LG Venus Review

Introduction

The Venus by LG is Verizon Wireless’s latest music phone and is the successor to the Chocolate lineup. It is a slider, and moves beyond the heat sensitive buttons of 8500 series by adding a pressure-sensitive dynamic LCD display. The camera has been upgraded to 2.0 megapixels, but otherwise the features remain similar to the Chocolates. The Venus has a QVGA display, EV-DO data, microSD expansion and a heavy focus on music. Included in the box the user will find:

• Venus by LG handset
• 800 mAh battery
• Cloth carrying pouch
• AC charger
• USB data cable
• Music Essentials CD

Design

The Venus (aka 8800) has been completely redesigned, and while itserves as the successor to the Chocolate phones the phones will neverbe confused for one another. Where the 8500 series made its mark withunderstated styling, the Venus comes at you with a mirrored display andplenty of chrome trim to make sure the phone will be noticed.

Model	Dimension (Inches)	Dimension (mm)	Weight (oz)	Weight (Gramms)
Venus by LG	4.00" x 2.00" x 0.62"	102 x 51 x 15.7	3.79	107
LG Chocolate 8550	3.80" x 1.88" x 0.69"	98 x 47 x 17	3.24	92
Blackberry Pearl 8130	4.20" x 1.95" x 0.55"	107 x 50 x 14	3.4	96

The front of the Venus is dominated by the two displays, the top being a high-quality 2” QVGA display with 262k colors. Just below sits an equally clear 1.49” 240x176 touch sensitive display which also features 262k colors. Both are bright and crisp and can be seen easily in all lighting conditions. The very top and bottom of the front feature a small strip of faux black mesh, and serve to conceal the earpiece and microphone. Around the entire top half of the slider is a quarter inch chrome trim. As you might have guessed it is nearly impossible to keep the Venus fingerprint-free.

The slider offers resistance initially, but then springs into action when it is sure the user is intending to open the phone. Sliding the phone open reveals a 15 key dial pad, with Send, Clear and End sitting above the number pad. The added width over the Chocolate is a welcome move because it creates much needed space for the keys. Where the Chocolate was downright terrible to text on, it is a much more pleasant experience on the Venus. The keys alternate between a blue pearl and flat dark gray (it might be a flat blue, it is very hard to tell just what color they are) and the keys are connected horizontally, making for a very cool looking pattern.

The housing is a dark navy blue which, to be frank, does not match the rest of the phone. Along the left side you will find, from top to bottom, a lanyard hole, 2.5mm headset jack, volume rocker, voice command button and the charging port. The right side of the Venus has the microSD slot, as well as hard buttons for the music player and camera.


The rear of the Venus is black and constructed of ersatz leather. It is best compared to the pleather dashboard of a low end car trying to mask its cheapness. The rear is simple and uncluttered; the 2-megapixel camera sits at the top of the unit while there is a single speaker at the bottom right. On the top of the phone is a small button which releases the battery door.

How LG okayed this design is beyond us, and while the build quality is excellent the styling is reminiscent of a cheap Chinese knockoff. The black clashes with the blue plastic, and the Venus is a mismatch of three different zones; the mirrored and chromed slide, the blue plastic middle housing and the black fake leather back. There is a sharp contrast from the elegant designs of the Chocolate and Shine series when compared to the Venus. Another gripe of ours is that the slider is misaligned when closed, leaving just a slight overhand at the bottom and disrupting the continuity of the design. Just looking at the Venus the average user probably wouldn’t notice it, but when running your fingers over the area it is very obvious.

The build quality of the Venus is very good. When viewed head-on the mirrored and chromed finish give the Venus a touch of class. However, when looked at as a whole the Venus leaves much to be desired. The complete mismatch of colors is nothing short of a fashion faux pas, and the cheap material used on the back is too prevalent to ignore. LG’s Verizon devices are usually top notch in the styling department, but we feel they really missed the mark with the Venus.

User Interface

The Venus receives a unique flash-based skin for the user interface, a common practice for higher end Verizon devices. In this case there are two variants, Venus Black and Venus Color, and the six main menu icons are listed horizontally with a beam of red energy flowing through the highlighted selection. In the black theme the icons are actually white, and color in the color theme. Both offer a black background, making for a high contrast menu that is easy to read. Sub menus are black with white text, and the selection is highlighted with a red bar. Also available is the classic Verizon layout. We don’t want to say that the menu lags all the time, but at times it suffers from slow response. We have a feeling this may be due to the touch pad since the Verizon UI is normally very smooth.

While the design may be new, it is still the same Dashboard UI found on any other device. The menu items, in order, are My Music, Get it Now, Messaging, Contacts, Recent Calls and Settings and Tools. From the idle screen the user has five options on the touch pad, Message, Contacts, All Calls, Shortcuts and Menu. The Shortcuts button brings up five user assignable shortcut on the touch pad, making it easy to get where you’re going with minimal clicks. While it does offer an additional shortcut, most phones allow you to set the four d-pad directional keys as shortcuts so this is hardly unique.

This lack of creativity is our main concern with the Venus, and there is nothing truly unique here. The touch interface is different, but it does not offer any competitive advantage over previous designs. In general, the touch display acts as a left and right soft key, five way directional pad and back button...just like almost every other phone on the market. While there is a space for a fourth button, it is rarely used and most of the time just takes the place of a button typically found on a physical keypad.

Further compounding this issue is that the touchpad doesn’t always work properly. The display does offer vibrating feedback and a button animation to let the user know a selection has been made, but there have been several times when we feel the feedback and see the animation, yet the device does nothing. There are no sensitivity settings, but it is not a matter of the device not registering the press since the feedback, both visual and mechanical, is given. Needless to say, this gets frustrating.

Taking it even further the mix of touch/normal display sometimes throws the user off. While we know very well that the main display is not touch sensitive, we often found ourselves trying to tap on it to make a selection from various lists or web links. In the day and age of the iPhone, which LG is clearly trying to capitalize off of with the Voyager and to a lesser extent the Venus, users are more and more accustomed to touch screens. The mix on the Venus is really nothing more than a tease, especially considering the limited functionality of the touch display.


Phonebook

The phonebook is pretty standard on the Venus. There is room for a generous 1,000 contacts, each can store 5 numbers and 2 email addresses, can be assigned to a group and have a unique ringtone and picture ID. Groups cannot be created, so the user must choose between Business, Colleagues, Family, Friends, School or no group. Contacts are sorted alphabetically by full name, there is not a separate field for first and last names.

Organizer

TheCalendar is also relatively vanilla on the Venus. Appointments arepretty basic; the only “advanced” option is to set a recurringappointment. They can only be created on the phone since there is nooption to sync your calendar with a PC or website. There is a notepad,but no task list available.

Messaging

As we have come to expect from Verizon devices messaging is straight-forward and easy. The Venus can compose and receive SMS, EMS and MMS messages, and the user can create the message in just three clicks. Predictive text is done via T9, though it is not adaptive (it does not learn what words you use and move them to the top of the list) and the user cannot manually edit the dictionary.

The Venus features Verizon’s Mobile IM client, which supports AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo Messenger. As always, each message sent and received, as well as signing on and off and buddy list refreshes are all done on the backend via a text message, so make sure you have an unlimited plan if you plan on utilizing this application more than just casually. There is no email client, and the email link on the Messaging menu launches the mobile web portal.



Connectivity and Data

The Venus is an EV-DO rev 0 device and has Bluetooth v1.2, though OBEX is not supported. It does support the HSP, HFP 1.5, DUN, FTP, OPP, A2DP, AVRC, BIP, BPP and PBA profiles, though OPP is used only for vCard and vCalendar. We were able to send pictures to the Venus without issue, but sending from it was another matter. When trying to send a user-generated picture to a paired Bluetooth device, be it another phone or computer, we got an “Image transfer not supported by receiving device,” which was not true. Luckily we had no problems pairing both a mono (Samsung wep500) and stereo (Motorola S9) headset with the Venus, and the sound quality on both were as expected.

The browser is the same WAP browser found on nearly all Verizon devices. Verizon’s WAP portal is graphically pleasing, and it is easy to get to common destinations such as weather, news and sports. HTML browsing is slow and cumbersome, and pages often time out due to memory errors. There is no option to download a third party browser given the phone’s BREW platform.

Camera

TheVenus features a 2.0 megapixel camera and camcorder. Picture qualitywas overall impressive. Colors were rich and saturated, though imageswere a bit dark. Edges could be a bit rough, but for a cell phonecamera we were quite satisfied.

The interface is very clean; thephone is rotated sideways to take a picture and the touch pad displaysan oversized Take button, with smaller buttons for Review, Video (toswitch to the camcorder,) Options and Exit. It takes 4-5 seconds toload the camera, and after it is loaded an image can be captured inless than two seconds. To save the image and capture another one takes6 seconds. While the results are good, loading and capturing picturesis comparatively sluggish and there is no option for multi-shot mode.There are a plethora of other options though, including white balance,self timer, night mode and digital zoom.

The camcorder can record at a max resolution of 320x240 and videos canbe recorded in 30 second clips for video mail or up to an hour forpersonal use.




Audio

Asthe successor to the Chocolate line, the Venus is a music-centricdevice. There really isn’t much new to report here, however. The playerdoes get a slight interface change, and now the album art for the trackplaying is displayed prominently with a semi-transparent and smallerview of the art for the previous and next tracks to the left and right.It is reminiscent of the cover flow found on the iPhone and iPod touch,though functionally they are nothing alike. Codec support is relativelysmall with only MP3, AAC, AAC+ and WMA, but chances are the majority ofthe user’s library is one of those formats.

The user can use the included Music Essentialskit and USB cable to transfer to and manage music on their device, orthey can simply drop the files onto the memory card. The third optionis over the air downloads via the V Cast music store. Tracks are pricedat $1.99 if purchased over the air, or $0.99 if purchased via the PCand side loaded onto the device.


The Venus supports V CastVideos (but not V Cast TV,) allowing the user to access a myriad ofpopular video clips from the likes of NBC, MTV, Comedy Central, CartoonNetwork and others, as well as view original content.User generated and side loaded videos are viewed with the same videoplayer, though V Cast does not have to be launched to do so.

Software

Thereis noting that sets the Venus apart in this category. Like all otherVerizon phones it runs on Qualcomm’s BREW platform. Unfortunately forthe user this means it sits behind a walled garden, and all contentadd-ons must be purchased through Verizon’s various shopping portals.There is a variety of games, ringtones and applications available viaGet It Now. Verizon’s signature application, VZ Navigator, runs justfine on the device and is useful as always.

Performance

For all of its shortcomings, the Venus performed admirably in the respect that matters most: being a phone. Reception was good and we were able to hold calls in areas that are known to be spotty for Verizon. Even in those low signal areas voices still sounded clear, and users said the same of us. The battery is rated at a more than respectable 240 minutes, but we were able to achieve a positively astounding 293 minutes of continuous talk time, almost an hour above the rating. Standby time is equally as impressive; the Venus is rated for 20 days.

Conclusion

The Venus is a good phone, but unfortunately it misses the loftier marks it sets out to hit. The design is a mashup, the touch screen lackluster in both function and performance and the Venus doesn’t offer any compelling reason to upgrade from the 8550. There are some minor upgrades of note, such as the camera and better keypad. We had no issues with the phone performance, which is arguably the most important feature, but if the customer is going to spend good money for a multimedia device we would have a hard time recommending the Venus.