LG Decoy Review

Interface:

Pressing in on the center joystick will display the updated User Interface, which is categorized into contacts, messaging, recent calls, calculator, media center, E-Mail, mobile IM, VZ Navigator, and settings & tools. By default, the icons are shown in a 3x3 Grid layout, but can be changed to Tab and List viewing. There are a total of four themes included (Classic, Slick Black, Decoy Blue, and Decoy Black), with each one changing the color of the icons and the main menu background. Regardless as to which theme or layout you use, they all have a fast response time with very little delay.


Phonebook:

The Phonebook is standard Verizon fair, with up to 1000 contacts being able to be stored, each with their name, mobile 1, home, work, E-Mail 1, group, picture, Ringtone, Mobile 2, Fax, and E-Mail 2. After a contact is saved, you can assign them to one of 999 speed-dial locations. Accessing a saved contact is as simple as pressing the Right Soft Key, which will display them in alphabetical order. At the bottom of the screen, you can type in the first or last name of a contact in the “Go To” field, and it will automatically search through your list. This saves time, instead of scrolling through pages of names to locate the one to call.

Voice dialing is accomplished by using the speaker-independent voice command feature, which can be activated by pressing the “Mic” button on the dialpad, or the “Phone” button on the Bluetooth headset (when turned on). Available choices are call name or number, send message to name or number, go to menu, check item, contact name, my account, and help. The most useful of these is the call name or number, which allows you to speak the name of a stored contact or the digits for the phone to dial. Even tough we didn’t experience any problems with the voice commands when communicating through the phone directly; it did have problems understanding our voice through the included Bluetooth headset. We ended up having to train the digits and words through the headset, which did alleviate most of the errors.


Organizer:

While at the home screen, the Calendar is accessed by moving the joystick in the down direction, causing the display to show the current month with the date highlighted. You can then use the joystick to move around and select any month or day, or type in a date directly by pressing the right softkey for the Options menu. Once a desired date is selected, you can add multiple events with each including the subject, start time, end time, repeat (once, daily, weekly, monthly, yearly), until, alerts, tone, and vibrate. After an alert is saved, it will notify you of the event by playing the designated tone and by displaying the alert information on the screen.


Separate from the calendar are three independent alarms, with each one allowing you to select the time, repeat (once, daily, mon-fri, weekends), and ringtone. This is an easy way to setup a daily wake-up alarm or notification if it takes place within 24 hours.

The Decoy comes with 65MB of internal memory, with 15MB used out of the box, leaving only 50MB to the consumer. Fortunately, the device supports microSDHC memory cards up to 8GB in size to allow additional room for storing MP3 files, pictures, and videos. However, any applications or games must be downloaded and saved using the phone’s internal memory.

Another feature is the support of Verizon’s FOTA (firmware over the air). This will allow customers to download the latest firmware for the phone without the need for visiting a store and having a technician install it. This is a valuable time-saver for both consumers and employees and we are pleased to see it starting to be implemented on more devices. We tested the FOTA, but since our Decoy has the latest firmware (V01), it did not download or install any updates.