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LG Venus Cell Phone Review

Mark Brezinski Published on December 05, 2007 Comment on this

Related ArticlesReviews: T-Mobile Shadow Cell Phone Review · HTC Touch Cell Phone Review · LG Chocolate VX8550 Cell Phone Review · Apple iPhone Cell Phone Review News: Verizon developing 4G · Verizon Wireless 4G devices to be GSM · Verizon conference call tidbits Blog: First Call: LG Venus on Verizon · First Call: LG Voyager · Judge keeps Qualcomm vs. Broadcom verdict

Intro Making/Receiving Calls Software Other Features

Tour & Design Messaging Battery Life Value & Comparisons

Audio Quality Organizer Connectivity Conclusion

Imaging Multimedia Hardware Ratings & Specs

The LG Venus from Verizon has the looks of a sleek business device and the functionality of a mid-range music handset. It's basically a Chocolate Vx8550 with a nicer-looking case and a small touchscreen where the D-pad array should be. In fact, the software is so similar we're not sure why it wasn't just marketed as an evolution in that line. Other than a sleeker interface, the only real improvement the Venus has over the Chocolate is its touchscreen. Typically phones either go for a full touch screen or none at all; the Venus is unique since its touchscreen is below and separate from the main screen, and only replaces D-pad functionality.

The touchscreen allows for up to four soft key options, and can display context-specific buttons, such as displaying media controls during music playback. This feature isn't strictly better than its physical counterpart however: it was sporadically unresponsive and didn't allow for rapid pressing. The touchscreen did leave us interested in seeing how this technology will be implemented in future phones. It's a significant step forward from the touch controls on the original chocolate that were almost unusable.

The Venus disappoints with poor battery life during calls and browsing the web. Its music playback time was good, which further emphasizes this phone's focus. Along those lines, the music software was also good. Unfortunately, the rest of the phone's multimedia features weren't as good: the camera only offered average still and video capture.

Verizon currently offers the Venus for $199 after a $50 online discount and with a two-year contract.

Tour & Design - The Venus is certainly a well-designed phone. It fits well in hand, and we like it's soft-touch backing.

Audio Quality - Audio quality is pretty good on the Venus. It tends to overemphasize its users voice a bit, but is otherwise fine.

Imaging - The camera on the Venus is either average or below average across the board.

Making/Receiving Calls - The Venus generally handles calling well, just don't try to use call waiting or you'll get frustrated and confused.

Messaging - Without an email client, the Venus isn't really a messaging powerhouse.

Organizer - The organizer features are surprisingly thin for such a professional-looking handset.

Multimedia - The Venus has pretty good music software, though we ran into issues with synchronization.

Software - Overall, the software on the Venus is basic. It isn't any more extensible than a typical, mid-range Verizon phone.

Battery Life - The Venus had low battery life scores in all categories but music playback. Music playback lasted an appropriate amount of time.

Connectivity - With Bluetooth 1.2 and little else, the Venus isn't the most connected phone out there.

Hardware - The Venus's secluded touchscreen was a bit confusing to get used to: we kept tapping the main display, forgetting it wasn't touch sensitive as well.

Other Features - The Venus can be used as a tethered modem and also offers basic GPS-like capabilities (but doesn't actually have GPS).

Value & Comparisons - We didn't think the Venus was a very good deal. The Venus should be considered a fashion phone where you're paying more for looks than functionality.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
The face of the Venus is about 80% screen. The top screen is the main one, and the bottom screen is a touchscreen D-pad replacement. At the top of the phone, just below the textured bit and just above the smooth plastic, is where you can find the speaker.

Front Open
Opening up the phone will reveal the keypad, which is both fancy and boring. The fancy comes from the diagonal striping, and the boring comes from the plain white text on the keys. We were expecting a more interesting font, or at least some symbols for the Send and End keys, if only to break up the monotony

Left
The left side of the phone contains no less than five features. Starting at the top, there's the ever-important lanyard loop. Moving on down you'll find a standard 2.5mm headphone jack, which is just above the volume rocker. Second to last is the voice command key. Finally, you'll find a proprietary data/power port, covered by a plastic flap.

Top
The top of the phone features the other side of the lanyard loop and also a button for releasing the back cover.

Bottom
The bottom of the phone has a tiny microphone hole and little else to hold interest.

Right
The right side of the phone features two buttons and one port. The two buttons are shortcuts for the camera and music player respectively. The port is for a MicroSD card.

Back
The back of the phone features a huge battery case that takes up about four fifths the total area. You'll also see the camera lens. At the bottom is the gill-like speakerphone. The plugs in the bottom corners are just screw caps.

Battery Out
There isn't much to see once you take off the battery cover.

In the Box (4.0)
The Venus comes in a nice, soft pouch. Also included is a wall charger, a software CD, and a proprietary USB cable. We would've liked to see some headphones since this is a V Cast-enabled, music-oriented handset. On the other hand, we've seen enough Verizon music phones to know what to expect.

Handling (5.0)
As an average-sized phone, the Venus fits as well in hand as most other phones out there. The textured back is definitely good, providing a grippable surface without being very abrasive at all.

Portability (6.0)
The Venus is about as portable as any other average-sized phone. It'll fit into all but the most minute of pockets, purses and bags. One thing you might want to keep in mind, though, is that the screens are easily scratched, even when it's in its case, so you might want to think twice before just tossing it into a pile of loose change.

Aesthetics (7.0)
The Venus is certainly a nice looking device. For some reason we kept focusing on the swank keypad design, as under-detailed as the individual keys are. We thought the overall design -- especially the textured black plastic back -- was classy, but not overstated.

Durability (7.0)
The Venus didn't creak when we twisted it around, which is always a good sign. As a slider, though, a lot of pieces move against each other which will cause faster wear than if they were stationary.

[page title="Audio Quality"]


Though modern phones are increasingly crammed with features, their primary function should be making calls. As such, sound quality is important. Our testing hardware is a head and torso simulator (HATS), which is used by manufacturers in their own testing. Our software is a sound analysis program called SoundCheck. This lab test tag team check out the quality of received and sent frequencies, and also measures the phone's side tone. To find out more about our methods, click here.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.78)

The graph above depicts how the phone handles received frequencies. The blue line represents the decibel level at each frequency, and the red lines show where the blue should fall between. As you can see, the Venus tends to do a good job with received frequencies: the blue only crosses the red a bit at the very beginning and end. This being the case, incoming voices might sound a bit clipped. Most people won't notice, however.

Cell Phone	LG Venus	LG Chocolate Vx8550 (on Verizon)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.78	8.27	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Touch (on Sprint)	Razr2 V9m (on Verizon)	Samsung Juke (on Verizon)
Score	7.44	8.28	6.89
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (7.24)

This test measures the quality of your own voice, as heard by others. Again, the Venus's performance is in blue, and the limits are red. As you can see, the Venus didn't fare as well on this test as it did on the previous one. It will overemphasize your voice a bit in the middle frequencies and drops off sooner than it should. This means your voice might sound a bit tinny in the middle and the higher frequencies may be a bit muted.

Cell Phone	LG Venus	LG Chocolate Vx8550 (on Verizon)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	7.24	8.06	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Touch (on Sprint)	Razr2 V9m (on Verizon)	Samsung Juke (on Verizon)
Score	6.56	7.34	8.37
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (9.02)
We are currently experiencing some trouble with our side tone testing. In order to ensure that we deliver this review in a timely fashion we have decided to publish the review without this one score. Please expect this section to be updated shortly.

Update: We've worked out our problems and ran our side tone test. First, to clarify,  so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. Our ideal score for side tone is -18 decibels. The LG Venus scored -18.98 decibels, which is pretty close to that ideal. You can see below that the Venus was only beat out in this test by the Chocolate and Razr2.

Cell Phone	Side Tone Measurement	Score
LG Venus	18.98	9.02
LG Chocolate Vx8550	17.85	9.85
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80
HTC Touch	20.36	7.64
Razr2 V9m	17.78	9.78
Samsung Juke	22.88	5.02

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.70)
We test resolution by snapping pictures of an industry standard resolution chart (as pictured below). We then export the photos from the phone to our test PC, which is equipped with Imatest, our image analyzing software. Imatest finds out exactly how many of the staggered black lines the camera was able to discern before it simply rendered the area as a patch of gray. The resulting figure is measured in line widths per pixel height, or lw/ph.

The Venus scored 779.9 lw/ph horizontally, and 740.1 lw/ph vertically. This is a lower quality cell phone camera, but not the lowest. Average lw/ph results are in the 800-900 range. They should be fine for viewing on your phone, but probably not worth printing for out and saving for posterity.

Cell Phone	LG Venus	LG Chocolate Vx8550	Apple iPhone
Score	1.94	1.69	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	779.9/740.1	616.8/569.5	970/879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Razr2 V9m	Samsung Juke
Score	3.56	4.34	0.40
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	895/1082	988/958	300/295
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (6.0)
We test color quality in a fashion similar to how we test resolution. We again take a series of pictures of an industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart that displays twenty-four different colors. Then we turn once more to Imatest to analyze the resulting captures. It then compares them both to the ideal color, and an adjusted ideal, which takes things like luminance into consideration.

The bottom chart with squares and circles depicts just how far off the camera's color representation is. Typically there are trends in the graph, such as all the lines radiating away from the center, squares on the outside and circles on the inside, or vice versa. In this case, while the differences between the ideal and captured colors aren't astronomical, the lines just splay out in random directions. As a general rule, the Venus will undersaturate colors slightly, and tends to skew colors towards the primary red, blue, and yellow. This isn't that big an issue though, you can see that none of the errors in in the chart are huge, and overall the Venus performed well in this test.

Cell Phone	LG Venus	LG Chocolate Vx8550	Apple iPhone
Score	6.00	4.69	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	HTC Touch	Razr2 V9m	Samsung Juke
Score	2.23	5.71	5.50
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.94)
Noise refers to the little bits of color that get randomly sprinkled around pictures. We measure it by taking pictures of the chart from the color test in different lighting levels. We then rely on Imatest for the hard numbers. The Venus didn't do such a great job with noise. Typically cameras with higher Megapixel counts show higher noise at lower light levels, simply because they capture more information. Conversely, those with lower resolutions have less noise. The Venus flies in the face of this tradition by having a lot of noise and subpar resolution. Bravo.

Cell Phone	Score
LG Venus	0.94
LG Chocolate Vx8550	1.27
Apple iPhone	1.20
HTC Touch	1.14
Razr2 V9m	0.84
Samsung Juke	1.50

Live Preview (3.0)
The live preview on the Venus is pretty bad. It's very choppy and panning or any kind of movement will cause a fairly prominent motion blur. Even trying to take pictures of a still subject showcases its slow refresh rate as your minor hand movement will make the preview look jittery. We also managed to get the live preview to crash by panning quickly.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (4.38)
Unlocked standby to first shot has the privilege of being the first timing test of the review (if you're reading the review out of order, feel free to replace "first" with the appropriate ordinal number). We begin with the phone closed and unlocked, start the timer, then take a picture of it. The captured image will display the length of the run.

The Venus was able to snap a picture about 4.57 seconds after we started going through the motions. As you can see from the table below, this is a bit sluggish. The Venus has the benefit of a dedicated shortcut button as well as not having to slide open. The majority of the time was spent waiting for the program to boot up. The Venus most likely won't help your reputation as a photographic quick-draw.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	4.57	4.38
LG Chocolate Vx8550	2.36	8.47
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23
HTC Touch	2.7	7.41
Razr2 V9m	2.85	7.02
Samsung Juke	1.89	10.58

Shot to Shot Time (1.08)
For shot to shot time, we start with the camera application open, aim the phone at the timer, and hit the shutter key and start button simultaneously. We then snap four more. Using the final capture as the total time, we figure out the frames per second the camera is capable of. If the phone has a burst mode we enable it. Basically, this test aims to see how quickly sequential pictures can be taken.

The Venus didn't do too well in this category compared to all phones, but it did about average for phones without a burst mode. It took about 14 seconds to take all five pictures, which is about 0.36 frames per second. With burst mode phones typically manage between 1 and 2 frames per second.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
LG Venus	0.36	1.08
LG Chocolate Vx8550	0.38	1.14
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20
HTC Touch	1.67	5.00
Razr2 V9m	0.29	0.86
Samsung Juke	0.56	1.68

Shutter to Shot Time (2.44)
Shutter to shot time again has us taking pictures of a timer. Like the previous test, we hit the shutter key at the same time as the timer's start button. Unlike the above test, each trial only consists of the single picture. This test measures the length of the delay between hitting the shutter key and when the picture is actually taken.

The Venus could snap a picture in about 0.82 seconds, which isn't particularly fast. A good score would be between .2 and .3 seconds. Though the delay might not matter if you're snapping a prom picture or a tourist photo, if you're trying to capture a moving target or preparing to capture a fleeting moment, delays approaching a full second could ruin the picture. Though the Venus isn't quite as bad as the LG Prada (3.6 seconds) or the Treo 700p (almost 7 seconds), it won't provide the fastest pictures relative to other cell phones.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	0.82	2.44
LG Chocolate Vx8550	0.22	9.09
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00
HTC Touch	0.26	7.69
Razr2 V9m	0.34	5.88
Samsung Juke	0.09	22.22

Interface (7.5)
We liked the Venus's camera interface. The secondary screen means the viewfinder is never cluttered with button assignment reminders. Hitting the options key will cause a small toolbar to appear at the bottom. It really doesn't take up much room, but we would've liked it better if it were translucent. Menus pop up from the toolbar, which does obscure vision a bit. There were times when these menus could've been a bit smaller than they are, such as the few menus that only contain two items. Even so, the interface is very neat, and the toolbar hides completely when not in use.

Photo Album Software Internal (4.5)
There are two different ways to view pictures on the Venus: in the camera application and in the My Pictures folder. You can view pictures in the camera with the "Review" option. The D-pad will display a film strip of three thumbnails at a time that can be scrolled through. Highlighted items are displayed on the primary screen. From here you can jump to the My Pictures folder. Here six thumbnails are displayed at a time. You can select multiple pictures for moving or deleting via a checkbox system.

Slideshows are also an option, but it simply scrolls through all the pictures. There are no options to create folders or otherwise organize your pictures. What is an option, however, is the ability to rotate and save photos. Despite the interesting design that sometimes uses the touch sensitive screen the LG Venus's album software is rather pedestrian.

Manual Control (1.0)
The Venus really doesn't offer any manual control options. It does have night mode, however, and since we award points for scene modes here, it receives a single point.

Zoom (1.0)
The Venus supports digital zoom up to 10x. We only award a single point for digital zoom because it isn't a true zoom. The phone crops the image and blows it up so it appears bigger. The more enlarged the image, the lower resolution it is.

Focus (0.0)
The Venus has a fixed-focus lens.

Flash (0.0)
The Venus doens't have a flash.

Metering (6.0)
Interestingly enough, the Venus does support basic metering. It has a default automatic setting and an option for spot photometry. It also has a brightness slider with 13 positions on it.

White Balance (2.0)
There are five preset options for white balance: auto, sunny, cloudy, fluorescent, and glow.

Image Handling (2.0)
The Venus really doesn't have any image handling software, such as automatic color correction or red eye reduction. You can rotate your pictures, however, which is more than some phones will allow you to do. Another available option is a color filter, such as sepia or black & white. You can also rename pictures, which isn't the most exciting feature, but a handy one nonetheless.

Video

Overall Video Score (3.5)
The Venus can capture video in 320 x 240, or 176 x 144 resolutions. The result of either will be pretty typical of cell phone video, meaning the videos will look adequate on the cell phone screen, but trying to watch them on a larger medium wouldn't be pretty. Video capture seems to reproduce color similarly to still capture, which will cause a bit of undersaturation. Overall, the video is certainly nothing special, but it isn't so bad to be out of the realm of average cell phone video quality.

Video Resolution (5.85)
Despite not having the best picture resolution, the Venus has video resolution on the better side of average. We wouldn't necessarily recommend you view it on a laptop, but if the video doesn't contain much movement it might be all right. Watching it on a TV screen, however, probably won't be a good idea.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
LG Venus	237/247	5.85
LG Chocolate Vx8550	218.3/200.8	4.38
Apple iPhone	N/A	0.0
HTC Touch	895/1082	4.51
Razr2 V9m	208/244	5.08
Samsung Juke	N/A	0.0

Video Compression (2.0)
The Venus can only capture videos in 3GPP format.

Interface (7.0)
The video capture interface is very similar to that of the regular camera. The controls are cloistered in the secondary screen, and the options menu will make a thin toolbar appear at the bottom of the screen. The zoom and brightness slider stick to the left edge of the screen and out of the way. The menus are less polite about intruding into the viewfinder. This is really only an issue in the case of white balance and color effect, as generally your menu selection would be better informed if you could see its effect.

Manual Control (0.0)
There aren't any manual controls for the video recorder.

Zoom (1.0)
Again, only digital zoom is supported. As video starts out at a much lower resolution than still capture, digital zoom is even worse here. We'd recommend you think of it as an incoherency slider.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing tools on the Venus.

Modes (0.0)
Unfortunately, night mode didn't survive the transition from still to video capture. The phone's video recorder remains a barren, mode-less landscape.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (7.58)
To test dialing speed, we clock the length of time between the phone being closed and unlocked until we hit the send key. We pull our numbers from a pool of many, in order to get a more accurate average.

The Venus showed itself capable of dialing a number in about 2.64 seconds. This is actually pretty fast, similar to the result for the Samsung Juke. The keypad was a good size: not so big we were fumbling to get our thumbs from key to key and not so small we were prone to mistakes.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	2.64	7.58
LG Chocolate Vx8550	2.96	6.76
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05
HTC Touch	6.98	2.87
Razr2 V9m	3.48	5.75
Samsung Juke	2.64	7.58

Talk and End Buttons (7.0)
The Venus's talk and end buttons are located in the top corners of the keypad. On their outer edges they have small bumps to aid in touch navigation, but they're so small it would be hard to rely on them too much. The best things they have going for them is their location. It's hard to miss the key when you just have to move to the top left and right until you feel the end of the keypad or bump into the top half of the phone. They do have good play and tactile feedback.

Call Management (5.0)
Call management refers both to how a phone handles the call itself and how it keeps records of past calls. The Venus does a good job with its book keeping, and has all the features we look for. The list of all calls lists the number, date, and time of the call, as well as a small descriptive icon. You can sort calls by received, dialed, and missed by pressing left and right on the D-pad. Opening up a call will reveal one additional piece of information: its length. The phone also has an extensive list of both call and data timers, which can be reset at your leisure.

As far as handling actual calls, the Venus performs well up to a point. An incoming call can be answered or quited. After you quiet a call, you can choose to ignore it. In a call, the D-pad will yield the choices of mute, options menu, send, end, and speaker. The options menu will let you access several applications, such as messaging and the contact list. You can also opt to write notes or record the call. The issues mainly crop up when a third person enters the picture. There is no menu option for new call, so feel free to just start plugging away at the keypad. Once you've made that outgoing call, it puts the first call on hold, but there's nothing on the screen that would even give you a clue this is what's happened. There doesn't seem to be a way to make conference calls; the menu doesn't provide any hints, and holding send did the same thing as pressing it normally. Also, once you've switched calls, pressing the Send key again will hang up on the caller. We'd recommend sticking to one caller at a time, because otherwise it's thoroughly confusing.

Startup to Call (3.98)
The title of this section fairly well describes the procedure. We shut the phone off, then time how long it take to get a call outgoing. We stop the timer when we press the send key. The Venus was able to perform this action in 25.11 seconds on average. This is a bit slow, though not the minute or so the HTC Touch received though, to be fair, it doesn't have the same complexity of software either. This is just another score that suffers from the Venus dragging its feet a bit.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	25.11	3.98
LG Chocolate Vx8550	22.37	4.47
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83
HTC Touch	70.24	1.42
Razr2 V9m	22.82	4.38
Samsung Juke	11.9	8.40

Ring Volume (8.58)
Ring volume is tested by holding the phone two inches away from a sound pressure meter. We then play through all the phone's ringtones, keeping track of the maximum decibel output. As you can see from the table below, the 84-85 range is a popular one to fall in. Somewhere around 80% of the phones we've reviewed fall within this range. The Venus will notify you of calls about as well as most other phones.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
LG Venus	85.8	8.58
LG Chocolate Vx8550	85.4	8.54
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49
HTC Touch	84.8	8.48
Razr2 V9m	85.7	8.57
Samsung Juke	85.8	8.58

Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
While you can download ringtones from Verizon's store for a fist full of cash, you can't use your own songs as ringtones.

Non Audio Alerts (8.0)
The phone's non audio alerts are actually pretty good. The vibration is loud enough for you to hear, and we definitely felt it shaking around in our pocket. The on-screen displays aren't particularly eye-catching, though the simple act of the sceen backlight coming on might be enough to get your attention. Overall, the Venus performed ever so slightly better than average.

[page title="Messaging"]

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.

As previously alluded to, message creation yields a choice: TXT Message, Picture Message, or Video Message. When writing a new message, you have a few options for customization. First, you can format text with quite a bit of detail. The options users are privy to are alignment, background color, and font size, style, and color. You can also set priority to either normal or high.

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

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The synchronization software for the LG Venus is strictly for music; there are no PIM synchronization options.

Alerts (4.0)
Alerts on the Venus are typically well executed. The phone will ring for a solid minute if it isn't answered. At this point it will auto-snooze and ring again in five minutes. Furthermore, you can add vibrate to the alert for added attention grabbing. The bad end of it is that the on-screen reminder is virtually invisible, because it is displayed in the D-pad area and is simply white text on the normal gray background. If you're listing to music, it isn't likely to catch your attention much.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The Venus doesn't support over the air PIM synchronization.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (6.95)
All of the timing tests in the organizer section of our reviews are virtually the same. We start with the phone closed and unlocked, and end as soon as we finish a simple entry. In this case, said entry is a contact which consists of a name and number.

The Venus did this rather fast: 14.38 seconds. For some odd reason, the process felt on the slow side of average. This is probably because of the lag we encountered transitioning from dialing to the contacts application. We'll have to take the timer's word for it. Some time was probably saved by the single name field. All we had to do was press space and keep on typing as opposed to shifting our grip to get to the touch screen.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	14.38	6.95
LG Chocolate VX8550	20.5	4.88
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79
HTC Touch	29.42	3.40
Razr2 V9m	19.26	5.19
Samsung Juke	14.57	6.86

Looking/Sorting/Search (1.5)
Contacts are organized alphabetically by name. This is a bit of an issue as there is only one name field on the phone; if you want your contacts to be organized by last name, you'll have to input their last name first. You can search through names using the multitap search bar at the bottom, but it won't pick up on fragments within the name field. This is incredibly disappointing, as the search provided in the notes application will allow you to search for fragments. We're not sure why LG seems to like giving their contacts program worse search functionality than their notepad application as we noted the same thing in the LG Chocolate VX8550.

There are no options for sorting. While groups can be assigned to contacts, there aren't any options for filtering based on them. Many phone have far better options in this category, both those in the same class as the Venus, and cheaper phones.

Fields (2.2)
There are eleven contact fields on the Venus. These include various numbers, two email addresses, a picture, and a ringtone. These are incredibly basic fields; the dearth of options here seems out of place on a $200 phone.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
The Venus does pretty well in this category. While it doesn't have voice tags (very few phones do), it does have great voice command software and about 95 speed dial values you can assign (four are taken up by system shortcuts, like voicemail and bill information). The voice recognition software caught all five of our test names without issue, and had a pleasing voice itself.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (5.30)
It took the Venus about 18.87 seconds to add our test calendar item. This isn't the fastest time, mainly due to the menu navigation necessary to get to the application. It sets a reminder 15 minutes before the event as a default, and as this is one of the criterion for our test entry, it saved us a bit of navigation (which translates to a few seconds of time). As a general rule of thumb, the Venus takes a bit of time to get where it needs to go. As you can see below this performance is nowhere near as good as what we managed with the Chocolate.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	18.87	5.30
LG Chocolate VX8550	6.48	15.43
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29
HTC Touch	7.94	12.59
Razr2 V9m	14.48	6.91
Samsung Juke	13.72	7.29

Calendar Views ( 4.89)
The Venus has three different calendar views: day, week, and month. It lacks an agenda or year view.
Month view is the default view, and about the least informative one. It contains the standard information about the current month, in a typical grid of numbers seven columns wide. Days with events are colored blue and weekends are orange. Highlighting a day with at least one event will yield the total number of events for that day. Clicking on a day will bring up the day view.
The week view should be no surprise, unless you're surprised by graphical underachievement. This basic view lists the days in the week along the top, and times along the left hand side. The middle is a simple grid. Events are blocked out in the grid in white. Typically you can highlight an event to get more details, but that isn't an option on the Venus. If you want more details you'll have to hop on down to the day view.
Day view displays list entries of all events planned on a given day. They're fairly simple, and only contain the title and starting time. Clicking on them will reveal the full entry.

This was another area where we were utterly underwhelmed. For a device that looks like it was meant for business professionals, it certainly doesn't provide good business functionality.

Fields (5.0)
Calendar entries on the Venus are thread-bare in terms of fields. You have a subject and a time slot, basic repeat options, a reminder, and a custom ring with the option to add vibration. These fields will suffice for simple entries, but the Venus is quite far away from being a business device.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The Venus can't create tasks, which will result in exactly four zeroes.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
N/A: Can't create tasks.

Fields (0.0)
N/A: Can't create tasks.

Notes

Adding Notes (2.65)
In a stunning display of foot-dragging, the Venus took 18.86 seconds to type out "Lunch 12pm tomorrow" in the notes application. This was partly due to menu lag, but also due to the inability to set T9 as the default text entry mode. This meant additional menu navigation during the test, and it took about a second before we could actually type.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Venus	18.86	2.65
LG Chocolate VX8550	13.73	3.64
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95
HTC Touch	17.64	2.83
Razr2 V9m	13.96	3.58
Samsung Juke	16	3.13

Note Interface (2.0)
The note interface is ridiculously basic. In the notes application, the only options are for cut, copy and paste, which, while a bit clunky to use, is a nice addition.

Note Formatting (0.0)
There aren't any options for formatting notes. We would've liked to see at least some options here, especially given the formatting resources available in text message creation.

Voice Memo (6.0)
Voice memos might be a little hard to find; it's located in the My Sounds folder as opposed to the regular notes program in that is found in the Tools menu. The voice notes application can record only a minute at a time, but strangely keeps a zero in the tens

[page title="Multimedia"]

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)
The Venus sports some decent music software. Playlists can be created and edited on the device, but it will only recognize imported playlist files if they're synchronized over -- simply dropping them onto a memory card won't cut it. The phone supported AAC, MP3, and WMA files, and recognized our Idv3, WMP, and iTunes tags. The library is updated automatically. Of course, background play is supported.

There are plenty of sorting and search options. You can sort songs by artist, genre, album, or song. There is a search available for all of these, but it wasn't the fragment search we saw in the notes application. This is a bit annoying, especially if you're not sure of the exact title of the song, or if it starts with an article.

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)
The video album looks pretty much like the photo album. There are two columns that each display three rows of thumbnails at a time. From the main menu there isn't much to do. You can play the videos of course, as well as a delete and options menu. The options don't really have any interesting features. It mainly tries to ferry you off to one of Verizon's media havens, like the PIX Place or VCast Videos. The "Manage My Videos" option will allow for you do delete multiple files. We thought maybe we could construct a makeshift playlist by selecting a few file then using the Play option in the secondary screen, but it only played the video we were highlighting at the time. Again, basic stuff from the Venus.

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)
VCast will let you download videos, but the selection is ridiculously limited and doesn't merit any points.

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.

[page title="Software"]

OS (3.0)
Despite looking a bit better, and having slightly different controls, the Venus runs a very typical BREW interface. The only real difference other than aesthetics is that D-pad navigation is far, far slower. Even the keypad shortcuts seem to encounter considerably more lag than on devices like the Chocolate Vx8550. The upswing is the touch screen interface, which we really liked. It made navigation a bit simpler, as it essentially provides four soft keys. This makes menus less cluttered than usual. In fact, given how nice it was to have a mini control panel of options, we were surprised it often went underutilized.

We only award up to five points for proprietary operating systems, as those found on smart phones are almost always more powerful. The Venus certainly doesn't do much to rock the boat in that regard.

Home Screen Score (6.0)
The Home screen on Venus is pretty average looking. The top left and right contain signal and battery strength respectively. The main portion of the screen showcases a picture. The bottom bar displays the time and date, under which is a bar containing notification icons. The secondary screen offers five options: Messaging shortcut, recent calls, contacts, a shortcut menu, and the main menu. Overall, the dedicated button-zone makes both screens worth of the home screen look neat, tidy, and functional.

Extensibility (1.0)
As with other BREW phones, there are tons and tons of shortcuts for "Get New App". This doensn't mean the phone is extensible, however, as there are about six different apps available. No one makes BREW programs because very few people use BREW phones and those that are out there are locked down tight.

Customizability (6.0)
The Venus offers the standard BREW selection of phone customizations. The wallpaper can be changed to a picture or video. LG Chocolate offers a fairly standard array of customizing options. As mentioned above, you can change the wallpaper to either a picture, video, or built-in animation. You can't change the home screen's button array, but you can edit which buttons go in the shortcut menu.

There are three themes available to make your phone pretty: Classic, Black Venus, and Color Venus. Black Venus and Color Venus are really similar, except icons are more colorful in the latter option. Classic is the basic BREW look.

You can change the feedback sound of the touch keypad, as well as the vibration type and level. There's also an option to show or hide the secondary screen's talk/end button. This is nice, as we felt they were redundant.

The font size can also be changed to some degree. If the default setting isn't big enough, you can change the font size to large for dial digits, menus and lists, or messages to large if the default setting isn't big enough.

OS Responsivness (2.0)
If you've read any of the review so far, you saw this score coming. It's not as slow as, say, the average Windows Mobile device, but that by no means makes it fast, or even of average responsiveness. Probably the most frustrating area to navigate is through the videos album. While videos are loading, it's really blind luck whether or not a button press will do anything.

Browser Features (6.0)
The Venus performs just as we’d expect a BREW device to. HTML and WAP pages both receive support. The Venus can also handle encryption and and cookies. You won’t be able to view Java, Javascript, or Flash on pages, and RSS feeds have also been overlooked.

Browsing Interface (3.5)