LG Venus Cell Phone Review - Messaging
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 05, 2007 Comment on this |
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Supported Email Services (0.0)
Email on the Venus is web-based. We look for email clients that store information on the phone so you can view it at any time, including when you don't have network access. This is not the case for web-based email. As the Venus doesn't support POP or IMAP and only supports MSN Hotmail, AOL mail, and Yahoo! mail, the service is even more pointless: if you do have network availability, you can just scoot on over to any of those sites and cut out the middleman. We don't award points for web based email services and so the Venus will receive zeros in many of these sections.
Push Email (0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
Multiple Email Accounts (0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
HTML and Attachments ( 0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
Email Customizations (0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
Time to a New Message (0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
Email Usability (0.0)
N/A: doesn't have an email client.
Supported IM Services (0.0)
There are three supported IM clients on the Venus: AIM, Yahoo!, and Windows Live. The astute reader will have noticed, however, that we haven't awarded the Venus any points for them. Instant messages stand up as one of the biggest rip-off charges out there, because they charge you twice: once against your messaging account, and again for the data transfer. We only award points for IM clients that only charge for the data transferred. Our goal is that the carriers who do double charge will one day stumble upon our reviews, realize the folly of their ways, and change their policies.
MMS Support (6.0)
Text messages are supported fairly well. You can send MMS messages from the camera, from the MY PICTURES folder, and through the messaging application. Unfortunately, when going in the messaging app route, you'll have to choose between MMS and SMS from the get-go. Many phones are integrating MMS and SMS messages, but the Venus chooses to keep them separate for the time being. They do share an inbox, which is a nice gesture, but still not the full integration we'd have liked.
SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
The Venus doesn't understand combinations of colons and parenthesis the way we do; to this humorless device they're just two sequential symbols, nothing more.
SMS/MMS Ease of Use (5.0)
SMS and MMS messages provide a messaging experience typical of the BREW interface. The inbox contains listed entries with each sender's number as well as the first few characters of the message itself. Each message also has an icon depicting whether it's been read or not. Strangely, there aren't any sorting options, which is really disappointing.
In terms of functionality, the Venus has average sms/mms software with some good extras, but is also missing some basic features.
Time to a New SMS Message (2.98)
Once again we break out our clocks and lightning fast reflexes in an attempt to showcase how complicated a certain task is. For this we begin with the phone closed and unlocked, and end as soon as a new message dialogue pops up.
The Venus had a new sms message dialogue open in about 3.36 seconds, which is a bit slow. There were only three steps in the process, but each one meant a little over a second of loading time. This is one of those instances where a relatively simple process is made slightly more aggravating by lag.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| LG Venus | 3.36 | 2.98 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.61 | 3.83 |
| Apple iPhone | 2.62 | 3.82 |
| HTC Touch | 3.98 | 2.51 |
| Razr2 V9m | 2.66 | 3.76 |
| Samsung Juke | 0.752 | 13.30 |
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