LG Dare Cell Phone Review - Value & Comparisons

Value (6.0)
The LG Dare is available exclusively from Verizon for $199.99 with a two-year service agreement. At the same price as the new iLG VoyagerG the Dare is inevitably going to be compared to it. We're not sure what our impression of the new iPhone's value is yet, but we can tell you that we think the Dare is a very solid value. It's not a smart phone, which means it has certain innate limitations, however it is a very, very good reguarl cell phone. With a very nice 3.2 megapixel camera that also takes good video, GPS functionality, a very usable and intuitive interface all packed into a reasonably small form factor and throw in great battery life to boot, we would not feel bad suggestion that someone pay $200 for this phone.

Comparisons

Samsung Glyde - The LG Dare is a superior device to the Glyde in almost all respects except perhaps one, the Glyde's QWERTY keyboard is much better than the Dare's virtual QWERTY. Aside from that we'd buy the Dare over the Glyde in a heartbeat. The camera is better, the software is better and most importantly the touch screen is much more usable.

Samsung Instinct - The Instinct and the Dare are probably on a similar level. They are both touch screen oriented devices that are not smart phones but still do alot of things well. They both have large displays, GPS functionality, poor virtual QWERTY keyboards and easy to use interfaces. We'll give the Dare the nod based on the fact that it has a nice virtual keypad that somewhat makes up for the poor QWERTY, while the Instinct does not. The Dare also has a much nicer camera than the Instinct. It's a close call, however.

LG Voyager - Another touch screen device the big hadware differences between the Dare and the Voyager is that the latter has a real QWERTY keyboard and is also a bit chunkier. On the software side the real contrast is in multimedia. The Dare has a much better camera and music software miles beyond the Voyager, which uses the typical Verizon V Cast software. On those merits along we'd go with the Dare.

Palm Centro - The Centro is a very affordable Palm OS smart phone that is able to do things that the Dare just can't. If you need a true organizer and email device the Centro is the choice over the Dare. If multimedia is more  your focus, we say the Dare is the better choice due to its significantly better camera and music playback capabilities.

Apple iPhone - Ah, the big matchup. Let's look at the big contrast points, the iPhone has 8 - 16 gigabytes of built in storage while you'll have to pay for a memory card on the Dare. On the other hand the Dare's camera is much better than the iPhones, which doesn't even record video. On the music front we'll give it to the iPhone, but only just. This is a pretty close contest, it's going to come down to whether you care more about storage than imaging and whether the iPhone's upcoming ability to support third party applications matters to you.