Verizon Wireless Blitz Review

Software:

Little has changed regarding the Main Menu, with categories for media center, messaging, contacts, recent calls, and settings & tools.  Two themes are included (Urban and Charming) and you can change the menu layout between tab, list, and grid view.  Between this, and being able to change the wallpaper and clock style, it gives kids the feeling of some personalization.


The Phonebook allows up to 1000 entries 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, there are only 21 speed dial locations you can choose to assign them to.



Even though the Blitz is a budget messaging phone, it still comes with an integrated 1.3MP camera.  However, as you can imagine, picture quality is lacking.  Images taken outside have a purple hue to them, with poor detail and soft edges.  Interior images look even worse, with a lot of fuzziness and grain being shown.  Because of these issues, we can’t see anyone other than kids using the camera to take quick pictures.  Once again, the enV2 does a better job in this category and price range.



The Blitz is not designed as a music phone, yet it is capable of playing MP3 and WMA files.  It uses the same out-dated music player that has been on Verizon Wireless phones over the past few years, so nothing new there.  Audio quality through the tiny mono-speaker was OK as long as the volume was not turned up to high.  In doing so, it would cause some distortion to be heard.  You can also use the 2.5mm headset jack or Stereo Bluetooth to achieve better quality playback.  It should also be pointed out that you cannot download full audio tracks (only ringtones), as it does not offer a connection to the OTA VCast music store.  You must either use a microSD card for MP3 playback, or the VCast with Rhapsody software for PC downloads. 


Mobile Web 2.0, VZNavigator, and Game download are possible, but unfortunately the Blitz does not support EVDO, which limits its data to the slower 1x network.  Because of this, the Mobile Web home page takes 15 seconds to load, instead of 6 seconds on the enV2.  Also, VZNavigator operates slower, since it takes longer to download maps and directions.


There is a total of 28MB of internal memory included, but 10MB is used out of the box, leaving only 18MB available to the user.  This is less than most other phones, but since there is not a lot of downloads available, you don’t need 62MB like on the enV2.