LG enV Touch VX11000 Review

User Interface:

The User Interface has been updated, and incorporates some of the features found on the Dare.  You begin by having to unlock the external display, which can be done by sliding up the screen, or by pressing the lock button on the left side of the phone.  The Home Screen shows your desired wallpaper and 5 icons across the bottom for Inbox, Dial Pad, Main Menu, Contacts List, and Favorites.  Located on the right edge of the screen is a small arrow, which can be placed anywhere from the top to the bottom.  Pressing it will open your Shortcuts menu, where you can add 15 items as well as second page for 15 media items (pictures, videos, music, web favorites).  You can then drag any of those icons to the top of the screen and it will automatically place it on your desktop.  We like being able to do this, as it allows for 1-click access from the Home Screen, but the Versa goes one step further with three separate Home Screens for Shortcuts, Media, and Favorites.  We’re not sure why this feature wasn’t added to the LG enV Touch VX11000, but it would be nice to have.



One area that the LG enV Touch VX11000 disappoints is in regards to the themes, as only two are included: Modern Retro and Blue Inspiration.  The Modern Retro is selected as default and shows 6 icons that look like postage stamps (media center, messaging, contacts, recent calls, VZ Navigator, my music, browser, and settings & tools).  When you select one (such as media center) you are taken into that menu and can slide from side-to-side to go to the next menu.  When using the Blue Inspiration theme, it shows three sections for communications, multimedia, and settings & tools, which are divided equally on the screen.  Each one of these categories has 6 icons, but only 3 are shown at a time, which means you have to horizontally scroll the icons across the screen to see the hidden items.  We didn’t care for this theme, as it is more time consuming to find what you’re looking for.  We don’t understand why a device with a two beautifully 3” WVGA displays would be subject to such flaccid themes.  Even the enV3 comes with a selection of four themes that show some animation when used.  Maybe a future firmware update will bring better themes to the enV Touch, but we doubt it.  Other limited user customizations include menu fonts, dial font size, and clock format.


Phonebook:

Just like it’s predecessor, the LG enV Touch VX11000 allows up to 1500 contacts to be stored with their name, 5 phone numbers and 2 email addresses, but you can now input a street address a well.  Naturally, you can still select a picture and ringtone for each contact, but the size of the CallerID image when that contact calls is rather small (about 1.25” diagonal).  There’s no reason why this could not be larger.  After a contact is saved, you can assign them to one of 999 speed-dial locations and also add them to your Favorites menu, which allows you to call or message a person just by clicking on their picture.  Finding a person in your contacts list is relatively easy, as you can either scroll through the list or input the beginning letters of their name at the bottom of the screen.



Tapping on the Phone icon on the bottom of the Home Screen will bring up the standard numeric dial pad.  Due to its larger size and better response, we didn’t encounter the dialing problems that we experienced with the Voyager.  Also, when you being to dial a number, it searches the contact list for matching results and will show the matching name at the top of the screen.  You can then click on it to dial the number.




Organizer:

The Calendar still offers the same features as before, but has undergone a facelift and is more user friendly.  It begins by showing the current month with the date highlighted.  You can select a specific day on the calendar by pressing on it, as well as moving from month-to-month by sliding your finger across the screen.  There is also a month and year drop-down list to go to any date faster.  Once the desired date is selected, you can add an event with the subject name, start and end time, repeat frequency, until date, alert time, ringtone and vibrate.  When the phone reaches that saved event, it will display the information on the screen and playback the designated alert tone.



Separate from the calendar are the Alarms, where up to 10 can be added.  It is very basic and only allows you to set the alert time, repeat frequency, and ringtone.  This is an easy way to setup a daily wake-up alarm, or notification if it takes place within 24 hours.

Just like with the Voyager, Dare and Versa, the speaker-independent Voice Command feature can be launched by pressing the Clear button located under the external display.  Once activated, there are 9 commands you can speak to the phone:  Call name or number, Send Message to, Go to menu, Check item, Contacts name, Redial, Play, My Account, and Help.  The most useful of these is the “Call” command, where you can speak the digits to dial or the name of a person in your contacts list.  The only training that is required are for the digits and a few basic words, not the contact names or commands.  During our testing, the system didn’t have any problems with our spoken commands, even while in noisy environments.  It can also be used in conjunction with a Bluetooth headset, so you can call numbers without accessing the phone.

The LG enV Touch VX11000 comes with 250MB of internal memory, but 90MB of that is used out of the box.  While this isn’t as much other “music” phones, such as the 1GB on the Chocolate 3, you can still add microSDHC cards up to 16GB in size for expanded storage of music, pictures, and videos.