We snap up Verizon Wireless' new modular, all-touch phone. Is this phone magical, or just a lot of hocus pocus? Find out in our in-depth LG Versa review.
Review summary of the LG Versa:
 |
|
Features » Side-by-side » Gallery » |
 The LG Versa is a very nice phone, both unique and well-designed. The interface is snazzy and modern, with plenty of cool ideas and useful shortcuts that make it a pleasure to use. It's a definite step up from the problematic LG Dare. Unfortunately, it seems that while LG was doing so much work to create a great phone, Verizon Wireless sat on their laurels, and the phone is saddled with some of the worst messaging, navigation and music apps in the industry. It's too bad, as there is so much potential for the cool modular design. We're excited to see how far LG and Verizon Wireless can extend the selection of modules, and we're hoping for unique ideas that add value to the phone and push it beyond its competitors. But based on the Verizon apps we found on the phone, its more likely The Network will take the easy way out and end up disappointing early adopters. Our verdict: wait and see if this platform takes off or if VZW treats it like the magical phone that lives under the stairs. Release: March 2009. Price: $200.
Pros: Cool modular design works nicely. Excellent interface design with plenty of useful shortcuts. Flash-enabled Web browsing.
Cons: Screen can be unresponsive in some apps, especially the Browser. Pathetic selection of messaging apps. Mediocre call quality. No extra modules available at launch.
| Poor |
Mediocre |
70%
GOOD |
Very good |
Excellent |
|
|
|
Full LG Versa Review:
|
Design – Very Good
The LG Versa is one of the most unique phone ideas to appear on a major carrier. At first glance, the phone seems to be a normal all-touch phone, exactly like the LG Dare. But the LG Versa also comes with a snap-on keyboard module, and the fun won't stop there. Though LG and Verizon Wireless don't get specific, more modules are on the way, and each could bring new functionality and features.
Even without the keyboard module, though, it's a very nice touchscreen feature phone, with a great, polished interface that shows a lot of thought and innovation from LG. The interface on our LG Versa review unit was very responsive (mostly). Flick your finger from one side of the screen to the other and the entire Home Screen rotates like a 3D cube, showing another side with new shortcuts. There is a screen for application shortcuts, multimedia shortcuts and Web bookmarks, contact shortcuts, and even a dedicated screen for the keyboard module that appears when you snap the keyboard in place. Dig into the menu and you get a choice between a standard grid or a smarter contextual menu. Throughout, the colors are vibrant, with plenty of gradients and drop shadows that give the phone a modern look. LG also packs a lot of information on screen. Whatever feature or option we wanted was usually a click away, if we could figure out exactly where to click.
To snap on the keyboard module, we had to remove the back cover, since the keyboard incorporates its own battery cover. The camera still sees through a hole in the back, and there is a hole for the earpiece up front, as well as simple calling buttons. You can dial recent callers with the cover closed, and the phone is smart enough to not hang up if you close the keyboard during a call. In fact, this is a smart phone all around, with plenty of nice touches that just seemed like a lot of thought went into the interface design. We wish snapping the modules on and off was easier, with fewer extra parts lying around, but at least the keyboard felt solid, with a hearty snap every time we shut the lid.
Calling – Good
Here we get to one of the problem areas on the LG Versa. The phone looks great, runs smoothly and packs in plenty of features. But calls didn't sound very good. This is true for many features on this phone. Everything looks good and seems to run smoothly, but once we delved deeper, we were bound to be disappointed. With the cover closed, calls sounded more distant, probably due to the physical distance between our ears and the mic, but with the cover opened things sounded better, though the phone was uncomfortable to hold with the keyboard in place. So, ditch the keyboard for calling, but our callers still reported a muffled, hollow sound to our voices.
The LG Versa uses Verizon Wireless' visual voicemail, and it looked even better than the visual voicemail on the Apple iPhone 3G. We got a name and picture associated with each message (if the contact was already photographed in our contact list). Our only gripe is that the visual voicemail app doesn't update automatically when it gets a new message. You have to choose to update from a menu, or exit and restart the program.
The contact list benefits from the cosmetic luxury on this phone, and it's a nice, rich address book with plenty of fields and good searching options. We wish that there was some sort of contacts sync option, especially if the phone could sync with our Exchange or other online address books. By now, its unacceptable for a manufacturer to expect users to manually enter new contacts every time they buy a new phone.
Speaker-independent voice dialing is present, but it didn't work perfectly in our tests. It came close, but when we tried voice dialing numbers, it was usually off on a couple of digits. Conference calling was much easier, since a "Merge Calls" button magically appears on screen while the second call is connecting. The speakerphone was adequate, but not abusively loud, as we prefer.
Messaging - Good
Considering the snap-on keyboard, we expected to find much better options for messaging on the LG Versa. Instead, Verizon Wireless has scraped the bottom of the barrel and given this phone the most basic, dated apps for e-mail and instant messaging. It's a shame, because every other feature on this phone looks so good and uses new and modern ideas to compete with the best feature phones on the market. It's almost embarrassing, then, that a phone with a snap-on keyboard uses an IM app that only supports AOL, MSN and Yahoo, and no social networking sites or Gtalk. It's a shame that this phone has such a poor e-mail app. It never alerted us to new e-mails, and it looks worse than any other app on the phone. When Sprint is selling phones like the Samsung Rant for less than $100 with Exchange support, it's a shame that Verizon Wireless' premiere consumer QWERTY device comes up so far short.
We definitely appreciated the snap-on keyboard included with this phone. It defied all our expectations of a snap-on accessory. The keyboard felt sturdy and solid, with a strong hinge keeping it in place. Keys were rounded and large, with plenty of travel and space between for easy typing. We even like the faux-leather feel of the exterior case, and the suede-like rim around the 4-rows of keys. The keyboard features a dedicated key for the "@" symbol, and, as an alternate, a dedicated ".com" key. There are also inverted-T arrow keys, which we found very useful for editing typos.
Multimedia - Good
Again, multimedia is an app that looks very good on the LG Versa, but after some frequent use, comes up short. The phone gets music from Verizon Wireless and Rhapsody's online store, and though the selection is both deep and current, the $1.99 pricing is still too high. Verizon also makes it unnecessarily difficult to load tracks onto the device. We tried copying files directly to the memory card, and had to try three times before we realized our tracks must be placed in the "My Music" folder, or else the phone won't even bother too look for them. Once we got our music playing, our album artwork didn't come through, except on the songs we purchased from the VCast store, naturally.
Even with these problems, playback was very good. There are plenty of onscreen menus and buttons to help organize and find the songs you want. Playlists were easy to create. When a song is playing, music controls appear on the Home screen, and you also get a drop down menu that lets you pick other tracks by name without opening the music player. Lots of thoughtful conveniences. We'd like an EQ, and we really need a 3.5mm headphone jack to listen to music on our favorite cans. But the phone paired nicely with our Bluetooth stereo speakers.
Videos on the LG Versa are abysmal. We tried watching an episode of "Lost" downloaded from the VCast Video Store. The video loaded very quickly, probably thanks to the fast EV-DO Rev. A networking. But quality was poor. Videos were blurry and blocky, and the poor quality was obvious even in the postage stamp-sized video window. There were no playback options to view videos full screen, either, though at this quality, we probably wouldn't want to.
Web browsing – Very Good
The LG Versa is one of the first cell phones we've seen to incorporate Flash Lite 3 into the mobile browser. The browser looks very good, though again, once we started using it (or trying to use it), we ran into serious problems. Here, screen responsiveness became an issue. The phone isn't perfectly responsive in any app, but in the Web browser, the screen was downright obstinate. We pecked and poked at the tiny menu buttons, but nothing would happen. Actually, a lot happened to show us that we were poking correctly. The button would light up, the phone would vibrate with haptic feedback, and we would even hear a woodblock chime to let us know it had registered the hit. But nothing happened. We had to press 10 times or more just to get the address bar to appear.
Once we got things moving, they moved quickly. Pages loaded in a snap. Layout wasn't perfect. Unfortunately, our page looked worse than most, with serious layout errors and text that was formatted incorrectly. But navigate to YouTube, and you'll see what this phone is capable of. Most of the Flash videos we tried loaded properly and played in the smallish browser window. Unlike other mobile devices that use Flash-enabled browsers, like the Archos 605 PMP, the LG Versa plays Flash videos naturally, without opening them in a separate window. About a third of the time, a video would choke and stop playing, especially if it was a longer video with more to buffer. But simple animations on the YouTube home screen and shorter videos, like our short firecracker clip, played perfectly.
GPS navigation – Good
The LG Versa uses VZ Navigator for turn-by-turn directions. GPS performance on the phone was very good. The Versa found us quickly on our test run in and out of Philadelphia, and had no trouble tracking us through the taller buildings and museums. Occasionally, we had to make a second turn quickly, and the phone didn't track us in time to advise us. Still, thanks to the fast networking speeds, when we found ourselves off course it didn't take long for our LG Versa review unit to suggest an alternate trip. On the other hand, VZ Navigator could use a lot of work. There seemed to be too many specialized screens, and we were often confused. One map screen shows your entire route with directions, but you can't zoom in or out. For that, you need another, identical looking screen. It was a pain to deal with. Also, the speaker on the Versa seemed even more quiet in this app. Even while listening to talk on NPR, we could never hear the next instruction over the radio.
Camera - Mediocre
The camera experience on the LG Versa was mediocre all around, which is surprising considering the auto focus capabilities and snazzy touch interface. We found the 2-megapixel shots to be blurry, with washed out colors. White balance presets didn't help much, either. In some pics, the in-camera processing was clearly oversharpening images, which helped in our eBay shot, but not elsewhere. We also didn't like the lens placement. More than on any other device, we found our finger in the way of a shot, as you can see in our dismal panorama pic below. As a nitpicking complaint, the camera also marks photos with the wrong time stamp, so they don't match the phone's network time.
Philly's Broad St.
Statue
It was a cloudy day, but the buildings and street scene in both of these shots was a bit more drab than we expected. The sky is completely blown out, too, resulting in too much white with purple fringing that drowns out the tops of the buildings.
Self Portrait
At full crop, the detail is completely gone. Check out the eyebrows, which seem to have been drawn on with charcoal. Also, why is the carpet blown out here? The light was balanced and even, if not a bit yellow, but that's not what we see in this shot.
Panorama
A barely passable job at a panorama. This is a difficult shot with so many moving subjects, so we can excuse the half-cars on the left, but the crosswalk should have been a seamless line.
eBay shot
Thanks to the sharpening in the image processor, words on the card, especially the white words with a black border, are sharp and legible. Of course, detail is mostly gone from the rest of the card, and Snake Eyes looks like he's on a TV still frame, and not a photograph.
Miniature Figurine
Not a horrible shot, but still disappointing. Color is drab and doesn't capture the pop of the figurine's pink head. The blue LED ice cube looks okay, as does the small stone.
The future for LG Versa modules
The biggest mistake LG made with this phone might have been launching it with only one module. There's a lot of potential for modules here, especially if they each add some interesting functionality and make the phone special, if not superlative. For instance, we've heard rumors of a gaming pad module, and that's a perfect idea, as long as there are games to go along with it. We've also heard about fashion modules, and perhaps even an external speaker, all good ideas. A module for Wi-Fi? Not so much. We'd like to see modules that extend the Versa and make it the best device in its class for whatever it is the module does.
For instance, instead of relying on the phone's lousy 2-megapixel camera, how about a module with an 8-megapixel sensor built in, and maybe even some optical zoom? A keyboard module is nice, so how about a musical module with a musical keyboard, or a drum set you can tap? We could imagine a module that was simply 32GB of memory, so that we could load a ton of music and videos onto the phone, or snap it off to save space. How about a miniature printer? The possibilities are endless, and it would be a serious mistake for LG to take the most boring, predictable route. We'd like to see modules come in cheap and abundant. Surprise us, please.
Price and availability
The LG Versa will start selling for $200 to $250 ((Verizon Wireless)) in March 2009.
|
|
|
|
|
Archive