With the LG Voyager and it’s siblings, the LG Venus the Verizon Voyager (the LG Voyager is exclusive to Verizon in the US) the first of the long awaited iPhone clones (or iPhone killers) has been released.
The LG Voyager looks remarkably like and IPhone actually, but there are differences. For one thing it includes a full QWERTY keybaord, for another it uses full 3G technology (and so will not have to remain locked to one carrier).
Here’s what some places have been saying about it:
US mobile phone network
Verizon Wireless today unveiled three new mobile handsets
for the Christmas shopping season. The most interesting offering is the LG
Voyager, poised to take on the Apple iPhone.
The LG Voyager features faster wireless internet access than
the
Apple iPhone, hooking up to the newest Verizon Wireless data network. It
also features a similar full touchscreen and web browser as Apple’s device.
If you find the Apple iPhone’s touchscreen keypad a bit
fiddly to manage, the LG Voyager also features a slide-out traditional Qwerty keypad
as well as a second screen on a clamshell. There’s also a 2-megapixel camera,
and a
microSD slot capable of 8GB of expandable memory. The LG Voyager also has
direct access to Verizon Wireless’ online music store.
They think it’ll be the iPhone killer: that’s probably a little hopeful.
More:
The LG Voyager is not a larger version of the LG enV,
though the two are both side-opening QWERTY clamshell phones. Instead,
think of the Voyager as the phone the LG should have been, or would be
for an extra $200, give or take. While we complained about the tiny
external screen and lack of features on the enV, we’ll have no such
complaints about the Voyager. The face is dominated by a large touch
screen. We don’t have specific measurements, but upwards of 2.5-inches
or more would be our best guess. The interface relies heavily on the
touch screen, and includes plenty of icon-based menus and shortcuts to
help navigate without having to open the clam.
Like the interface on the LG Venus, every aspect of the Verizon
Wireless interface gets an upgrade to utilize the touch screen on the
LG Voyager. We were especially pleased to find included functionality
in the music player, as the simplistic controls and navigation on the V
Cast player always bugged us. The phone gets the full host of V Cast
services, including music, V Cast videos, VZ Navigator, and even V Cast
Mobile TV. The TV service relies on a tiny, thin external antenna, a
very dainty twig of metal that made us nervous even as our rep withdrew
it from its slot on the side of the phone. We didn’t get to see the
service in action, as the beta version of the phone wasn’t active on
the MediaFLO network.
We like this phone’s design, and can definitely see a market for it.
Perhaps a slider keyboard would have made more sense, and cut down the
number of non-touch screens on the phone, but the familial relationship
to the LG enV might encourage some customers to swap up, once they’ve
compared the two. On the inside, with the clamshell open, the Voyager
is still a nice phone, though it isn’t nearly as interesting.
What we like best about this phone, and the LG Venus, for that matter,
is the improvements LG has made to Verizon Wireless’ interface. Verizon
Wireless believes, at least from what our reps told us, that users like
to learn an interface and then find it useful on the next phone they
buy. We don’t buy it. Phones are improving too fast, with too many new
features every season, and users want a phone that makes sense. Maybe
it made sense to bury the touted HTML browser under the "Get It Now:
News and Info" submenu in the past, but now, that’s the last place we’d
look.
All of the new phones will be in the stores by Thanksgiving:
Lifting the curtain today on what will be four of the most desired
phones of the year from Verizon Wireless, the company unveiled several
anchor phones that will be available for the 2007 holiday season: the
Verizon Wireless Juke by Samsung, the BlackBerry(R) Pearl(TM) 8130
smartphone, The Venus(TM) by LG and The Voyager(TM) by LG. All of the
phones will be in stores before Thanksgiving.
There is even, if I knew what it meant, haptic feedback:
Today Verizon Wireless showed
off the LG Voyager, a followup to the popular LG enV. The LG Voyager
features a large touchscreen on the front with haptic feedback, giving
users a small vibration when they touch a button. This
messaging-centric phone flips open like a laptop to reveal a QWERTY
keyboard. The LG Voyager is exclusive to Verizon Wireless and features
support for its high-speed EV-DO 3G network. The Voyager also includes
a full HTML web browser, as well as V CAST Music and Video and V CAST
Mobile TV. The music player on the LG Voyager supports .MP3, .WMA, and
unprotected .AAC music files.
Earlier news from Verizon had them allowing a pro-abortion group (or as they would prefer to be known, pro-choice group) being allowed to use their network to send text messages:
And also their patent dispute with Vonage. One that might well close Vonage down altogether.
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