LG Cell Phones

At first glance, the LG Venus looks a little like the LG Prada with what appears to be a full 3-inch display. A closer look, however, reveals that there are actually two screens - the one on top is a regular QVGA display, which measures 2 inches diagonally and is simply beautiful to behold. It supports a luscious 262,000 colors, and graphics and animation look fantastic. while the other one underneath is a touch screen that shows onscreen navigation controls. Measuring 4 inches by 2 inches by 0.62 inch, the Venus has quite a sleek, slender figure with curved corners and faux-leather covering on the back. This gives it a nice and luxurious feel in the hand and a comfortable grip.

The really special thing about the Venus, however, is its unique navigation interface. Measuring about 1.5 inches diagonally, the lower screen displays touch-sensitive navigation controls with different layouts depending on the application. For example, on the default standby page, the touch-screen layout has the Menu button in the middle with shortcuts to messaging, contacts, a shortcuts folder, and recent calls arranged around it. The shortcuts folder contains up to four user-defined shortcuts to different applications. On the menu interface page however, the onscreen layout changes to an OK button in the middle and up and down arrows positioned above and below it. Similarly, when the music player is activated, you will see music player controls on the display, and when the camera is activated, you will see camera controls instead.

Slide open the phone and you'll find a very spacious and tactile number keypad with the Send, Clear, and End/Power keys on the top row. The slider mechanism felt quite sturdy when opening and closing the phone as well. All keys are very well-spaced apart with a lovely raised curved texture that makes it quite easy to dial by feel. The keypad also has alternating colors, which we think is a nice touch. The volume rocker, voice recorder button, and headset and charger jacks sit on the left spine, while the right is home to a microSD card slot, a dedicated Music player key, and a dedicated camera key. On the back is the camera lens.

The LG Venus is more than just a pretty face; in fact, it has a very impressive feature set that complements its design nicely. But before we get to that, we'll start with the basics. The Venus has a 1,000-entry contacts list with room in each entry for five phone numbers and two e-mail addresses. You can organize them by caller groups, and pair them with a photo or any of 16 ringtones and five alert tones for caller ID. Other essentials include a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, text and multimedia messaging, a calendar, an alarm clock, a world clock, a stopwatch, a notepad, a tip calculator, and a voice memo recorder, plus voice command support. On the higher end, there's also e-mail, PC syncing, USB mass storage, instant messaging, a wireless Web browser, and stereo Bluetooth. A nice departure from Verizon, the Bluetooth supports file transfer, object push, and dial-up networking protocols. In addition, the Venus has built-in GPS so you can use it with Verizon's own location-based service called VZ Navigator for turn-by-turn directions.

The Venus comes with 3G support in the form of built-in EV-DO. This gives the VX8800 access to the full stable of Verizon's broadband services like streaming video from V Cast Videos and the ability to download songs over the air from V Cast Music. The music player interface is nice and clean thanks to the onscreen music player controls, and you can view the album art when a song is playing. The songs are automatically organized by artist, genre, and album, and you can create and manage your own playlists if you wish. Other music player options include a shuffle and repeat mode, 11 different preset equalizer settings (or "sound effects"), plus a Music Only mode (also known as Airplane mode) which turns the cell phone RF off so you can use the phone to play music while in flight (It does not turn off Bluetooth, though, so you can still use your Bluetooth headset to listen to music). Another nice touch is that you can multitask while the music is playing--you can hide the player and continue browsing the Web or typing out text messages. The music player supports MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ file formats, and 64MB of internal memory is dedicated to music storage. If you wish to add more storage, the Venus also has a microSD card slot that supports cards up to 8GB.

The Venus has a lovely 2-megapixel camera that can take pictures in four resolutions (1,600x1,200; 1,280x960; 640x480; 320x240), five white-balance settings, and five color effects. Other settings include spot metering, up to 2x zoom (not usable at the highest resolution), a brightness setting, a night mode, a self-timer, plus three different shutter sounds (with a silent option). There's also a built-in camcorder with two different video resolutions (320x240 and 176x144), and many of the editing options are similar to the still camera. Video recording time is limited to 30 seconds for multimedia messages and up to 1 hour for saving.

Personalization options with the Venus are plentiful--it comes with a variety of color themes, wallpaper, screen savers, alert tones, and more. Of course, you have the option to purchase more via the Venus's built-in Web browser. The Venus comes with one game called VZW Board Games, but you can always download more as well.

Product summary:
The LG Venus is a beautiful slider phone with a great feature set. It has a unique dual-screen design with onscreen navigation controls that change layout depending on the application, plus it has vibrating feedback when touched. It also comes with a wealth of multimedia features, EV-DO support, plus great performance. MicroSD slot located supports memory cards up to 8GB in capacity. Access to AOL, Windows Live, and Yahoo Web mail and instant messaging.