LG Dare Cell Phone Review - 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.

Time to Play Music (sec)

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.

Time to Play Video (sec)

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.

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