Verizon’s LG Venus, its second touch-screen enabled phone after the Voyager, sports a very aesthetically pleasing design. Similar to the popular “Chocolate,” the Venus swaps out the Chocolate’s touch-sensitive buttons with an actual touch screen, which gives it a rather unique dual-screen design.
Clocking in at 4 inches by 2 inches by 0.62 inch, the Venus looks high-tech and very chic, with curved corners on a silver border, and a faux-leather battery cover on the back, which gives it a comfortable grasp and opulent feel in the hand.
Phone, MP3 Player, or Both?
Verizon is billing the Venus as a phone/mp3 player hybrid, very much like the Chocolate. The phone’s OS has the capability to switch into “music only” mode, which prevents the device from making calls, presumably to save the phone’s battery, when being used only as an mp3 player. Interestingly, this music-centric phone does not include a memory card in the box, which would have made sense as the 128 MB of internal memory does not offer much space for music.
As mentioned above, the phone has two displays on the front: The upper “primary” screen, and the lower touch screen, which acts as a dynamic navigation display. Measuring 2 inches diagonally, the upper screen is very easy on the eyes. The average user will immediately note an improvement over many of the phone’s predecessors, as graphics and animations look incredible on the screen.
The Venus’ simple, updated interface is a nice improvement over the clunky, “classic” theme of older Verizon phones – however the theme can be changed back to the classic version if the user desires. The display's backlight, font size, and the clock format can all be customized, but not the brightness or contrast.
The phone is available in two different versions. There is a "masculine" version, the black Venus (pictured), and a "feminine" pink Venus. The only difference is that the pink version has its own pink-based color scheme for the main theme.
A Chic, Stylish, Interface
What sticks out most about the Venus, though, is its unique navigation interface. At about 1.5 inches measured diagonally, the lower screen displays dynamic touch-sensitive controls that change depending on which application is open. For instance, on the phone’s default home page, the touch-screen display has buttons to open the contact list, messages, recent calls, and a user-defined folder containing shortcuts arranged around a menu button in the center.
Pre-installed Apps
The shortcuts folder can contain links to the phone’s built-in apps, which include a tip calculator, world clock, calendar, notepad, and more. A modest set of apps comes standard, and a limited number of purchasable apps can be added.
If the user navigates to a built-in application, such as messaging, the navigation controls change to buttons useful for that application. When the contacts list is called up, buttons such as “Call” “edit” “options” “view” and “back” are displayed. When a contact is called, the navigation screen displays that person’s phone number, and two buttons: “speaker” (to activate the speaker phone mode) and “cancel” to end the call.
EVDO Capabilities
The Venus has the capability to connect to Verizon’s 3G EV-DO network, giving users the option to add data to their plan. The phone can therefore be used as a wireless modem for laptops or to connect to Verizon’s V-Cast service, which allows users to watch streaming media.
The phone does not come with a full featured web browser, however. Users who buy the data plan will feel cramped by the limited browser which only supports sites that have been tooled specifically for mobile phones. There is no support for flash or really anything outside the browser’s built-in links to mobile sites such as CNN news and sports.
Early versions of the phone's OS felt sluggish and tended to be buggy, but this is no longer a problem, as version 1.4 (which comes preloaded on all new Venus handsets) has reduced these sluggishness issues and done away with most common bugs.
All in all, the Venus feels very well-rounded and well-built: a good choice for users who want simple messaging on a music-enabled phone, but not for people who favor a full-featured browser or want a full touch screen.
The phone's price has come down sharply from the initial 199.99 asking price. It can now be found for as low as 25.00 from Amazon.
Philip Davis - Hello! I am an average guy from Finleyville, PA, USA who loves technology and building computers. Since the age of 12 I have been ...
