LG Voyager
Score: 70% When: November 2007 Worth: $300

Let's get the comparisons out of the way early. The LG Voyager wants to be an Apple iPhone killer, and it could be the very first bona fide contender. It does plenty of things that the iPhone can't, and while it isn't perfect, for many users its shortcomings won't detract from the significant advantages over Apple's device. Forgive us for glossing over the hardware keyboard in this review; we'll discuss whether we enjoyed using it for messaging, but whenever we could, we kept the lid closed on this device, and tried to rely on touch for whatever functions we could.

Design - Very good

The LG Voyager is easy to describe. It's an LG enV with a large, 2.8-inch touchscreen on the exterior instead of the numeric keypad. But if LG had simply stopped there, slapping a touchscreen onto the enV, this phone wouldn't be half the device it is. The touch screen is reinforced by haptic feedback, so whenever you tap the screen you get a slight buzz. It's a great effect, and it made the screen much more pleasant to use than the screens on more static devices.

The Touch interface has improved upon the Verizon Wireless in some nice ways. For one, Verizon has kept the LG Voyager in their walled garden, so you'll be familiar with the features if you've used a VZW phone before. But the garden looks much nicer on this phone, and they've put the best plants up near the front entrance. So VZ Navigator and the Web browser--formerly buried under the "Get it now" menu--are now top-level menu options, just as they should be. Perhaps we understand hiding V Cast Mobile TV, as it won't be available to all potential customers, but we can't understand why the mobile e-mail app is hidden, while SMS and IM are near the top.

The internal QWERTY on the Voyager is nice, but a little flat for our tastes. We prefer HTC's excellent keys, like we found on the AT&T Tilt. The Voyager's onscreen keyboard, however, is the best software keyboard we've seen on a phone. It beats the Apple iPhone with its haptic feedback, though its design is otherwise very similar. Unfortunately, like the iPhone, the Voyager doesn't let you use the wide, touch QWERTY keyboard everywhere you want, and gives you a 12-key pad on screen for SMS messaging, or sometimes makes you open the flip to use the hard keys.

Calling - Good

Call quality on the Voyager was disappointing, and in many ways the calling features are simply average. Though the soft buttons on the touch screen looked nice and polished, there were no new or outstanding calling features to take advantage of the technology, and some of our favorite features were missing. Speaker-independent voice dialing worked perfectly, but we miss conference calling, which the Voyager lacks. Bluetooth worked well for calling, and the speaker phone was nice and loud, better with the phone open than closed. The address book was unfortunately average, and though it had plenty of fields, a touch screen phone cries out for innovative speed dialing, like the "Hollywood Squares"-style menu on the HTC Touch on Sprint.

For calling times, we managed a phone call over four and a half hours, longer than Verizon Wireless' four-hour pledge. Still, that's not much for a multimedia phone, and V Cast Mobile TV is even more of a resource hog. On a long train commute home, we managed to drain the battery in less than three hours, watching television and browsing the Web, then navigating from the train station to home.

Messaging - Very good

Messaging was fine on the LG Voyager's touch screen, but the best experience required opening the phone. This is too bad, as the Voyager's on-screen keyboard is nothing to hide. We enjoyed using it when it did pop up, but this wasn't in the text messaging or instant messaging apps. The phone supports AOL, MSN and Yahoo for IM, and had no trouble setting up our Gmail account without additional help from us, even though Gmail wasn't one of the listed presets. The phone can also handle picture messages and video messages, though we wish there was a way to e-mail pictures. Instead, the e-mail app is somewhat buried, and separate from the standard "Messaging" window.