We were excited about the Venus' interface and hardware design before we even touched it, but did the touchscreen live up to the hype?
Review summary of the LG Venus:
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 The LG Venus should have been a much better phone than it is. It doesn't need to be the iPhone killer that its bigger brother, the LG Voyager, tries to be. It should have just been a phone with a clever, fun design that added surprising use to an already-stylish phone. Instead, we get much of the style, but little of the fun, and no surprises. The Venus is a very likeable phone, and it does a fine job as a standard Verizon Wireless V Cast device. Music handling was as good as any V Cast phone and GPS performance was also good, but the device could have been much cooler, and hopefully the next versions will take better advantage of this innovative design. Release: November 2007. Price: $200.
Pros: Innovative touch screen design. Cool menu updates Verizon Wireless' standard look. Stereo Bluetooth and updated music player.
Cons: Touch screen is often used as a gimmick, never reaches full potential. Call quality disappointing. Messaging and Web browsing just average at best.
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Full review of the LG Venus:
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Design - Very good
When we first saw the LG Venus at the beginning of the summer, we were immediately struck by its appearance. Even more than the LG Voyager, a massive touch screen phone loaded with multimedia features, we thought the Venus had the unique potential to try new ideas in interface design, and to some extent this was true. Buttons reshape themselves somewhat and contextualize based on the menu choice above. Screensavers dip into the lower screen, and some buttons pulse and flash, in the music player, for instance. Still, the potential goes mostly untapped, thanks perhaps to Verizon Wireless' hold over the menu structure on V Cast phones. The Voyager at least managed a separate, and new, button for Web browsing, but even on the Venus, where soft keys should have been all the rage, you still have to dig for it.
So, if the Voyager is an super edition of the LG enV, the Venus is a super-Chocolate, except that it isn't much more exciting than the newest Chocolate phones, beyond the new interface. The phone we tested was black, with the familiar chrome band around the outside, and a comfortable if not spectacular slide-out 12-key keyboard. The touchscreen was plenty sensitive, and though our aim could have been better, we could just as easily blame the buttons. We definitely liked the haptic feedback, similar to what we found on the LG Voyager, which delivered a ping or two when we tapped the touch screen. Haptic feedback is definitely a nice addition to touch screen devices, and something we would recommend looking for.
Calling - Good
Call quality on the LG Venus was somewhat disappointing. Clearly LG focused on the multimedia functions, as we found calls to be a bit garbled and digital-sounding. Calls were discernible, but they certainly were not as clear on our caller's end as on ours. Call management was fine, just what we'd expect on a Verizon V Cast phone, but again, we saw a lost opportunity for the touchscreen. We would have liked to see speed dialing buttons, perhaps even pictures and other clever contacts features integrated into the touchscreen, but instead we just got a little help navigating menus.
Like the Voyager, the Venus lacks conference calling, which could have been fun on this touch phone. Bluetooth was easy to setup, and the speakerphone was pleasantly loud, though not obnoxiously so. Speaker-independent voice dialing worked very well in our tests. For call times, Verizon and LG are happily conservative in their four hour estimate. We got more than five in our calling tests. Reception also was strong in Manhattan and New Jersey, coming in around four to five bars every time we checked.
Messaging - Good
The LG Venus had all of the basic messaging options we've come to expect on a V Cast phone, but none of these were well-integrated with the unique design of the device. We found instant messaging and e-mail for AOL, MSN and Yahoo, as well as SMS and MMS, but there was nothing about the Venus that made the experience any nicer than using a standard slider, like the Chocolate. Typing was fine on the device's keypad, but the standard 12-key numeric pad was limited. We would have liked to see some alternate keyboard options that made better use of the touchscreen, but it sat idle for much of our messaging experience.
Music - Good
The music player on the LG Venus sees the best cosmetic use of the touch screen buttons, an upgrade to the stodgy V Cast Music Player. Still, it doesn't go nearly far enough. Beyond light-up icons, we want to see visualizers and a touch screen than understands swiping, and not just tapping. We would like to see better music controls, like those we found on the LG Voyager, with scrubbing that relies on the touch screen. Stereo Bluetooth worked well when paired with our headsets and speakers, and we were impressed by the phone's ability to handle memory cards up to 8GB, though we haven't even seen a card in that capacity yet.
Video - Good
Videos started and stopped quickly over Verizon Wireless' EV-DO network, but video quality was disappointing. Videos were blocky and blurry, whether in portrait view or full-screen landscape. Also, though the music player saw a nice visual upgrade, taking better advantage of the touch screen on the lower half of the phone, the video player sees none of this improvement. Video content was standard V Cast stuff, which means plenty of small clips from popular shows on Comedy Central and the like. This would be a great candidate for Verizon Wireless' V Cast Mobile TV service, but then again, wouldn't every phone?
GPS - Very good
We would have liked a better GPS app than VZ Navigator, but overall GPS performance on the Venus was very good. Unfortunately, VZ Navigator couldn't track us live on the follow-me map, and had trouble keeping up with our progress on the highway. Watching just the turn-by-turn view helped, but we're seeing plenty of phones with 3-D style mapping software these days, so we would have liked more. Still, the GPS sensor found us everywhere we asked it to, including in our third floor office.
Web browsing - Mediocre
Web browsing is another area where LG should have used the touch screen to improve navigation and browsing, but instead did as little possible to improve the experience. And the experience needed plenty of improvement to begin with. Our graphically intense homepage opened, but looks crooked and condensed in the single-pane view. Overall, the Web browsing experience didn't lack for speed, but navigation and layout were both disappointing. It would be useful for killing time, but would never substitute for a desktop browsing experience.
Price and availability
The LG Venus is available now from Verizon Wireless for $200 with a two-year contract and an instant online discount of $50.
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