LG Venus Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Mark Brezinski Published on December 05, 2007 Comment on this |
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Accessing Music Software (5.52)
For this timing test, we again start with the phone closed and unlocked. We end as soon as the song starts to play. The Venus took 3.62 seconds to get a song playing. Considering the process consisted of a single button press, this score is a bit of a bogey. All you need to do is hold in the MUSIC button and it'll start playing from where you last left off. Getting a song to play without using the secondary function of the MUSIC key took a bit over 5 seconds. Most media-oriented devices can get a song playing in less than three seconds using this method (not many phones have the secondary function the Venus has). Again, the majority of the time spent in either navigation method was on loading time.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| LG Venus | 3.62 | 5.52 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.04 | 9.80 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.1 | 6.45 |
| HTC Touch | 7.8 | 2.56 |
| Razr2 V9m | 4.96 | 4.03 |
| Samsung Juke | 2.72 | 7.35 |
Dedicated Music Controls (4.0)
The Venus has a exactly two dedicated music keys. We define a key as "dedicated" when it performs its function outside the music player application, such as on the home screen. The only keys that meet this criteria are the music key and the volume key.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.0)
There are a few extras lumped in too. The first is Music Only mode, which most users will recognize as an airplane mode. There is a basic, presets-only equalizer, under the menu moniker Sound Effect. There are 12 settings to choose from, such as Jazz, Concert Hall, and the mysteriously capitalized POP.
Online Song Downloading (6.0)
As a Verizon phone, the Venus has access to the VCast music store. Songs are available through this service for $1.99 a song. This is twice what you should be paying, as iTunes, Napster, and more recently Sprint all offer songs for a buck. The Venus's VCast setup is leagues better than we saw on the Razr2 V9m. Songs are listed as small entries, and highlighting them will show the album art and a few extra details, but we're not sure this merits the extra dollar.
Streaming (0.0)
The Venus can't handle streaming audio of any type.
Podcast Support ( 0.0)
The Venus doens't give podcasts any special treatment.
Music Sync with PC (0.0)
As with most recent Verizon phones, the Venus comes with some freebie VCast sync software that you should just leave in its paper case. You can't, however, as you need to install the drivers so the phone will actually work. Furthermore, you have to use VCast to sync on Vista. Knowing this, we begrudgingly set about installing the drivers since we already had VCast installed from the Razr2 V9m. Unfortunately, even after we'd installed the drivers, each time we'd connect the phone a window would pop up claiming Vista still needed drivers. We tried reinstalling them, but got access error messages. After a few tries and restarts, we just opted for downloading the whole VCast package for the phone online, which incidentally came with the drivers.
After the download, everything seemed to have installed fine. Now, whenever we wet to put the phone into sync mode, a newer, different driver needed to install. This was fine because they installed without issue, but by the time installation had completed, the sync connection had timed out. No problem, we got the driver, just reinitialize the sync connection, right? Nope. Starting it up again prompted the driver install again.
At this point we started to think our PC was simply haunted, so we tried our test PC. The CD's autorun gave us an access error. Fine. We try a third PC. Same problem as the second. After an hour playing around with the CD, drivers, downloads, and even swallowing our pride and checking out a FAQ, we gave up. We don't run into these problems often, so we're pretty sure our three randomly selected computers weren't just broken.
Music Formats and DRM (3.5)
The Venus will support MP3, WMA, AAC, and AAC+ files. It will also play VCast music.
Music Interruption (10.0)
The Venus handles music interruption like a champ. When a call came in it paused, and when the call had ended it resumed. Just about the only feature we would've liked to see was a option to fade songs in. We're partial to loud, abrasive music and, coincidentally, prone to being startled by sudden loud noises.
Video
Video Software Access (2.19)
This was a bit of an embarrassing score, even more embarrassing when you consider we had to cheat a bit to get the time down to a lengthy 9.12. Well, we didn't cheat per se; the phone wouldn't let us open the video in the cursor's default position right away, but for some reason scrolling away from the default position made the phone more apt to boot up the video. It also helps if you hold down the select key for a bit before letting go. The first time we performed this test we didn't know these tricks, and it took about 21 seconds. Honestly, though, we're not surprised; even responsive phones lag when loading video thumbnails.
| Cell Phone | Time (sec) | Score |
| LG Venus | 9.12 | 2.19 |
| LG Chocolate VX8550 | 2.71 | 7.38 |
| Apple iPhone | 3.2 | 6.25 |
| HTC Touch | 8.6 | 2.33 |
| Razr2 V9m | 5.24 | 3.82 |
| Samsung Juke | N/A | 0.0 |
Video Controls (7.0)
The video playback interface is similar to audio playback, but has a few more options available in the secondary screen. You can fast-forward and rewind, but you can't skip from video to video. Of course, there are buttons for play/pause and stop, but there are also buttons for mute, file info, set as wallpaper, and full screen mode (in profile orientation). There is no options menu. Though we like having all the options at our fingertips this also indicates that there just aren't very many options.
Video Software & Organization (3.0)
Video Sync with PC (0.0)
Video sync is the same song and dance as music sync: fiddle around with installations and drivers until you give up and get a book.
Video Formats (3.0)
The Venus supports standard Mp4 files, as well as 3GPP files encoded with either H263 or H264. Windows Media files, Real Media, Flash, and Quicktime weren't supported.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Venus doesn't support any video DRM, so if you've bought shows off iTunes or Amazon.com, you're out of luck.
Video Playback Smoothness (8.0)
The Venus was able to play back all our test video files, up to 768kbps. Unfortunately, our top two files, 768kbps and 384kbps, were a bit jagged, and had little skips throughout. They didn't make the videos unwatchable, but it would be hard to argue the playback was smooth.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
Video Streaming unscored
We don't score phones based on video streaming, because there's no clear industry standard yet. The only streaming the Venus supports is via VCast, but it costs money. Youtube mobile, Zoovision, and Windowsmedia.com weren't supported.
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