Okay I’m doing this review becusae a friend asked me too (bob our guest reviewer) and I’ve been slacking on the reviews and well it’s a gadget. We’ll review gadgets from time to time. So here goes, my not to long, but not too short review on the Verizon Voyager!
I used to have a VX7000, I got it for mostly free since my mother and sister got one they had a buy one get 2 free or some crap, so they gave me one.. IT was a great little phone! but as of late the charging wasn’t working so well.. So i decided since i had 100$ credit in the bank and the voyager is down to 149.99 with a 2 year contract and rebates i’d give it a shot.. Hell its 50 bucks!..
Right off the bat its a sexy phone! I allways thought it was.. True it is not an iphone, but i look at this phone as something different than an Iphone. Why? It has a fold open keyboard with another screen.. To be honest the touch on the front is almost gimmicky.. BUT I do like having a full size viewing screen on the front.. It makes viewing things much more tolerable. Okay lets get down to brass tacks.
The Touch Screen
The touch screen on the unit is more of a pressure touch screen. I Find that sometimes i cant get the unlock key to unlock the phone if i just barely touch it, i either need to make a solid tap of it, or i need to hit it a few times, once its unlocked tho it seems to notice most things i do just fine, That or i’m adjusting to what it wants to get from me. I have to say, since this is my first touch screen phone, that i’m not too impressed with trying to text with it on the screen.. IT all depends on my mood. IF i’m trying to text while in the car at a light or something, i hope you speak alien language cuz the t9 is going to throw up some wierd shit for you. IF i take my time and use two fingers i get better results but at that rate i may was well just flip it open and use the keyboard. So texting on the front.. meh.. its so/so I dont love it, i dont hate it.. but sometimes its a bit frustrating… navigating menu’s is nice though, i simply touch where i want and i can go there.. One thing i do not like though is that when I’m on a call it locks the phone after a few seconds, so if i’m being prompted by some number.. i.e. “PRess 2 to speak with an operator” I now have to first hit a button to the turn front screen on (it goes off while not being used after a few seconds) Then unlock the phone via touch screen then hit the number i want.. Its kind of a pain. There is an easier way though, there is a small button on the left side of the phone which does and instant auto unlock, i’m not used to using it yet, but it would drastically cut this down.. Though honestly i kind of wish it would just leave it unlocked during a call, and there may be a setting for this but i’m not finding it yet.
So there’s 4 main options you cause on the touch screen on the front of the phone, the first being the texting button which i like cuz i text alot, so its right there…(a tad small but workable), the next being the phone button which brings up a regular phone interface to call people, the third being the menu (same menu you get when you flip open the phone and select menu) and the fourth being the directory of people you know. There’s a 5th option which isn’t instantly obviously, that being if you push any part of your default background you’re given a shortcut menu, very similar to iphones. This menu gives you 11 choices you can choose from and luckily its customizable! well…. to an extent.. This is where it sucks.. not EVERY thing on the phone can be put here.. For instance, this phone features a stop watch, a cool little feature if you’re timing how fast your buddies can down a beer for instance, but you cant link that into the shortcut menu, it pre-selects like 15 items you can choose from and THATS it. well that isn’t so great for a touch screen phone which you want shortcuts with…
The rest of the interface and interactions are okay, i dont have too much to complain about.. Even with my screen protector over my phone its still pretty sensitive to my touches. Although i do have to say the ‘drag’ functionality leaves a bit to be desired. I find that when i first tried to scroll through my phone book by ‘dragging’ i went the wrong way, not only that, but most people i give the phone too that have never used a touch phone do exactly what I did, they go the other way. I dont know why, but we did that, not that the phone is wrong, it would just be nice to have an option to invert scrolling or something. Though now i’m used to it, the scrolling still isn’t as smooth as it could be, often times i feel like i need to keep my finger pressed against the screen pretty good for it to register the full drag otherwise i get false clicks or select something i didnt mean too..
Also dont turn of the mini vibrate haptec feedback, it helps you, trust me. I tried without it, i text a bit better with it cuz now i know when i’m hitting a key. IT also lets me know that my phone is a tad glichy when i hit ‘unlock’ 4 times and feel a vibrate yet i dont get it unlocking.. So the phone isn’t absolutely perfect but i KNOW i felt a vibrate and my phone didnt un-lock.
Flip open keyboard and screen!
One really nice thing about this phone is that LG didnt skimp when it came to flip open functionality, the screen inside the phone is VERY bright and vivid and crisp, as well as just as large as the front screen! it might be a tad smaller i haven’t measured and i’m FAR to lazy to look up the spec’s but its damn nice to be sure! it is NOt touch screen but does it need to be? There’s stereo speakers on the left and right.. They do get a little crackly when its too loud, or on certain speaker phone calls, but i’m happy to at least have gotten speaker phone! Speaker phone works best when the phone is open by the way.
Another great feature i love on this phone is the completely back lit keyboard. Its not super 100% bright but its enough to see every single key, and its pretty evenly lit. Unlike my saitek eclipse 2 keyboard on my computer where you can hardly read some of the keys in the dark, these are all lit up nice. At first i didnt think it would have a lit keyboard and I was a bit down about that, but when i saw it, i gasped and smiled 
It was nice of them to remember that some of text at night while lying in bed! Keys are square and fairly big, i never have much trouble hitting them or over or under hitting.. I am still getting used to the space keys so often times my words are seperated by periods instead of spaces, but being my first full qwerty keyboard, it is real nice to be able to switch between numbers and letters immediately just by moving my thumb and not having to change an entry system.
The screen pivots open two clicks one at an angle and one puts it almost straight with the keyboard (a littler further back then the first click).
Sound quality
So the only issue i have with the phone is that its sound quality leaves a little to be desired, Its not that i cant hear people, but when i talk, i hear myself echoing and sometimes its fairly bad. I’m getting used to it i suppose, but I shouldn’t have too. I really hope they can fix this with a firmware becuase its akward. I dont think i notice it when using a bluetooth headset though. Other than that i can usually hear the person on the other end just fine and they can hear me as well without too much effort.. Talk time has been fine and standby just as good.
Camera
So camera’s in phones aren’t all that.. Its still about as blurry as my old vx7000 there’s just more of it now.. instead of 1290×900 i’m now at like 1900×1600.. its more resolution i cant complain, but its fuzzy and not the greatest picture quality.. Downsized pictures do look good. But any pictures taken in anything other than full light suffer from alot of noise and grain.
My second biggest gripe/issue with this phone is how SLUGGISH it is to get into the camera interface.. WAna capture that perfect expression on your cats face? or that guy who is about to run into a brick wall with his car? well forget it with this phone.. You’re going ot need about 6-10 seconds of lead time depending on which you want to do. Getting into the camera first requires you to have the phone unlocked, then you press the camera button first displays a “Turn the phone on its side to use the camera” message which displays for about 1 second then you get a ‘please wait’ for about 2-3 seconds.. you’re already 4-5 seconds in and the camera is just now starting so you can get a preview of what your going to shoot.. The preview is pretty laggy probably 10 frames per a second.. so not super smooth… The shutter lag is HORRENDIS! you press the button to take a picture, and depending weather you have auto focus or not it can take 3-4 seconds to take the actual shot.. I prefer to use auto focus becuase your shots wont look good without it, but the problem here is that its all in one button click, you cant auto focus first then snap, you just press it and it does it all, often times meaning you’ll miss that perfect shot for clarity. IF you turn of auto focus its a bit faster but still a 1-2 second lag from when you push the button to when it takes the photo.. It also takes about 1 or 1.5 seconds to write each image to the card.. I know seconds doesnt seem long but when you’re between shots it can start to bog you down.
Movie capture is not much better, my first grip is that the only way i can find to get to movie capture fast is to first go INTO camera mode, then hit the options button THEN hit the movie button then it switches over, so add another 2-3 seconds onto your already 6 seconds of getting into the camera.. While it may seem like i’m making a big deal out of this, when you know its going to take you 10 seconds to get the film mode up and running you often times dont even bother recording anything.. Also its confined to a really really low resolution with a ton of compression.. Why do we not have an uncompressed mode? I would have thought uncompressed would be faster for the camera, granted i’m not a programmer.. i have a 4 gig SD card in there i can easily hold 320×240 uncompressed for probably hours.. Also i wish we could have gotten a tad higher resolution.. 640×480 would have been too much to ask for i know.. but maybe something like 400×300 or something? The compression blocks just kind of suck .. and the movie quality often times isn’t THAT much better than my vx7000, okay i’m being mean, it is substainally clearer, but still, i feel like they could have done a little bit better at least cut out the compression if you could.. With an added SD card slot it seems we deserve that much.. The other thing that annoyed me was that while you are filming a flick or even taking a picture, a txt message (and probably a call too) will completely interrupt what are you doing. It’s more so annoying with a txt message, i understand a call is more urgent then a txt, but in the middle of recording a video, the text will pop up and stop your recording. luckily they save however much you had been recording automatically asuming you have space, but i’d prefer some kind of subtle warning that i have a text or they completely hide the notification untill *I* decide when i’m done filming, not the phone. Its annoying in picture mode too when you’re getting it centered and lined up and push the button and it does it’s autofocus thing and BAM! text message comes in and you loose the shot and now have to trudge through the slow camera mode to get back to where you were.
Unfortunately I didnt really get to try the TV functionality or the music or movie playback on this phone, It has some of those features, tho i can say this, I accidently hit the ‘my music’ button, and it took like 5 seconds to load it up.. when i have NOTHING in there.. that seems a bit absurd to me.. I’m sure the quality of playback is fine and i’m sure movies and other things probably look fine as well i just dont really have an interest in those..
I’ve only used the web to surf my account information as well, so i really cant comment on how well it surfs websites.. When i try the instore demo, it was slow to be sure.. And i dont want to be billed 1.99 for every 1 meg i get just to test websurfing that i hardly use. I really wish the phone had WIFI.
Over all
I had some issues with some OEM car chargers i bought off ebay, i basically sent those back though, The problem was the guy was sending me chargers that worked with OTHER LG phones but none of them listed the VX10000.. Dont asume one charger workers for all.. OTher than that i’ve been pretty happy with this phone.. For one it has taught me that sometimes I am just not in the mood to deal with a finicky touch screen interface for texting, and that the iphone may not have been the right thing for me. I like tactile keys on occasions espically when i want to say something fast. I would be frustrated as hell with the iphone, and i base that conclusion off my time with the voyagers touch screen. I do admit the voyagers touch screen probably isn’t as sensitive but it still gives me a rough idea. But its sleek, has nice screen, and from what i was using the picture and movie quality are substantially better. Its actually thinner than my old phone and only an inch or so taller.. Its sleek and with my cheapo plastic case, it glides into my pocket. I will admit i’ve read horror stories of the screen cracking becuase people wang it up against something while in their pocket, but i’be tried to be careful, becuase of its longer shape, it does tend to get it self tight my pocket when i sit.
All in all i feel pretty good about my purchase, i’ve dreaded the ‘NOW COMING VOYAGER 2′ announcement that would come 5 seconds after i purchased it but so far nothing like that.. and for 50 bucks and a 2 year commitment for me, its not a bad upgrade! It’s a solid phone, but i am looking forward to this rumored ‘refresh’ they are going to have for it.
All in all i give it …
pickyassgamer
Millennium
Jinx
0 Responses to “**Gadget Review** Verizon Voyager VX10000 cell phone.”