LG Dare Cell Phone Review - 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.

Time to Add Contact (sec)

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.

Time to Add Appointment (sec)

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.

Time to Add Note (sec)

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.

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