LG Dare Cell Phone Review - Hardware

The virtual QWERTY is just terrible, but it's saved by a very good virtual keypad. The screen is not very bright, but it is large and produces sharp images.

Text Words Per Minute (8.68)
Let's start with the simple facts. Using two hands on the LG Dare's virtual phone keypad with predictive text entry on we were able to manage a comfortable 43.4 wpm, which is pretty decent. You can see below that it's just about average and faster than we were able to manage on the iPhone's virtual keyboard or the Centro's real one. It's also significantly faster than we were able to manage on the Samsung Instinct's virtual QWERTY, which brings us to the next part of this section, the rant.

Word Per Minute

Like the Instinct the LG Dare has three different forms of text entry available. Handwriting recognition is on board and we imaging some will enjoy this, but it's generallly going to be the slowest form of text entry. The virtual QWERTY keyboard is brought up on the Dare simply by rotating the device to landscape orientation any time you are entering. Unfortunately we found the QWERTY to be annoying and innacurate, much like the QWERTY on the Instinct. First of all the buttons on the screen are very small, making it difficult for those with fat fingers, like us.

To compound matters the Done button is given prime real estate and is twice the size of other buttons. Located right next to the L, M and Return buttons we found ourselves hitting it by accident all the time. The small keys also contributed to an enormous amount of errors, so much so that rarely were we able to produce an intelligible string of text more than five words long. All this despite torturing ourselves with the keyboard over the course of several days. By contrast we were able to type almost forty words per minute with the iPhone keyboard in the space of a few minutes practice, and those who use it regularly can type even faster. At the very least the Dare's QWERTY needs some kind of auto correction feature like the iPhone. To be fair we handed the Dare to someone with smaller fingers and their first impressions of the keyboard were positive, but they werre not able to type very fast on it.

As such we found it much faster to do our words per minute test using the virtual phone keypad with predictive text entry. First of all we'd like to thank LG for putting a virtual keypad on the device, it's a big improvement over the Instinct where for some reason they decided that an alphabetical list of lettes made sense as a text entry solution. The virtual keypad had much larger buttons than the QWERTY and we found we could type quite well on it. Even here there is a problem, however, namely that the predictive text entry has to be turned on manually each and every time  you go to enter text. On many phones you can just turn it on once and it stays on, and we wish the Dare supported this as well. Rant over, for more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

T9 and Auto Complete (5.0)
The LG Dare supports predictive text entry when using the standard keypad to enter text. It does not support word completion where the phone attempts to guess what word you are writing.

One-Handed Typing (7.06)
We know that many of you like typing out a message one-handed on your phone, as such we do our words per minute (wpm) test using only a single hand. We'll let you guess the input method we used (see above for more information). We were able to manage 35.3 words per minute in this test. You can see below that this is above average and the best amongst our comparison phones. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Words Per Minute

Keypad Backlighting (0.0)
Yes, the keypad/keyboard is always backlit very well, thanks to the fact that it's part of the screen. No points awarded here.

D-Pad/Joystick (0.0)
The LG Dare does not have a standard D-Pad or Joystick, relying instead on its touch screen for almost all interactions with the interface.

Touch Screen (8.0)
Before the iPhone touch screens on cell phones were the realm of of Windows Mobile and Palm smart phones and were used as a secondary form of interaction as the phones generally sported standard D-Pads, soft keys and QWERTY keyboards. Since the iPhone was announced last year we've seen a slew of consumer oriented touch screen only devices. For all of these phones, including the Dare, the key question is how well does the touch screen do as the major point of interaction with the phone's interface.

We're happy to say that on the Dare it does quite well. With a few notable exceptions like trying to touch links in the web browser or using the virtual QWERTY we had no problem getting around the interface using the touch screen. We would say it was about as accurate and responsive as the touch screen on the Samsung Instinct or LG Voyager, and just a bit less responsive than the iPhone.

Jog Dial (0.0)
The LG Dare does not have a jog dial for quickly moving up and down lists.

Soft Buttons (0.0)
The LG Dare does not use soft buttons to navigate the interface.

Volume Control (6.0)
The volume control on the LG Dare is located on the right side of the device near the top. The buttons are only raised slightly above the surrounding plastic, but they are well differentiated enough that you can find them by feel. There's also a very clear delineation between up and down so you can tell which direction you're adjusting the volume by feel as well. When pressed key travel is good, but tactile feedback not as good, the button feels a slight bit squishy.

Power and Standby (6.5)
The power button on the LG Dare is a secondary function of the end key. Simply press and hold to turn the phone off. Another press and hold will turn it back on.

Other Buttons (6.0)
In addition to the buttons discussed above the LG Dare has several other buttons to help you get around. Between the send and end buttons on the bottom front of the device is a dedicated back button that also launches the voice command software when you're on the home screen and launches the voice recorder with a press and hold. On the left side of the phone is a dedicated lock button and a dedicated speakerphone button. On the right side is a dedicated camera key that also launches the camcorder with a press and hold. None of these buttons can be reassigned to a different function.

Primary Screen Gross Resolution (0.0)
The LG Dare's screen resolution is 240 x 400 pixels. This is slightly higher than the 240 x 320 pixel standard for cell phones, but you can see below that it's still lower resolution than all of our comparison phones apart from the LG Voyager. Despite this the Dare's screen should be high enough resolution for most users, it won't be as sharp as the iPhone but should be better than average.

Primary Screen Pixels per Inch (7.78)
Pixels per inch (PPI) is a mesure of how tightly packed pixels are in the display. Higher pixel density produces richer colors and sharper images. Lower pixel density can lead to a washed out screen and pixelation. The LG Dare's pixel density measured 155.5 PPI. This is slightly below average, as you can see below, but was more than sufficient to produce a sharp image on the Dare's display.

Pixels Per Inch

Screen Physical Size (7.50)
The LG Dare's screen measures three inches diagonal. This is slightly smaller than the 3.1 inch display of the Instinct and significantly smaller than the 3.5 inch display of the iPhone. It's also much bigger than the display on most cell phones, which tend to range from 2 - 2.4 inches. This is good as you need a larger display on a touch screen device to give you enough real estate to interact with the interface. Would we have liked the Dare's display to be a bit larger? Yes, it does feel a bit cramped ocassionally, most notably when using the web browser, but it's not small by any means.

Screen Size Diagonal (inches)

Screen Brightness (3.9)
The LG Dare's screen measured only 38 lux in our test of screen brightness. We do need to note that our test of screen brightness is often stymied by phones that adjust screen brightness automatically and don't offer manual brightness controls, which the Dare does not. In such cases the dark room where we measure the screen brightness actually causes the phone to automatically adjust the brightness down, which produces poor results. The fact that the Dare's screen did not rise to a much higher brightness to produce a readable display for our bright light test, see below, leads us to believe that this probably isn't the case. The Dare just doesn't have a very bright screen, probably in an effort to save battery life.

Screen Brightness (lux)

Screen Bright Light Performance (1.0)
When we shone 3000 lux of light on the LG Dare's display, equivalent to a very bright day, the screen was completely unreadable. This is not a phone that handles bright light conditions well, in fact it may be the worst screen we've seen under bright light.

Color Depth (8.0)
The LG Dare's screen is capable of displaying 260,000 colors. You can see below that this is about the same as the best of our comparison phones. Only high end Nokia devices with sixteen million color displays are better than the Dare's range of colors. What this means in practice is that you should get reasonably accurate colors when viewing videos and images on the Dare's display or using it as a viewfinder for the camera.

Power & Data Ports (7.0)
The Dare uses a Micro USB port for both data and power. Micro USB is the next generation of Mini USB and is an industry standard, which we like to see. It is a bit less prevelant than Mini USB still, as such we are awarding one less point than we would for a Mini USB port. The Dare does support charging via USB.

Headphone Compatibility (8.0)
A trend we're starting to see on phones that we like is support for standard 3.5mm headphone jacks. This is trend the LG Dare joins as it gives you a full sized jack at the top of the phone. The Dare also supports wireless Bluetooth stereo headphones.

Internal Storage (1.0)
The LG Dare has 120 MB of internal memory, which should be plenty for all your contacts, calendar appointments and even a few photos. If you expect to take a lot of photos, however, we recommend you invest in a memory card.

Expansion Slot & Format (8.0)
The LG Dare suports Micro SD cards, including high capacity cards up to 8GB in size. The Micro SD slot on the phone is located on the left side towards the top between the lock and speakerphone buttons. A tethered cover protects the port and it is spring loaded, but we did find it a bit fiddly to get cards in and out as they go back pretty deep. If you don't have much in the way of fingernails you might want to use a pen cap or some other tool.

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