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LG Dare Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on July 10, 2008 Comment on this

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The LG Dare is another touch screen device that is pointed directly at the iPhone. Verizon has been moving strongly in the direction of touch screen phones with devices like the LG Voyager and Samsung Glyde. The Dare is the best of the bunch so far, however. It has superior software, a very responsive touch screen, an excellent 3.2 megapixel camera and very good battery life. Is all of this enough to beat out the iPhone 3G and get Verizon customers to shell out $199 with a two-year contract for the Dare instead? Read on to find out.

Section	The Good	The Bad
Tour & Design	The Dare feels very durable.	It won't be winning any beauty contests.
Audio Quality	Good sound received by the phone and side tone.	Sound sent by the phone had some issues.
Imaging	Above average photos and excellent video recording.	Color accuracy could have been better.
Making/Receiving Calls	Very good vibrate alert.	A little slow to dial.
Messaging	Very fast to creat an SMS.	No email client.
Organizer	Nothing spectacular here.	This won't replace a PDA.
Multimedia	Very fast load times for music and video.	Video software could have been better.
Software	Easy to use and intuitive interface.	Web browser is difficult to use.
Battery Life	Excellent battery life across the board.	We just don't have anything bad to say here.
Connectivity	EVDO Rev A and solid Bluetooth.	No Wi-Fi support.
Hardware	Responsive touch screen.	Terrible virtual QWERTY.
Other Features	GPS & Tethered Modem support.	You have to use Verizon's GPS software.
Value & Comparisons	A solid value at $200.	You'll be paying extra for storage.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

The LG Dare won't win any design awards, but it's a solidly put together device and smaller than many all-in-one phones.

 

Front
From the front the LG Dare is dominated by the three inch touch screen. Above the display is the Verizon logo and the speaker for the phone. Below is the LG logo and three buttons: send, end and back.

 

Left
On the left side of the Dare you find several ports and buttons. Near the top is a lock/unlock key, below it is the Micro SD card slot with a tethered cover and below that is a dedicated speakerphone button. Nearer the bottom is the Micro USB port with another tethered cover.

 

Top
The top of the LG Dare holds the 3.5mm headphone jack. There is a cover for the jack but it is not tethered and is tiny so expect to lose it quickly. Opposite the headphone jack is an eyelet for lanyards.

 

Bottom
The only thing on the bottom of the Dare is the hold for the phone microphone.

 

Right
On the right side of the LG Dare you find the volume keys near the top and a dedicated camera key near the bottom.

 

Back
The back of the Dare holds the lens for the 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera with an LED flash sitting next to it. To the right of the lens is the loudspeaker.

 

Battery Out
Pushing up on the back of the Dare will remove the cover and reveal the 1100 mAh battery.

In the Box (2.0)
The LG Dare does not ship with many accessories. In addition to manuals and a software CD there is a USB cord that also plugs into the wall charger, so it serves dual duty. It wold have been nice to see a stereo headet and memory card with a high end device like this.

Handling (7.5)
The LG Dare is about the same width as the iPhone, but slightly shorter and thicker, some with smaller hands may find it a bit too wide. The back of the phone has a soft touch finish that should help you hold it better and the edges are beveled so it fits comfortably in your palm. The phone weighs in at 3.76 ounces, lighter than the Samsung Instinct or the iPhone, so it shouldn't weigh you down when your're holding it up to your head for long calls.

Portability (6.5)
At 4.1 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches the Dare is larger than your average phone. It will fit into many pants pockets but if you like really tight jeans it will get unconfortable in there. It should fit comfortably into a jacket pocket or all but the smallest bags. It's certainly not as portable as a Razr, but it' also not quite as bulky as some bigger smart phones like the Treos.

Aesthetics (3.5)
The LG Dare is styled in black with silver highlights. Obviously aesthetics are always very personal, but we were not impressed by the Dare's stylings, and neither were any of the people we showed it to. The best we heard was boring, and ugly came up more than once. Frankly we like the look of the Samsung Instinct better, and even the Palm Centro at least had cute going for it.

Durability (7.0)
The LG Dare felt well put together, with no obvious creaks or gaps in its construction. Some of the buttons did feel a bit plasticky, and of course you have to worry about that large display. We're most concerned about the unprotected lens for the 3.2 megapixel camera. Aside from these concerns we think the Dare will hold up well to daily use. We do recommend you go get a screen protecter, however, and be careful with that camera lens.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

Sound received was good, but sound sent had some serious problems. Side tone was just a bit low.

 

General Audio
The quality of audio you get from your cell phone is arguably the most important aspect of your cell phone's performance. To ensure we can give you the best information about audio quality we use professional equipment and software to test it. We use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS) to simulate the human head and ear and we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software to analyze the audio. This is the same combination of hardware and software used by many manufacturers and carriers. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.73)
In this test we take a look at the quality of audio received by the LG Dare, so this is how others will sound to you during a call. Below you can see the Dare's performance in blue with the limits against which we test in red.

You can see that the LG Dare had a couple of issues, rising slightly above our limits in the mid range of frequencies and then dropping off a bit faster than we would like. Neither of these are major issues, however, and you should not notice any major problems with the audio quality received by the Dare. You can see below that the Dare put up a score right in the middle of our comparison phones, and in fact it's almost exactly average for all cell phones.

Cell Phone	LG Dare	Samsung Glyde (on CARRIER)	Samsung Instinct (on CARRIER)
Score	7.73	6.56	7.25
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

 

Cell Phone	LG Voyager (on CARRIER)	Palm Centro (on CARRIER)	Apple iPhone (on CARRIER)
Score	7.84	6.24	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Sound Send Frequency Response (6.74)
Here we look at the quality of audio sent by the LG Dare, so this is how you will sound to those on the other end of the call. Once again the chart below indicates the Dare's performance in blue with the two red lines indicating the limits against which we test.

You can see that there are some significant issues with the audio sent by the LG Dare. At lower frequencies it falls below our limits and then rises above them at higher frequencies. This means that lower voices will sound extra bassy while higher pitched voices will be exaggerated. You can see below that the Dare's score on this test is the worst amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	LG Dare	Samsung Glyde (on CARRIER)	Samsung Instinct (on CARRIER)
Score	6.74	8.23	6.75
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

 

Cell Phone	LG Voyager (on CARRIER)	Palm Centro (on CARRIER)	Apple iPhone (on CARRIER)
Score	8.51	7.82	7.58
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Handset Side Tone (8.29)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that a phone pipes into your ear so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. Our ideal for side tone is -18 decibels while the Dare scored -19.71 decibels in our test. This is slightly lower than we would have liked, you may find yourself raising your voice just a bit to compensate, but is nowhere near as bad as the Samsung Glyde or Instinct, as you can see below.

[page title="Imaging"]

The 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera took very good shots, with the weakest point being some issues with color accuracy. Video capture was also very good and there's even slow motion video available.

 

Resolution (6.96)
To test resolution we take photos of an industry standard Applied Image 12233 resolution chart. We then run these photos through Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per picture heigh (lw/ph). This is a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together.

The LG Dare and its 3.2 megapixel auto-focus camera did reasonably well in our test scoring 1251 lw/ph horizontal and 709 lw/ph horizontal. You can see below that this is the best performance amongst our comparison phones in this test. It's also far above the average phone camera, although not quite up to the standard of our best performers like the Nokia N82.

Cell Phone	LG Dare	Samsung Glyde	Samsung Instinct
Score	6.96	4.04	1.40
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1251/709	954/960	562/623
Image of Resolution Chart

 

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	Palm Centro	Apple iPhone
Score	2.93	1.41	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	837.9/838.9	581/596	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (3.77)
To test the quality of colors produced by the LG Dare's camera we took photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart and ran the photos through Imatest software to analyze them. Imatest produces the chart below, which compares the 24 original colors on the color chart to the colors produced by the Dare.

Imatest also produces the following chart, where you can get a more visual idea of how accurate colors are. In this chart the square is the ideal color and the circle is the captured color. The longer the line between the two the more innacurate the colors.

You can see that the LG Dare's camera had some issues as almost all colors were slightly off. That said it's not terrible performance and the whites in particular were pretty accurate, which we like to see. You can see below that the Dare's performance in this test was right in the middle of our comparison phones. Overall it falls a bit below average for color fidelity.

Cell Phone	LG Dare	Samsung Glyde	Samsung Instinct
Score	3.77	2.32	1.67
Color Checker Chart

 

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	Palm Centro	Apple iPhone
Score	5.31	8.08	5.22
Color Checker Chart

Noise (1.47)
To test noise we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels ranging from very bright to about candlelight. We run these photos through Imatest to analyze noise at each lighting level. We consider both overal noise and consistency across lighting levels in our final score. The LG Dare performed better than average in this test with very consistent and reasonably low noise across lighting levels, at least for a cell phone. The truth is that even the best cell phone cameras produce a lot of noise, which is why there isn't a single score below over 2.0.

Live Preview (7.0)
The LG Dare's live preview takes up the entire three inch display, which is what we like to see. Colors on the screen were very accurate to what we got in the final shot, but we did notice a lot of blurring when we panned the camera, which may make it difficult to take a photo of a moving target or quickly shift your perspective and take a shot. Details was good, however, everything on screen looked sharp.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.90)
The LG Dare took 2.9 seconds to go from the home screen until we had captured a photo. This is actually pretty impressive for an auto-focus camera, you can see below that the Samsung Glyde and LG Voyager, both of which also have auto-focus lenses, took significantly longer. We were very pleased with the LG Dare's performance on this test, this kind of speed in an auto-focus camera is exceedingly rare. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (9.0)
The LG Dare was able to take a series of six shots in almost exactly two seconds using its burst mode. This works out to three frames per second (fps). This is excellent performance, but like many cameras it comes at a price. The resolution of the photos is dropped significantly. The saving grace is that the "dropped" resolution on the Dare is 1.3 megapixels, which is as high as many cell phones take a maximum resolution. This means the photos will still be somewhat usable. The excellent performance in this test means that you'll be able to capture pretty good action shots, where shot to shot time becomes most important. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (1.25)
The LG Dare took 1.6 seconds to capture a photo once we had pressed down on the shutter key. This is pretty slow, but is to be expected from an auto-focus camera that needs to put the scene into focus before capturing the photo. If you expect you might need speedier performance you can turn off the auto-focus. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (8.5)
The LG Dare is very good. The screen is blank when you first launch the camera aside from a helpful reminder to tap the screen if you want to access controls and a couple of indicators at the top of the screen. Tapping the screen will bring up controls on the top, left and right of the display. At the top is a bar for zoom, you can also control zoom with the volume keys. On the left is another slider for brightness control and just below that a button that takes you to more in depth menus. On the right are five controls for the Home screen, Auto-Focus, Timer, Flash and a shortcut to the Album software.

Tapping on the menu button brings up a series of icons on the bottom of the screen. These act as tabs, so tapping on one will bring up a menu just above it, very similar to the interface we see on some HTC phones. We like this interface for two reasons, even when accessing menus you get to see what's on screen as almost everything is transparent. The interface is also very camera-like. We found that the Dare's interface gave you quick access to many important functions and had a plethora of other controls available in a well organized menu system.

Photo Album Software Internal (6.0)
The LG Dare's album software takes you to a simple thumbnail grid 3 x 4, with the bottom row slightly cut off. Tapping on a picture will take you to the full screen version and rotating the phone will let you view the photo in landscape orientation automatically, similar to the iPhone. At the bottom of the screen is a menu button that will let you select multiple photos to move, delete or send. There's also a play button to play a simple slideshow. Unlike the camera there's very little fancy here, it's what we would expect to see from a standard cell phone.

Manual Control (3.0)
The LG Dare offers a couple of manual controls. There are scene modes for panorama, portrait, landscape, night and beach and a face detection feature, which is very rare on cell phones.

Zoom (1.0)
The LG Dare offers a 2x optical zoom. Optical zoom just crops and enlarges the scene and is not worth much, thus we only award a single point for it.

Focus (5.0)
The LG Dare has an auto-focus camera, which takes the time to make sure that you're scene is in focus before you take a shot. This generally produces much better photos than the fixed focus cameras you find on most cell phones.

Flash (3.0)
The LG Dare has an LED flash that is good out to about a meter.

Metering (6.0)
The LG Dare offers brightness controls, ISO up to 400 and a choice of average and spot metering. This is the best selection of options for controlling how light is judged in your scene that we've seen on a cell phone to date. It's still nowhere near as good as a real digital camera, however.

White Balance (0.0)
The LG Dare has the typical set of white balance presets that you see on most cell phone cameras.

Image Handling (7.0)
The LG Dare has very good image handling options. When you choose to edit a photo your choices include drawing on it, adjusting contrast, sharpness blur and brightness, cropping, rotating and adding some fun effects. This is not quite up to the range of options you see from S60 devices from Nokia, but is far better than what most cell phones offer.

Video Quality (8.0)
The quality of video captured by the LG Dare is very good, significantly better than your average cell phone, but not quite up to the standards of the Nokia N95 and N82. It captures 640 x 480 video at 15 fps, half the frame rate of those other two phones. Most users will be quite pleaesd by the results, colors were accurate and the video was sharp, even when blown up to twice its size on the screen. It's certainly Youtube worthy and can be watched on a monitor full screen without too much worry. We wouldn't want to show it on a high def tv, however. We should also mention that the Dare can capture video at 120 fps, but only at 320 x 240. The result of this is that you get slow motion video. Although it can be some fun, the quality of the video captured did not impress us, and it's certainly not something you can show off on anything larger than a small cell phone screen. Still, it's a nice extra to have.

Video Resolution (12.26)
The LG Dare did very well in our test of video resolution. For this test we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use in our stills resolution test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest to produce a line widths per picture height score, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The LG Dare put up the best score by far amongst our comparison phones, and there's a couple of phones in there that aren't too shabby.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
LG Dare	383/320	12.26
Samsung Glyde	279/306	8.54
Samsung Instinct	286/294	8.40
LG Voyager	222/211	4.68
Palm Centro	249/274	6.82
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video recording	0.00

Video Compression (2.0)
The LG Dare captures video in 3GP format only. This is a shame as we would have loved to see Mpeg-4 or H264 capture as well.

Interface (8.5)
The camcorder interface is very similar to the camera interface. The screen is blank except for a couple of indicators at the top of the screen. Tap the screen to get zoom controls at the top, brightness and menu button to the left and time, speed, flash and album buttons on the right. Hitting the menu button will bring up a selection of controls at the bottom of the screen with associated menus. The biggest difference is that there are just fewer menu items for the camcorder. We still very much like the layout of the interface.

 

Manual Control (0.0)
The LG Dare does not offer any manual controls for video playback.

Zoom (1.0)
As with still pictures you have a 2x digital zoom available for video capture. Once again digital zoom is not worth much so we only award a single point for it.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing features on the Dare.

Modes (3.0)
The LG Dare offers a time limited mode to record video to send via MMS. It also offers white balance controls.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing a number on the Dare was a bit slower than we'd like, but the Vibrate alert was very good.

 

Dialing Speed (4.88)
Dialing a number on the LG Dare took an average of 4.1 seconds. You can see below that this is slightly below average and sits right in the middle of our comparison phones. Like most touch screen phones you're going to be slowed down some by not having proper tactile feedback on a real keypad, you just can't move as fast without that specific feedback to your fingers letting them know where they are. That said it's certainly not super slow. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Send and End Buttons (6.5)
Unlike the iPhone and the Samsung Instinct the LG Dare has real send and end buttons, which we appreciate. Located below the screen flanking the back button the buttons are a bit narrow, but wide enough that you shouldn't have trouble hitting them. There's not a lot of key travel when you press them, but you do get good tactile feedback with a firm click. They're not the best send and end buttons we've ever seen, but they aren't the worse either.

Call Management (8.0)
The call history on the LG Dare is pretty fully featured. You can access the history by going through the menu or by simply hitting the send button from the home screen. You get a list of all calls you've made, but you can tap on the All Calls button at the top of the screen to get a menu that allows you to filter by missed, received or dialed calls. Tapping on the small menu button in the bottom left, which is a standard button in the interface, will bring up a menu that will allow you to erase calls or view your call and data timers.

During a call the you see the phone number you're on the call with at the top and just below that a timer showing how long the call has lasted. The center of the screen is taken up by six buttons that give you access to the Dial Pad, Speaker, Contacts, Notes, Messages and Bluetooth. At the bottom of the screen are a mute button and an end button with the standard menu button in the bottom right. This button will let you access some of the same options on the main screen, but it does give you access to call recording, which is a nice feature not always seen on phones.

One annoyance about picking up a call on the LG Dare is that if the phone is locked you first have to unlock it, we'd prefer to have a system like the Instinct or iPhone where the act of picking up a call unlocks the phone and does it in a way that is resistant to accidental pick-ups. One nice extra is that like the iPhone the Dare will automatically shut off the screen when it senses an object near, like your head. Overall the Dare's call options are very good, there are few options you might need that you won't find.

Update: As noted by a commenter below you can pick up the Dare without unlocking it by simply hitting the send button, an oversight in our original review.

Startup to Call (3.83)
Getting the LG Dare to start up and make a call took an average of 26.1 seconds. You can see below that this is faster than average and comparable to the fastest of the other devices listed. It's certainly much faster than a smart phone like the Palm Centro. Less than thirty seconds is reasonable to get a phone going and make a call. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Ring Volume (9.64)
The LG Dare's ring volume came in at 96.4 decibles. You can see below that this is just above average and right in the middle of our comparison phones. The LG Dare's ring volume should be loud enough that you can hear it in all but the very loudest settings. To test ring volume we set the phone volume to maximum and run through every ring tone on the device. We use a sound pressure meter to measure loudness in decibels.

Ringtones (0.0)
The LG Dare does not allow you to use your own songs as ring tones, if you want additional ring tones you'll have to buy them from Verizon. You also can't use your own voice recordings as ring tones.

Non Audio Alerts (7.0)
The LG Dare's vibrate alert is actually pretty good. We were actually able to feel it in our rather voluminous shorts pocket and we think you'll even notice it vibrating in a jacket pocket. If you're looking at the screen you'll probably notice it light up with information about the incoming call, but it doesn't blink at you in order to grab your attention.

[page title="Messaging"]

No email client is a bummer, but at least creating a new SMS is speedy.

Supported Email Services (0.0)
Unlike the Samsung Instinct or the iPhone the LG Dare does not come with a full email client. Instead you are stuck with web based email like most regular cell phones. This is unfortunate as we're sure that Verizon intends the Dare to compete directly with these two devices. We don't award points for phones that used web based email as this precludes you from doing things like saving copies on your device so you can view them when you don't have a connection to the network. This is an important feature for anyone who needs serious email on their mobile phone. As such the LG Dare will receive zeros in many of the sections below.

Push Email (0.0)
No email client.

Multiple Email Accounts (0.0)
No email client.

HTML and Attachements (0.0)
No email client.

Email Customizations (0.0)
No email client.

Time to a New Email Message (0.0)
No email client.

Email Usability (0.0)
No email client.

Instant Messaging (0.0)
As is standard on Verizon phones the LG Dare supports AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo messaging services. As we see with most carrier branded instant messaging services any instant messages sent or received by the Dare will cost you a text message. This can quickly get expensive and is particularly unfair to anyone who is already paying for an unlimited data package as IM does not use up much data at all. As such we don't award points for instant messaging services that use a text message gateway like the Dare does. If you do want to use the IM service on the Dare we recommend you look into an unlimited text messaging package.

MMS Support (6.0)
The LG Dare does a good job integrating MMS messages into the album software and camera, there's a big send button in both that will allow you to send a photo or video via multimedia message. Our only annoyance is that Verizon still has separate interfaces for MMS and SMS messages, we much prefer phones like the Palm Centro that use a single unified interface.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Smiley faces are a wonder that will put a smile on anyone's face. Unfortunately you won't be smiling with the LG Dare as it does not turn smileys into graphical equivalents. It also doesn't offer a handy menu to insert smiley faces. Oh well, who likes smiling anyways?

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (6.0)
The messaging interface is pretty straightforward. When you enter the messaging interface you get a simple list of mailboxes along with a few links to other messaging related items like voicemail and instant messaging. The inbox, sent and drafts inboxes are shared between MMS and SMS messages, which we like. Unfortunately the interface for creating messages is not unified, in fact  you have four different options when you hit the new message button, TXT, Picture, Video and Voice message types. This is confusing and unecessary, phones like the Palm Centro have it right in that they provide a single interface to create messages with the ability to add any type of media to any message. Apart from this annoyance, however, the LG Dare's SMS/MMS interface is fairly simple to use.

Time to a New SMS Message (7.14)
It took only 1.4 seconds to create a new text message on the LG Dare. This score is significantly faster than average, and only a couple of our comparison phones beat it out. The fastest way to create a new text message on the Dare is to launch the favorites menu on the home screen and choose the TXT Msg button at the upper right, which takes you directly to a new test message interface. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

[page title="Organizer"]

This isn't going to replace your PDA or smart phone, the organizer apps just aren't up to snuff and there's no synchronization support.

 

Synchronization (0.0)
The LG Dare doesn't offer any options to synchronize your phone with a computer.

Alerts (5.0)
Alerts on the LG Dare can only be set for calendar appointments. An alert can be set to go off at one of a number of preset times including on time or 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, 1 day or 2 days before the appointment. You can set the tone and vibrate setting for each appointment individually. We would have preferred to see the ability to set exactly the time you want your alert to go off, but the large number of options should make this less of an issue.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
There is no over the air synchronization option on the LG Dare.

Adding Contacts (4.99)
It took us an average of 20.04 seconds to add a new contact and phone number to the LG Dare's address book. You can see below that this is slightly below average, running in the same range as other touch screen phones like the Samsung Glyde or Instinct. It's nowhere near as fast as phone's with real QWERTY keyboards like the LG Voyager. We found that it was actually faster to use the virtual keypad and multi-touch to enter names as the time it took to rotate the phone and bring up the QWERTY combined with a rather fiddlly interface killed any possible time savings from using the virtual QWERTY keyboard. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.0)
Contacts on the Dare are sorted alphabetically by first name. There is an alphabet at the top of the contacts list that functions a bit like the iPhone's alphabet found on the right side of its interface. Run your finger along the alphabet and you can jump to the letter of your choice. You can also bring up a search feature by pressing the Go To button at the bottom of the screen. Finally you can choose to view your favorites, groups or speed dials by pressing the Contact List button at the top of the screen and choosing the one you want from a drop down menu that appears. Although not quite as convenient as the QWERTY search on the Palm Centro, it still provides users with a decen selection of sorting and search options.

Fields (1.1)
When you create a new contact on the LG Dare you get a static selection of fields. These include name, four phone numbers, fax, two emails, group, ringtone and picture. Nothing too advanced here, certainly not compared to a smart phone like the Centro.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
Like most phones you can assign up to 98 speed dials on the LG Dare. You can access the Dare's voice command software easily by hitting the back button on the home screen. We were able to dial up all five of our test contacts with diverse names without a hitch. We have to admit that voice command software has gotten significantly better in the year plus that we've been reviewing, we remember when it used to choke on names like Alberto Juarez. Like most modern phones there's no support for voice tags, where you record your own voice commands, but given how good the voice dialing software is it's not that big a deal.

Adding Calendar Items (5.15)
It took us an average of 19.4 seconds to add a new lunch appointment to the LG Dare for the following day. You can see below that this was below average, although we have seen much worse on phones like the Samsung Instinct. Interestingly the same thing that led to such a terrible score on the Instinct also slowed us down a bit on the Dare. In particular setting the time for the appointment uses an interface very similar to the iPhone with a rotating dial. Done better than the Instinct's terrible implemention we still would have preferred to just enter the time using a virtual keypad. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Update: As noted by a commenter below you can tap on the rotating dial on the Dare to get a more standard interface for entering dates. We do not have the phone in house any more so we can't retest this, but it is possible this could improve the Dare's poor performance on this test.

Calendar Views (3.33)
The LG Dare offers three calendar view. The default view shows you the current month with today's date highlighted in blue and days that have appointments highlighted in green. One nice feature that you see throughout the calendar interface is that you can move from month to month (or day or week) by swiping your finger across the screen in one direction or the other. The second view shows you the current week with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out at the time they are scheduled but in both the month and week view no details are given.

This makes both views really shortcuts to the day view, where you get a chronlogical list of all appointments on that day with indicators for things like recurrence and alerts. This view is where you'll spend most of your time on the Dare. We found the Dare's calendar views to fall somewhere between the iPhone and the Instinct in terms of usefulness, better than the Instinct but not quite as good as the iPhone. Of course there nowhere near as good as a proper smart phone would offer, there's no support for advanced features like categories, filtering or search.

 

Fields (6.0)
Calendar fields on the Dare are what you would expect from a standard cell phone. You get title, start/end, recurrence, and alert type. The recurrence options are decent, you can set up recurrence for a set interval of days, weeks, months or years, for example every five days. You can also choose the days of the week you want a calendar appoinment to appear or select just weekdays. The interface isn't the clearest in the world, but the advanced options are there, and we appreciate them. There is no support for other advanced fields like categories or notes, however.

 

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The LG Dare does not have a to-do or task program, as such it will receive zeros in this section.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
No tasks program.

Fields (0.0)
No tasks program.

Adding Notes (2.07)
It took us an averge of 24.2 seconds to add a new note to the LG Dare. We were slowed down by the fact that the notes application is buried in the menu system, you can speed access up a bit by adding it to your shortcuts menu on the home screen. What slowed us down the most, however, was the text input method. For this test we have to type out: Lunch 12pm tomorrow. We found that entering the mix of letter and numbers using the keypad was annoying because you had to switch entry methods between word and number. We found using the QWERTY keyboard, was a bit faster, so that's what we ended up timing, but as you can see below it's just not very fast. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Note Interface (5.0)
The notes interface on the LG Dare offers some decent options. Notes are organized in a chronological list with the newest at the top. As with calendars when you select a note you can scroll to the previous or next one by swiping your finger left and right. At the bottom of the screen are two buttons, one to add a note and one to erase the selected note, or all notes in the main list. There's also a search feature, which is nice to see as most cell phone notes applications lack this. More advanced features like categories, filtering and sorting are not available, but frankly we weren't expecting things like that from a phone like the Dare.

Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no formatting options for notes on the Dare.

Voice Memo (4.0)
To record a voice memo on the LG Dare you have to go into Media Center, Music & Tones then My Sounds, or you can just press and hold the back button from the home screen. At the bottom of the screen is a button to record a new voice memo up to one minute in length. Buried as it is we recommend you add it to your shortcuts menu on the home screen if you want quick access to it. Voice memos are limited to one minute in length and all you can really do with them is listen to them or send them via MMS. Pretty bare bones here.

[page title="Multimedia"]

We were quite impressed by the Dare's music software, in particular how fast it was to load. Video software was also good. This is definnitely a strong multimedia device.

 

Accessing Music Software (6.67)
Verizon and LG have accomplished something of a minor miracle with the Dare. They have thrown out Verizon's slow as molassas music software and replaced it with something fast, three seconds fast in fact. Compare that to the Samsung Glyde and LG Voyager below, two Verizon phones that use their traditional music software, and you can see how big a difference this is. We are very appreciative of this upgrade on the Dare, we hope to see similar improvements on other Verizon phones in the future. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (2.0)
Another significant upgrade on the Dare compared to other Verizon phones we've reviewed is the ability to have music play in the background. When music is playing in the background you can quickly access it via a plugin on the home screen. You can also, obviously, change the volume using the volume keys. Although we may have wished for some more dedicated music controls this is probably a good compromise.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.0)
The LG Dare's music software looks different than that on most Verizon phones, something we appreciate at we've never been fans of their proprietary music interface. When you launch the music software on the Dare you are taken to a screen where you can access our music by title, playlist, artist, genre or album as well as access the music settings. Above this list are buttons for the player, store and synchronization. Picking any one of these sort options will take you to the appropriate list with the same alphabet that allows you to quickly jump to a point in a long list that we saw in the Contacts. Another now familiar interface item is that you can just tap on the name of the sort at the top of the screen to get a drop down menu and pick a different sort option.

When music is playing you see the album art in the center of the screen, only embedded album art is supported. Below this are the playback controls: play/pause, next, previous (or FF/REW), Mute, Repeat and Shuffle. The Dare's music software was not able to view our standard .pls or .m3u playlists. Playlists synchronized over from Verizon's music software will show up and you can create and edit playlists on the device. Tags were recognized for our Mp3, AAC and WMA files. As we mentioned above music can be played in the background, about time Verizon, and although there's not a full equalizer there are a variety of presets available to tweak the sound. Overall it's miles better thant the standard Verizon music software and compares well to some of the better music software on other phones.

 

Online Song Downloading (7.0)
As with other Verizon phones the LG Dare can download music direction from Verizon's V Cast music store. Although the music remains overpriced there is the nice bonus that a new partnership with Rhapsody means you can get DRM free versions of the music you download via your computer. Plus you can use Real's software to manage your music from both Rhapsody or Verizon.

Streaming (0.0)
The LG Dare was unable to play streaming Mp3, WMA or Real audio from the web. Verizon offers a variety of pay streaming services, but we don't award points for those.

Podcast Support (0.0)
The LG Dare does not include any software to download or organize podcasts on the Dare.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
You can use either Verizon's V Cast desktop software or Rhapsody to manage and synchronize your music between your computer and the LG Dare.

Music Formats and DRM (3.5)
The LG Dare is able to play back Mp3, AAC and WMA music files. The only form of DRM it supports is Verizon's proprietary DRM.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The LG Dare did a fine job when an incoming call interrupted music playback. The music paused immediately so you could take the call and started up again from the same point when you were done.

Video Software Access (6.06)
The LG Dare's speedy music startup time is matched by an equally speedy video playback time of only 3.3 seconds. This is also extremely impressive, you can see below that the Dare's performance in this test is significantly faster than average and beat out only slightly by advanced phones like the Centro and iPhone. We were quite happy at how quickly we were able to get a video playin on the Dare. We wer helped out by the fact that a shortcut to your videos is included in the shortcut menu on the home screen. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (8.0)
When a video starts playing on the LG Dare it begins playing in portrait orientation with the vieo in the middle of the screen and controls below. The controls are Previouw/Rewind, Play/Pause, Stop, Next/Fast Forward. Beow this is a mute button, a button to take the video full sreen, which rotates the interface to landcsape orientation, and a menu button. You can also go to full screen by simply rotation the phone to landscape orientation. In this orientation you can tap on the screen to bring up controls. There are a strip of controls on the left and right sides of the screen and a srubber appears in the middle of the screen. The controls are basically the same with the addition of volume up/down buttons, which aren't that important since the volume keys will control video volume in either orientation. We found the controls fully featured and easy to use.

 

Video Software & Organization (2.0)
When you first enter the Video software you get a list of all your vides with a small thumbnail of each video along with an indicator to the left showing the storage location. As with other places in the interface you can also top on these location icons to select multiple videos so you can delete multiple items. At the bottom of the screen are buttons to record a new video, access Verizon's V Cast video service and a small menu button in the bottom right. Videos seem to be organized by type and there are no additional sort option. There's also no search and no library features like viewing only TV shows or Movies. The video software is pretty simple overall, no better than the gallery software we see on many other phones and without the organizational features you see on the iPhone.

 

Video Sync with PC (7.0)
You can connect the Dare to your computer using the included USB cable and put the phone into USB mass storage mode to use a program like Windows Media Player to synchronize videos over.

Video Formats (5.0)
The LG Dare was able to play back all three of our 3GP encoded files using different codecs and was also able to play back Mpeg-4 and H264 encoded video. It does not support Windows Media Video, Quicktime, Real or Flash.

Video DRM (0.0)
The LG Dare does not play back any type of DRM protected video.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were pleased to see that the LG Dare was able to play back all five of our video test files encoded at various bitrates. Even at 768 kbps the video played back in full screen mode without any problems.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The LG Dare does not allow you to download premium videos directly to your device for playback later.

Video Streaming unscored
We don't score this section as there is no standard for streaming mobile video yet. We do test a few sites, however, to see whether they work. The LG Dare was able to play back streaming video from Youtube's mobile site. It does not support Flash video from the full version of Youtube, however. It also wasn't able to play back streaming Windows Media Video from Windowsmedia.com. Verizon also offers a variety of premium streaming video services via V Cast, although you'll have to pay extra for much of this content.

[page title="Software"]

The LG Dare's interface is well though out and simple to learn. Our biggest issue here was that we had problems clicking on links with the web browser.

 

OS (4.5)
The LG Dare runs a proprietary operating system that is different from the standard BREW interface that we see on most Verizon cell phones. On the negative side this will require some adjustment for longtime Verizon customers, on the plus side we were never particularly fond of the BREW interface and we found the Dare's operating system to be intuitive and well developed for the touch screen interface. We particularly liked the consistency of the interface, for example you almost always find a menu button in the bottom left corner. When a sort/type item is shown at the top of the screen you can almost always tap on it to see other sorting or types. The home button is almost always found the top right and the back button almost always found in the top left. You can also almost always swipe across the screen to the left or right to move to the next or previous menu or item. There will certainly be a learning curve, but once you get these simple rules you'll be able to get around the interface easily and quickly. Our score for proprietary operating systems is capped at five points, we reserve higher scores for more powerful smart phone operating systems like Windows Mobile or Palm OS.

Home Screen Score (0.0)
The LG Dare's home screen looks fairly typical for a cell phone, at least for a touch screen one, but it does have a few nice extra features. The majority of the screen is taken up by your wallpaper, which is animated by default. At the top of the screen is a bar that shows you typical cell phone information including signal strength and battery life. Near the bottom is a bar with the time and at the very bottom are five on-screen buttons. From left to right these are Messaging, Phone, Menu, Contacts and Favorites. The last is your favorite contacts, not programs.

On the right side of the screen is a small triangle that brings up a menu of customizable programs. This is nice to get quick access to commonly used features. Overall the Dare's home screen does a good job of giving people access to most of the main phone functions and customizable access to some other functions. It doesn't give you as much information as a Windows Mobile Today screen, which lists things like calendar appointments and tasks, but it's as good or better than standard cell phone home screens.

Extensibility (1.0)
The LG Dare is very limited in terms of its extensibility options. There are a few Verizon programs that you can download and install like their email client, however you cannot install Java applications like Opera Mini and there's no support for native third party applications. This means that if the doesn't already do it or Verizon offers it you're just plum out of luck.

Customizability (6.0)
We already talked about the customizable shortcuts menu on the home screen. In addition you can also customize the background for your home screen to any photo or video you want. Another nice customization option is that you can reorganize the main menu icons, simply grab and drag them to the positions you want, they don't even have to be in any particular structured order. If you happen to do something like stack them all on top of one another just hit the reset button at the bottom right to reset them to default position. We were also happy to see that the Dare gives you a choice of five different fonts for the menus and two font sizes for the numbers on the dial screen. Many phones don't give you any font options. There are also two different themes you can choose from that change the look and feel of the device. We'd say the Dare's customization options are better than average for a standard  phone.

 

OS Responsivness (7.0)
We had no problems with responsiveness when using the Dare. Almost every program launched quickly and smoothly, we didn't have a single crash and we didn't detect major lag anywhere. Occassionally you'll get an indicator that the phone is thinking, but this usually only lasts a second or two. The Dare is more responsive than the Samsung Instinct, where we had several crashes, and about as responsive as the iPhone.

Browser Features (6.5)
The Dare has a full HTML browser that purports to give you a full web browsing experience, which is all the rage nowadays. It supports full web pages as well as mobile WAP pages. It can display images, supports cookies, encryption and frames. It had a bit of trouble with our Javascript test page, so we're only awarding half points for that, and it doesn't support more advanced web technologies like Flash or Java. We'd say the Dare's browser is a slight step up in terms of technology supported than the bare bones web browsers we see on entry level phones, but not as good as truly advanced mobile browsers like S60 Web on Nokia smart phones.

Browsing Interface (5.5)
The LG Dare's web browser can be viewed in both portrait and landscape orientation, just rotate the phone to switch between the two. Either way the majority of the screen is taken up by the browser with a set of controls at the bottom. These controls are Back, Forward, Refresh, Home, Zoom, Favorites, enter address and Menu. Web pages on the Dare are displayed as they would appear on your computer so you have to pan around to find the stuff you want. Thankfully the Dare's web browser does have the overview mode that allows you to see the entire page and zoom in on the part you want, however this is found in the menu, we think it should have had its own button in the main interface.

Favorites on the Dare are a simple list of pages, there's no support for organizing them into folders, but you can edit existing bookmarks and set your own home page. The history is bit more fully featured, it's also a simple list but can be sorted by date, site, last visited or most visited. Moving around the controls on the Dare's browser is pretty easy, but getting around actual web pages is a bit more annoying. In particular we had a very hard time tapping on the link we wanted. Sometimes the page would move under our finger and almost every time we had to tap the link multiple times before it would register. This is strange as the Dare's touch screen is very responsive everywhere else in the interface. We hope this is fixed in a software upgrade but in the meantime it's a major stumbling block for what otherwise might have been a pretty good browsing experience.

 

Browser Access (8.0)
It took us five steps to go from the home screen unlocked on the LG Dare until we had browsed to our own site. You can see below that this is pretty good, above average and is only beat out by the iPhone amongst our comparison phones. For this test we use steps instead of a timed test because we don't want network issues to interfere. Entering the address is counted as a single step.

Gaming (1.33)
As is typical of many cell phones nowadays the LG Dare doesn't come with a single full version game. In fact it doesn't even come with any demonstration versions, so you'll have to go out and pay for any games you want to add to the device. We have some concerns with how games would be played, lacking a standard D-Pad we imagine you'll be using virtual controls, which don't tend to work very well. You are limited in your selection of games to those that Verizon sells.

Calculator (3.0)
The LG Dare's calculator is pretty simple, it looks just like the small calculator you might have used in grade school with numbers at the bottom left, functions above and to the right and a display at the top. Simple arithmetic functions are supported and the only advanced functions are the ability to add parantheses and exponents. You'll be able to figure out your tip, but don't expect to do any advanced math here.

 

Alarm (6.0)
The LG Dare allows you to set up three different alarms, each can have its own recurrence pattern with a choice of once, daily, Mon - Fri and weekends. You can also set the alert sound for each individually. This is pretty good functionality, in particular we like the good selection of recurrence options.

 

Document Software (0.0)
The LG Dare doesn't include any software to view or edit office documents like Word or Excel files.

Other Software (0.0)
There is no additional software on the LG Dare that we though was worth extra points.

[page title="Battery Life"]

Strong battery life across the board, this phone is going to get you through even a busy day of use. For more information about our battery tests see this article.

 

Call Time (6.76)
The LG Dare lasted five hours thirty-eight minutes in our talk time test. You can see below that this is significantly above average and only the iPhone amongst our comparison devices performed better. We were quite pleased with the Dare's battery life, it should be sufficient for all but the gabbiest users to get through a couple of days.

Music Playback (11.93)
Music playback time on the LG Dare was a very impressive sixteen hours thirty-four minutes. This is almost twice our average for cell phones and amongst our comparison  phones only the Instinct came anywhere near it. Bottom line is that you can listen to a lot of music on the Dare without stressing about battery life.

Web Browsing (7.16)
In our web browsing test the LG Dare lasted five hours fifty-eight minutes. This is very impressive, especially considering the Dare is using Verizon's high speed 3G network, which tends to be very battery hungry. We were very happy with the Dare's performance on this test, you can see below that it's significantly above average and the best amongst our comparison phones. To do this test we point the phone's browser at a website that is set to refresh every ten seconds and then wait for the battery life to run out.

Idle Time unscored
In order to ensure that we deliver reviews in a timely fashion we don't test idle time. LG stated idle time for the Dare is fifteen days.

[page title="Connectivity"]

EVDO Rev A is on board for fast data and the Bluetooth support is good. We wish there was Wi-Fi too, however.

Cellular Bands (4.0)
The LG Dare is a dual band (800/1900) CDMA device that is locked to Verizon's network in the U.S. CDMA is not as widely used internationally as GSM, so the Dare probalby isn't a good phone for world travellers. Verizon does have a decent network in the U.S. however. Our score for cellular bands is based on the total number of bands supported.

Data Support Score (7.0)
The LG Dar