My Review Of The Verizon LG Voyager

I have purchased LG phones in the past; some good and some not so good. My most recent purchase was of the LG Voyager on the Verizon Wireless network. This phone is without a doubt the best phone I have used so far, from any vendor. I did use the VX9800 and the EnV, but I didn't stick with Verizon for very long because those phones didn't have an HTML browser. Normally when a company milks a phone chassis; like Palm and their Treo lineup; I tend to get annoyed by the offering. But in this case, the improvements on the VX9800 chassis have been well worth it. This design, to me, is the best possible phone design. The phone is of a Fold-Open design, which is nice because I prefer making calls on a Candy-Bar style phone like the basic Nokia's. Then when I open it up, there is a full keyboard. The keyboard layout is just like that of a standard computer keyboard. So the phone is like having a tiny laptop. Both screens are very large, and your company went with 18bit res screens. Which many vendors are trying to cut the res and color of their phones to save on cost. So this makes watching TV, Clips, and other Videos a really nice experience. When I converted and transfered some movies to my memory card and watch them full screen on the phone, the quality is great! And the stereo speakers add so much more sound quality to videos and music. And unlike so many other media phones I have used, the Voyager doesn't reset or freeze-up during video playback. That is due in part to the fact that you put 182MB's of RAM, which is higher then most phones offered in the USA right now. Even many PDA's, like the pathetic Treo's are still not even close to offering that much Internal memory! The camera is 2MP's, which takes cleaner photos then my 2 other digital cameras. The Voice Command feature is also very cool! My voice is deep and many speak activated devices have a hard time understanding me, but the Voyager doesn't. Well, most of the time. It's never going to be perfect. I also love the idea that with the Voice Command feature, I can set the phone to call out the name of the person calling. Or it will readout just the numbers for any number not in my contact. Syncing is easy to do. I have been using Bitpim to create custom content and transfer it to the phone. But even without Bitpim, transferring content is easy because the phone is treated by the computer as a Mass-Storage Device. Call quality is just as clear as with a landline, no difference. I haven't dropped a call yet. The HTML browser is the main reason why I finally felt I could switch over to Verizon and get my money's worth.

There is just a few problems though. I will list them in the hopes that you correct them in updated versions.

1. The HTML browser only has room for under 30 Favorites. Most people have way more then that many favorite pages they want to save. 100 would be a better number
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2 The Stereo speakers are loud when the phone is open, but when watching videos with the outside display and the phone is closed, those speakers are not able to create loud enough sound. So maybe by allowing sounds to play through the telephone speaker, as well as the 2 internal speakers, would help make watching videos when the phone is closed better.

3. Like many digital cameras, the time it takes to press the button to the time the camera actually takes the picture has a pretty long delay to it. And pressing the button doesn't always take a photo. You have to really press down hard to take the pic.

4. This is most likely a limitation set by Verizon, but if you could allow for the streaming of MP3 formats, as well as some other video formats, this would make the phone's media features so much better. Right now the phone can only play 3GP streams. So watching videos on Youtube Mobile is possible, but in order to stream other live content, we are forced to use ORB are stream it from our computer to our phone. Just by adding MP3 stream support would add a million times more content access to the phone.

5. Since the Voyager is packing a lot more features, it would be nice to have even more Shortcut support. The phone will allow us to set a Shortcut to 4 BASIC features through the "OK" Toggle pad and the "FN" has room for 10. But with all of the possible games and services, features and other content, more Shortcuts would be nice.

6. The HTML browser is decent, but not great. It takes a long time to load different web sites and has limits on what it can and can not do. It will also not let you see the full progress of the loading. So as your trying to scroll through a web page, it will seem like the page is done loading, but in reality it is not. So scrolling becomes slow and the progress unknown. So in other words, it is no Opera Mini, Which I would consider the Gold standard of cell phone browsers. Well, the older versions of Opera Mini were Gold. The new versions with the Zoom-In feature are more like Copper. The browser also displays widows in 3 different formats (Standard, Screen Optimized and Text Only). Screen Optimized being my favorite. I just wish the rendering was cleaner and more stable like Opera Mini, or even Mobile IE. So the Voyager's browser is better then Palm's Blazer, but not as good as earlier versions of Opera Mini. So there is lots of room for improvement. It is a great start, but hopefully not the way it will stay in later versions.

Those are basically the few core problems. There is other simple things, but nothing big. The Voyager overall is such a great phone, but with just a few more features it could be perfect! And with the help of Bitbim, the Voyager and Verizon become a much better offering.

Usually I don't like LG phones, but I must admit that this one is something special.

It has few flaws, but that's nothing in compering with its good sides.

Yes it is awesome