LG Vu Review

Performance:

As with just about any touch screen handset, the first question that pops into one’s mind is, “How well does it work?” Well, we find ourselves at odds here. When navigating through menus or any place that required just a touch, it worked great. When it came to scrolling, that's where things go down hill. The scroll bars worked as if they should but without them, it was very difficult to navigate accurately. When using the web browser, we were getting close to constant vibrations, which should only happen when first pressed, a link that was scrolled over would be opened, or the handset wouldn't even recognize that what we were doing. As mentioned before, navigated through music or videos was next to impossible without the sidebars. Compared to how smooth this works with the iPhone, it is just appalling.

The handset is very quick in its operations. Well, except for when you try to open up the images or video menus, which took about 10-15 seconds. This occurred with and without the memory card inserted.

There were two glitches that we came across within usage. First, the Vu restarted itself whenever we tried to open up the album through the camera. The second is that it rebooted itself when it was not even in use about twice in one week. We could not find the culprit of this as both settings were completely different from each other.

Our Vu was tested around the Chicago area and we managed to get 5 hours and 30 minutes out of one charge. As in all cases, results may vary here depending on what options are turned on and whether the handset is on the 3G network or not. Ours was not on the 3G network and with all of the defaults set. With heavy usage of the media player and TV, we found that the battery lasted barely a day.

Voice quality was great for both incoming and outgoing calls. On our side, voices came through loud, clear, and with no distortion in medium to strong reception areas. Within low reception, voices were a bit garbled but only slightly. On the outgoing side, we sounded natural and clear.

Volume was not an issue on either side except in extremely noisy environments. The ring tone even came through loudly for both calls and messages.

With reception, we were a little stuck. While it tended to get signal, even in our basement test, the strength tended to jump around a lot. While this didn’t appear to have any consequences during our tests, there may come times when this could end a call unexpectedly.


Conclusion:

As more and more handsets enter the touch screen market, it just sets the bar higher for the next model. Each manufacturer has to come up with its own way to differentiate the phone to draw customers away. Well, with all the models out there, the Vu sure does have its job cut out for it and there is no excuse to cut itself short. Sadly, there are just a lot lacking to keep it from the top.

For starters, the touch screen just isn’t on par with the rest of the competition. Also, some of the applications and menus aren’t as intuitive as the others. The camera quality should be much better than it is. All of this is being picked on because the Vu is supposed to be a high-end handset and you want to get the most out of your phone when you pay $300 (after $100 mail-in rebate), including a two year contract. For that price, there are just other models that are out there that do all of this better.