LG Vu Review

Introduction:

Even though LG has beaten everyone by releasing a fully touch-screen phone like the PRADA on the market, it’s undeniable that the iPhone has had the most success. That target is what has been fueling the race to build the best touch-screen handset. To do so, each manufacturer makes their additions to it to just spice up a bit, such as a slide-out keyboard. Still, some seem to stick closely to the original formula; make the front dominated by a large display, a few key buttons are added, a decent camera and voila.

This is what LG seems to have done with the Vu. Sure it has mobile TV, but take it away and it seems to follow that basic formula. Apart from its look and the TV, there’s not much that jumps out at you immediately. It’s boxed in the Standard AT&T white/blue/orange box. Open it up and it just sits there on a dull gray cover with the accessories located underneath.

Sure it’s attractive, but the real magic should happen once you begin to use the phone. Besides, who wants something that just looks nice and doesn’t perform like the other handsets that are out there? Luckily, the Vu has plenty of features, to entice consumers away from its competition.

Design:

From just looking at the Vu, it has a very elegant and sophisticated look. Except for a silver ring around the sides and the camera, it’s dressed entirely in black. Looks can be deceiving however. Once handled, there’s a cheap feeling to the Vu since the housing is made up of plastic and feels light overall. Not to say that it’s a bad thing, but it just doesn’t ease the mind to think of what might happen if this phone was dropped. As this is a very stylish handset, another concern is, just how scratch resistant it is and especially the display. Well, the back was turned out to scratch very easily while the display was much more resilient. It didn’t get any minor scratches, but it did get to rather large deep ones, so make sure to keep it away from those keys.



You can compare the LG Vu to many other phones, using PhoneArena's Visual Size Compare tool.

At 3 inches with a resolution of 240x400, the display mixes in very well with the competition and takes up the majority of the front. Still, some menus and applications felt as if they were cramped when displayed.

It reproduces colors that are realistic, lively, and have good contrast. Brightness was a let down, however. Indoors, it was more than adequate, but once outside, the sun washed it out, making it very difficult to read.

Sensitivity was accurate when it comes to where it was pressed but not always in the way that you scroll. There were three main issues that we came across. When testing to see how quickly we could type on the keyboard, there were times when two of the same letters would be entered even though the second was a different one. Once we moved out of the test and used it for actual typing, we did not have this issue, but for the very fast texters, this may be something to consider.

The second issue occurred when we were using the web browser and scrolling across the page. It would open a link that was scrolled over at times, but we'll go more into depth on this later. The final issue was when scrolling through folders, music, or videos. When not using the scroll bar, it would speed through the list all the way to the beginning or end of the list.

Found just below the screen, are the control buttons. There’s the call, hang-up, and back/clear buttons. The camera, lock/unlock, volume rocker, charger slot, and antenna are all located on the right side. Despite their small size, all of the buttons were easy to press and use. Each one gives back a small click when pressed for feedback. The antenna is easy to extend and retract, but its base is very slim and looks like it could break off fairly easily.



While the Vu does come with a microSD slot, the bad news is that it’s placed behind the battery and just below the SIM (like in the Prada), making it very inconvenient. The good news is that it’s very easy to insert and take out the card.

The back holds the 2.0 mega-pixel camera with autofocus. With its silver finish, it really stands out from the rest of the black surface.

Interface:

LG's touch handsets all use very similar software, so the Vu’s interface should be familiar to those who've used a Prada, Viewty, or Glimmer. For those of you who are venturing into this line for the first time, here's a quick run through of how things look.

The home screen is almost empty by default. There is a line with service information on the top and in the bottom are four shortcuts: menu, TV, phonebook, and dialing pad. An option in the menu allows you to put a clock, calendar, or shortcut menu with eight options, in the center of the screen. The most customization of the shortcut menu that's allowed is the order in which the icons appear.

There is an icon just next to the battery indicator that looks as if it were a box over a box. This is the multitasking menu shortcut that opens up a list of functions, such as make a call or write a message. How is this multitasking you ask? Well, when a call is placed or the media player is running, this icon can be clicked and a new program can be opened. They will run at the same time. To switch back and forth, just press this icon again and all of the programs running will be displayed at the bottom. Just select the one to be brought to the top and it will be.

The main menu is in four tabs (Phone functions, Multimedia, Organizer, Settings). Everything is arranged logically here, and even first-time users will easily find what they need. The icons’ appearance is animated, but not slow. They look well (at least in the four preloaded themes) and one can easily get an idea of their purpose (even without reading the label below). The menu system is not only modern and looks good, but is also pleasure to use and can multitask easily.

Phonebook:

The contacts system is very good, which has really left some positive feelings in us. The names are displayed, filtered by their first letter (A-D, E-H, I-L, etc), in order to avoid lots of scrolling. The symbols are large, and we only wish the caller ID image was displayed when the contact is selected. By selecting the Lupa in the lower left corner, searching can be performed, by any word of the name.



Adding a contact offers you fields for names, two numbers and an email address. While this is plenty for some, it would be nice to see more fields or at least the option to add additional ones if needed. Of course each phonebook entry can have a personal image and ringtone, as well as being added to a group

Dialer:

Input of a number that is not in your phonebook is just as simple as in other phones. Open the dialpad (one of the shortcuts on the homescreen) and press the large numeric keys. It would be nice if the handset searched through the phonebook as the number is being entered, but it doesn't.

Organizer:

The third tab in the main menu houses all the organizer tools. Total of five alarms can be added, each with a separate time, recurrence options, name and tone. A few clicks are required to add an event (Appointment, Anniversary, or Birthday) to the calendar. Optional fields include subject/name, location, alarm and recurrence options. You are also able to search for text in the events added. Tasks can be added with three priority levels, while notepad is for plain notes without any options. There also are a calculator, tip calculator, a world clock, stopwatch and a currency converter.


The phone lacks real File Manager, which allows you to preview all files stored in the integrated memory or the card. It is replaced with the more typical for non-smart phones, browser that filters the files by their type (Pictures, Audio, Video, Applications, Documents, Flash, Others). Every time any of the filters is selected, it searches the available content, which takes some time to load.

To save images or videos, Vu comes with 120MB of internal memory, but it can be expanded with a microSD card.

The system tried to predict our words, but we would prefer to trade this feature for spelling-check, once the writing language is chosen. The on-screen keypad is similar to a standard one, but is absolutely flat (still it is on the screen), and its buttons are bigger than the QWERTY’s since they are less.

One peculiarity is that the QWERTY keyboard is not always available and when it is, the layout changes slightly. When entering a new contact, where a keyboard would be very useful, we were stuck with the keypad only. When composing a new email, only the keyboard was available, but the layout changed slightly compared to that of when writing a new text message. Come on LG, a bit of standardization would be great here.

If you include multimedia content such as a picture or tone, the message will turn from an ordinary SMS to a MMS.


Email IMAP4/POP3 client is also present and is easy to set up thanks to the built-in wizard. The settings for the more popular email providers are available (Yahoo! Mail/AOL/AIM/Windows Live Mail/AT&T Yahoo!/BellSouth/Comcast/Earthlink/Juno/Mindspring/NetZero). It does lack the option to setup a custom IMAP or POP3 email account, which is just unacceptable.

Connectivity:

The Vu is a quad-band GSM handset with dual-band UMTS/HSDPA (850/1900) support making web surfing and using other online services a blaze.

The full HTML internet browser is definitely among the good ones on the market. Even heavy pages, such as phonearena.com, are not a problem, and it visualizes them correctly. There are options for full screen, landscape or portrait orientation and for zooming out (so the whole page is visible) and then zooming in a particular part of the page.


Unfortunately, it cannot play embedded Flash objects, unlike the N95 8GB with its latest firmware. Considering the hardware, this shouldn’t be a problem.

One very irritating issue that we ran into while using the browser, actually came from the sensing mechanism. There are two ways to navigate through the webpage: using the scroll bars located at the right side and bottom, or by just pressing on the page and moving the whole site with your finger. The latter is where we ran into trouble. Some of the time, it would work without issues, but other times it felt as if the Vu thought we were pressing multiple times. We would feel the handset vibrate quite a bit and even open up a link we went over occasionally. It just became so frustrating that we stuck with the scroll bars for scrolling.

Another one was the zoom. It’s not that it doesn’t work properly, it’s that it just feels like it doesn’t zoom out far enough sometimes. This goes back to where we talked about certain aspects feel as if they were cramped. While other rivals use double tapping or other gestures to zoom in or out, the only way to do so with the Vu is to use the on-screen zoom slider. It's very unintuitive and just doesn't offer the level of accuracy as the others do.

For local connectivity, there is an option between Bluetooth 1.2 (which supports A2DP, AVRCP, and a long list of other profiles) and using a USB cable to synchronize with the computer. It’s unacceptable that it’s using Bluetooth 1.2 instead of 2.0 as other handsets do nowadays.

Camera:

While it does come equipped with a 2.0MP like most of its competition, the Vu could use a better camera seeing as it is a high-end handset that has only recently been launched. But size isn't everything as we still have to consider image quality and how navigable the camera interface is.

For us, the interface is very neatly laid out and it should be easy for a first time user, to know where everything is. Bars along the left and right side of the screen hold the most commonly used options (resolution, zoom, scene mode) while items such as image quality, shutter tone, and storage source are located in the settings menu. At the very bottom is a small status bar that lists the options that have been set.

To use video share, both handsets must have this option and be on a 3G network or it will not be accessible. We did not have another handset to test this option with.

Now you’re all probably wondering how the image quality is and we must say that it’s very disappointing. Images came out very blurry with purple fringing in many of the shots. Even in the brightest environments, there was a lot of noise that was captured and colors looked unnatural. The lack of flash makes the camera useless in dark environments.


Video capture faired better but not by much. Video quality is about what you find on YouTube. The resolution is down to 320x240 (available only with general record mode) or 176x144, scene mode is limited to night mode, and the record modes are MMS mode, video share, or general mode.

LG Vu sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution

Media Player:

No handset would be complete without some sort of media player and the Vu takes it one step further, by including a TV service, thanks to AT&T's mobile TV. The media player itself is a very basic one but gets the job done. Once in the now playing screen, controlling the song is easy thanks to the large buttons. As for the visualization, it’s either the album art or one of two spectrum analyzers. Apart from the repeat and shuffle, the last option is an equalizer, which made a very small difference in sound.



When watching media, the general layout stays the same, but there are a few options that have been added and some that have been taken away. There is the option of watching the video in landscape mode, to make the most of the screen. There’s an ability to take screenshots from what is being watched and save or send them. The final option is the ability to send the video via Bluetooth or a message. In our test, we could only open an h263 video file for preview.

Sound quality on both videos and music is great. It’s no surprise that bass is very lacking on a handset but music still came back through. Vocals were strong and clear and were not drowned out by instruments. The headsets were only slightly better with bass but sounded no better than the handset itself.

Software:

Now the real treat from this model, mobile TV. The channels available depend on the subscription, but what we’re really interested in are the options and just how well it works. Well, to answer both really quickly, we would have to say great.

The interface is simple and to the point. In the top left, there is a shortcut that opens up the guide menu for all of the channels. Here, all the shows currently playing as well as upcoming ones, can be previewed along with their information. Also accessible from this screen are options for subscription manager, parental controls, and updates. Back on the home screen, the only other changes that can be made would be to adjust the volume, switch to another channel, or exit the service. Quality is great and makes the experience even more pleasant. To acquire signal, it takes about 2 to 3 seconds, so there’s very little waiting and we experienced no issues when using this service in the car as long as we weren’t caught under a bridge or other blackout zone.


Quality is just as great and makes the experience very pleasant regardless of whether on the EDGE or 3G network. As long as there was strong signal, it seemed to work flawlessly. Of course, image quality was better on the 3G network but on a 3 inch screen, it’s not as noticeable as it would be on a regular TV.

Apart from just watching TV on the go, would it be possible to open or edit, say a Word or PDF document, to get that assignment done, before getting into the office? Sadly, it is not possible to open or edit any of them. It’s a shame too because with the QWERTY keyboard, a lot could be done.

The Vu does come with five games, but they are all demos. Each one makes use of either the full touch sensitive screen or on-screen buttons. The controls were rather frustrating as instead of using a D-pad, there are five buttons in two rows that have to be used.

Viewing photos is actually very easy, thanks to the built-in slider. It recalls to mind a little of how the iPhone flips through the albums. Well, almost. Instead of all of the photos being blown up, the selected one is the center of focus while the rest are just below and minimized.

An image editor is also supplied with the phone that allows one to change color effects, resize, rotate, and mirror the image.

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.