LG Dare Cell Phone Review - 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.

Steps to Browse

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.

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