Review where we take the phone to our very hip local coffee house, show it to the finest caffienated technophiles, answer their questions and report their comments.
LG Voyager from Verizon rated 4.5 out of 5 by the Coffee House Test Review by Wireless and Mobile News.
What does the LG Voyager feel like and how does it work?
The LG Voyager feels strong and looks classy. It’s got a nice metal decoration around the edges and it’s not too heavy. You can operate it from the front touch screen which is set to vibration feedback or the interior screen with keyboard and navigation buttons. To switch from the touch screen to keyed screen all you have to do is open the phone and the screen appears on the inside. To move the menu items down on the touchscreen, you brush your fingers up and the menu items move down.
What’s the browsing like?
The browsing on the LG Voyager is in landscape mode only and works well. We didn’t get impatient with any our usual websites when the keyboard was used. We had more difficulty typing in URLs with the touchscreen keyboard which had a nice feature of a “.com” key. Wireless and Mobile News loaded fine, even with all its graphics, you have the choice of Web screen optimized, text only and full html from either the front touchscreen or interior screen. The screen resolution is 400 x 240 pixels. You can zoom in and out on either screen on the keyboard side it is through the menu key. In optimized mode at 100% you can view 9 lines of text that equates to about 9 points high if the fonts were printed on a page or at 200% it’s 8 lines of text at about 11 points high if it were printed text. There are four views 100%, 125%, 150% and 200%. Menu functions have number shortcuts next to them which are faster.
At th VZW Home Screen you can do a Web search or go to News, Sports, Weather, Entertainment, Optimized Web, Connect, have Verizon account access or get help. This icons are numbered for easy keyboard access or they can be tapped on the touchscreen.
There were no problems loading and posting to Twitter but seeqpod did not work because it requires the Adobe Flash Player. Although myspace required a lot of finger scrolling we were able to finally login and check email.
Can I check my Yahoo Mail and Gmail?
The LG Voyager has a ready made Connect screen to connect to Yahoo, Windows Live, Gmail Aol Mail and Facebook. We accessed Yahoo mail and sent a message with no trouble. The VZ “Get it Now” function allows you to get Mobile Email access to “other” email services which may cost an additional fee depending on your service plan.
Is the GPS worthwhile?
The GPS simply put is a blast. Once the permissions were setup it located our exact office address with a map from which we did a local search that verified that THE coffee house is 3.5 miles away. It then spoke exact turn by turn directions. The Verizon Navigator service offered to send a text message regarding the location with an estimated arrival time of 8 minutes. It will also create a “follow-me map” which shows the route you are traveling on the map, this is fun but dangerous while driving. Monthly access costs $9.99 a month and daily access is $2.99. Another nice feature that is not currently available would be if we could place a call directly to the mapped location.
Does the LG Voyager display YouTube?
There is a direct access icon via the Entertainment button to YouTube Mobile with a data use warning. A music video was slower loading than webpages it took 8 seconds to load. Google Maps defaulted to the mobile version.
How are the phone calling features?
Great, we called people solely with voice activation with no problems. The voice activation voice was female warm and friendly(or you have a choice of three other characters.) It would call to a name said and distinguish between home or mobile. The phone quality was excellent.
How’s the Mobile TV?
This is were the screen is at its best, it is a lot better than any YouTube or Web video and is mobile optimized. The image does jump once in a while.
What about Battery Life?
Pretty good, yesterday, with a full charge, the LG Voyager was powered on from 10:00 am to 7:00 pm and the battery went from 4 bars to 2 bars with about 3.5 hours of Internet access. IHowever, after using the camera and video camera, power was used faster. It’s rated for up to 240 minutes usage time and up to 480 hours standby time.
Music compatibility?
You can sync music from PC to phone via V CAST Music Manager which will will only work with V CAST Music Manager, Windows Media Player 10 (or higher) on the Windows XP (or higher) operating system. Mac OS is not supported. You can also drag and drop music to the microSD card.
How does it compare to the iPhone?
This question is so intense it is answered in a separate Review of Reviews iPhone vs Voyager.
Hows the camera?
The camera is like playing a video game, it fills the entire screen with a preview and has many adjustments. We had to play with a while before we were able to get the best shots. It does not have a flash therefore light adjustment is important. Here’s a photo from the coffee house.
Comments Heard
“Great keyboard.” “I wish the screen was just a little bigger.” “Excellent phone quality.” “The opening and closing screen change is neat.” “The call quality is better than my iPhone. I like the GPS, video, voice commands, photo settings, TV and fast access but find the vibrations distracting. The Web browsing and camera are better on my iPhone,” said an iPhone user.
Our test research leads us to believe that the LG Voyager is packed with enough features to keep most phone users with textaholic tendencies happy, but won’t satisfy users who have “i” envy and must have Wi-Fi. We rate it 4.5 because it has almost everything but the kitchen sink including a very usable keyboard (from which we could write a short story or review in a pinch) music player, Web surfing, e-mail access, V CAST, mobile TV and GPS navigation.
If you would like to see what other reviewers noticed about the LG Voyager take a look at our LG Voyager (Verizon) LG VX10000 Review of Reviews.
The LG Voyager was a lifesaver for an actor who needed to access his Yahoo mail to get the phone number and address of an audition in Hollywood. He first tried to call his girlfriend to access his computer, but she couldn’t do it. Through the connect function, he got the address and then got the directions through GPS. The only thing the LG Voyager couldn’t do was get him the part…
This article was found at:
http://www.wirelessandmobilenews.com/2007/11/new_review_verizon_lg_voyager.html
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