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LG Voyager Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on December 04, 2007 Comment on this

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 Voyager is an innovative phone from Verizon that sports an exterior touch screen and folds open to reveal a second display and a full QWERTY keyboard. The Voyager is a pretty chunky phone, but only a mite bigger than it's predecessor the LG EnV. Continuing the list of nice features the LG Voyager has a 2 megapixel auto-focus camera, but in our tests we found the camera didn't produce the greatest shots and was rather slow. The LG Voyager's external touch screen worked very smoothly, better than many Windows Mobile devices we've tested but not quite as well as the iPhone.

Speaking of Windows Mobile devices, although you may think at first glance that the LG Voyager is an all-in-one device, once you get under the hood you sadly discover that it isn't. There's no email support whatsoever, the organizer features are only average and video playback functions are just sub-par. On the other hand the LG Voyager does have some nice advances in software, including a very nice web browser that renders pages as you would see them on your desktop browser. But aside from a couple of exceptions like the browser the LG Voyager is really just a standard cell phone with a interesting hardware extras like the touch screen and QWERTY keyboard thrown in. It's not a smart phone like the AT&T Tilt or even almost a smart phone like the iPhone.

The LG Voyager is available exclusively from Verizon for $299.99 with a two-year contract.

Tour & Design - The LG Voyager is a big device, but it does feel well put together.

Audio Quality - The LG Voyager did decently in our send and receive tests.

Imaging - The LG Voyager's 2 megapixel camera was on the slow side and only produced average photos.

Making/Receiving Calls - It was easy to dial using the LG Voyager's touch screen keypad.

Messaging - The LG Voyager lacks any form of email support while SMS/MMS was just average.

Organizer - The LG Voyager makes it easy to add a contact or calendar appointment, but it lacks advanced organizer features.

Multimedia - We're not fans of Verizon's VCast music software and the video playback software was very basic.

Software - The LG Voyager's interface was easy to use and generally snappy, with a few notable exceptions.

Battery Life - The LG Voyager's battery life scores didn't wow us, but it should last long enough for most users.

Connectivity - The Voyager lacks Wi-Fi capabilities but EVDO data should provide decent browsing speeds.

Hardware - The LG Voyager's QWERTY keyboard isn't the easiest to use, but it does allow you to type quickly and the two large displays are excellent.

Other Features - The LG Voyager supports Verizon's mobile TV services, although this is only available in select markets.

Value & Comparisons - At $299.99 with a two-year contract the LG Voyager is a little on the pricey side considering it's not a smart phone.

[page title="Tour & Design"]

Front Closed
From the front the LG Voyager is dominated by its 2.81 inch touch display. Above the display is a Verizon logo and above that the speaker for the phone. Below the display is the LG logo and near the bottom are three control buttons, send, end and back/clear.

Front Open
When the LG Voyager is opened up like a small laptop you reveal a large QWERTY keyboard on the bottom half and another 2.81 inch display above. This display is not touch sensitive and is flanked by speakers on either side. The QWERTY keyboard takes up most of the bottom half of the phone but there is a D-Pad and some additional control keys on the right side. Above the QWERTY keyboard are two soft keys.

Left
The left side of the phone houses a dedicated camera key, lock button and volume rocker, all arranged in a small indentation near the middle.

Top
The top of the Voyager doesn't house any features or buttons.

Bottom
The bottom of the LG Voyager houses the port for a proprietary data cable, protected by an attached cover.

Right
The right side of the LG Voyager has a Micro SD slot near the bottom that is protected by a cover that remains attached to the phone when opened. Near the top is a 2.5mm headset jack.

Back
The back of the LG Voyager is dominated by the cover for the battery, with a release switch near the bottom. Also near the bottom you will find a stylus port on the right side. To the right of the battery cover is a small port for an external antenna. The top of the phone houses the lens for the 2 megapixel auto-focus camera.

Battery Out
Like on many LG handsets the battery is attached to the cover so it all comes out in one piece. As the Voyager is a CDMA phone there's no SIM card slot.

In the Box (2.5)
The Voyager doesn't ship with as many accessories as we would like. In addition to a software CD and manuals there's a power cable and a data cable. Considering the phone costs almost $300 we would have liked to see a pair of headphones included and maybe even a nice carrying case or memory card.

Handling (5.0)
When closed the voyager fits comfortably into the palm of your hand, we like that it isn't as wide as the iPhone and the added depth lets it sit in your palm easier. We did find that the exterior buttons are a little annoying to get to, especially when trying to do so with a single hand as you will need to adjust your grip. When the phone is opened up in clamshell mode it's meant to be held in two hands. The keyboard may be a little wide for some and we found the placement of the soft keys to be distant from the other controls. The LG Voyager is a little hefty, especially if you're holding it up to your head for long phone calls, although the soft touch paint on the back does make it easier to grip.. The Voyager's definitely a big handset and those with small hands may find it difficult to use.

Portability (6.0)
Measuring 4.64 x 2.12 x .71 inches and weighing in at 4.69 ounces the LG Voyager is a large handset. You will definitely feel this phone in your pocket, and those who like to wear tight pants will struggle to squeeze the phone into their pockets. Anyone used to a Motorola Razr or LG Chocolate will find this phone to be almost immense, and when you open it up in clamshell mode it gets even bigger. Those who have used it's predecessor the LG EnV, a Sidekick or larger smart phones will find it easier to adjust. Whatever your expectations this isn't a phone you'll be able to stick in your pocket and forget about.

Aesthetics (6.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't have the slim good looks you see in a lot of phones, but it does elicit something of a wow factor. The black stylings with some silver highlights look decent, our only major annoyance with the overall look is the somewhat clunky hinge. We do like the soft touch finish on the back and although we aren't enamored of the styling on the speakers others may disagree. Sexy it ain't, but it is a phone for those who like to stand out, similar to a Sidekick or a Helio Ocean.

Durability (6.0)
The Voyager feels like a well constructed handset, we didn't detect any major creaks or flaws. We do have our concerns though. First of all any phone with moving parts immediately raises a red flag, and we have to worry about the durability of the hinge. On the plus side the hinge does have two locking positions so even if it gets somewhat loose you may still be able to lock it into place for use. We also have concerns about the two large screens on the Voyager. They're inevitably a magnet for scratches so you might want to invest in some screen protectors. Finally the plastic construction on the front of the phone could also be prone to scratches. None of these are major concerns by themselves, but in combination they lead us to have some doubts about the Voyager's long term durability.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

To test the call quality of phones we use the same professional hardware and software that many of the manufacturers do. To simulate the human ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS) and to analyze the sound produced we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. For more information on how we test see this article.

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.84)
The chart above illustrates the quality of sound received by the LG Voyager. The Voyager's performance is indicated with a blue line while the limits we test against are in red. You can see that the Voyager did a decent job of staying within our limits with only a couple of minor aberrations. This means that you should have minimal problems understanding the voices on the other end of a phone call. You can see below that that Voyager's performance in this test isn't the best we've seen, but apart from the iPhone it is certainly amongst a collection of very solid phones.

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	HTC Touch on Sprint (on Sprint)	Pantech Duo (on AT&T)
Score	7.84	7.44	7.62
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia E90 (on AT&T)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	6.09	7.88	9.17
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Sound Send Frequency Response (8.51)
In this test we try to measure the quality of sound sent by the Voyager. This is how you will sound to those on the other end of a phone call. The chart above indicates the LG Voyager's performance with a blue line while our limits are again indicated in red. You can see that the LG Voyager did pretty well in this test as it doesn't fall outside of our limits at any point. We were quite pleased with the Voyager's performance; your voice should sound clear to those on the other end of the call. You can see below that the Voyager put up the best score in this test amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	HTC Touch (on Sprint)	Pantech Duo (on AT&T)
Score	8.51	6.56	4.94
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia E90 (Unlocked)	Helio Ocean (on Helio)	Apple iPhone (on AT&T)
Score	5.74	6.45	7.58
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph (click to view)

Handset Side Tone (9.63)
The equipment we use for testing side tone is currently not functioning properly. In the interest of releasing this review in a timely fashion, we've decided to simply not score the Voyager's side tone for the time being. We will update this section later as soon as we can get our equipment back in working order.

Update: We have fixed our problems with the side tone test. Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that the phone pipes back into your ear so you can hear how loud you are speaking. Our target for side tone is -18 decibels; the LG Voyager scored 17.63 decibels, which is just about right on. You can see below that the Voyager put up one of the best side tone scores amongst our comparison phones.

Cell Phone	Sidetone Measurement	Score
LG Voyager	17.63	9.63
HTC Touch on Sprint	20.36	7.64
Pantech Duo	25.06	2.94
Nokia E90	21.23	6.77
Helio Ocean	22	5.50
Apple iPhone	8.8	0.80

[page title="Imaging"]

Resolution (2.93)
To test the resolution of photos taken by the LG Voyager's 2 megapixel camera we take a series of photos of an industry standard resolution chart and run them through the Imatest software. Imatest analyzes the photos to see how many alternating white and black lines can be discerned before they start blurring together, a score called line widths per pixel height (lw/ph).
The LG Voyager's camera scored 837.9 lw/ph horizontal and 838.9 lw/ph vertical in our test of resolution. This is not a particularly impressive score, you can see below that only the Pantech Duo and Helio Ocean did worse in this test than the LG Voyager. Other phones that also have two megapixel cameras, like the iPhone, have put up significantly higher scores than the Voyager.

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	HTC Touch on Sprint	Pantech Duo
Score	2.93	3.56	1.09
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	837.9 / 838.9	895 / 1082	512 / 457
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia E90	Helio Ocean	Apple iPhone
Score	5.27	2.18	4.18
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	1089 / 992.9	701 / 476.6	970 / 879
Image of Resolution Chart (click to view)

Color (5.31)
To test the quality of the color produces by the Voyager's camera we took photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors in a grid. These photos are analyzed by Imatest to compare the captured colors of the photos to the original colors.
Imatest produces the chart above, which shows you the captured color in the outer box, the corrected color in the inner box and the ideal color in the small vertical rectangle. Imatest also produces the chart below, where the ideal color is indicated by a square and the actual captured color by a circle The longer the lines between the two the more inaccurate the colors.
As you can see, the LG Voyager has some serious issues in the reds and yellows: colors in that area are significantly under-saturated. Adjusting this problem in software like Photoshop shouldn't be too much of an issue, but it is an additional hassle. Apart from this issue though the LG Voyager does a good job in color fidelity, with very little error in other colors. As a result it ends up with an overall score that isn't too bad, you can see below that it's comparable to the iPhone and Nokia E90 and significantly better than the HTC Touch or Pantech Duo.

Cell Phone	LG Voyager	HTC Touch on Sprint	Pantech Duo
Score	5.31	2.23	2.34
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Cell Phone	Nokia E90	Helio Ocean	Apple iPhone
Score	5.77	6.66	5.22
Color Checker Chart (click to view)

Noise (0.95)
To see how much noise is produced in photos taken by the LG Voyager's camera we take photos of the GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then use Imatest to analyze the amount of noise produced at each lighting level. Our final score is based both on total noise at each lighting level and consistency across lighting levels. The LG Voyager didn't do particularly well in our noise test. The total noise at the two highest lighting levels was reasonably low. In lower lighting conditions, however, it jumped significantly. The lowest lighting level had a terrible amount of noise. You can see below that the Voyager put up the worse noise score amongst our comparison handsets, although you'll also note that none of them did a particularly impressive job. The truth is no cell phone camera does very well when it comes to noise.

Cell Phone	Score
LG Voyager	0.95
HTC Touch on Sprint	1.14
Pantech Duo	1.07
Nokia E90	1.34
Helio Ocean	1.14
Apple iPhone	1.20

Live Preview (6.0)
The LG Voyager's live preview does a generally good job. It uses the entire screen, which provides for a very large viewfinder. Items on the screen are sharp and colors are reproduced accurately and reflect your final photo as well. Where we did run into a slight problem was with panning, where the refresh rate caused some serious pixelation and fuzziness. You'll have to stop panning and hold the camera still for a sec to get the good view back again, but once you do you'll be fine.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (3.51)
To see how quickly you can take a photo with the LG Voyager when you're not actually in the camera application we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have captured a photo. We do this test until we get a consistent result. The LG Voyager took 5.7 seconds to go from a standby to a captured photo. This is not a particularly good time, although we have seen worse as illustrated in the table below. The LG Voyager is slowed down by the auto-focus lens on the camera that takes the time to make sure the scene is in focus. Auto-focus cameras are generally slower in this test than fixed focus cameras. The six-second delay means you'll likely miss spur of the moment shots.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	5.7	3.51
HTC Touch on Sprint	2.7	7.41
Pantech Duo	6.67	3.00
Nokia E90	7.55	2.65
Helio Ocean	4.1	4.88
Apple iPhone	2.43	8.23

Shot to Shot Time (0.45)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photos with a camera. Good shot to shot time is important for capturing motion shots like at a sporting event. When possible we try to do this test using a camera's burst mode. The LG Voyager doesn't have a burst mode, so we were stuck doing the test manually. It consequently did pretty poorly in this test: it took 27.2 seconds to capture four photos, which works out to 0.15 frames per second (fps). This is just about one of the worst scores we've ever seen from a camera. In the Voyager's case the terrible score was the result of a convergence of features, or lack of them, including no burst mode and the inability to turn off auto-review and the auto-focus camera. This combination means you won't be able to capture many action shots with the LG Voyager.

Cell Phone	FPS	Score
LG Voyager	0.15	0.45
HTC Touch on Sprint	1.67	5.00
Pantech Duo	0.81	2.43
Nokia E90	0.61	1.83
Helio Ocean	1.25	3.75
Apple iPhone	0.4	1.20

Shutter to Shot Time (1.54)
Shutter to shot time is the amount of time it takes for a photo to be captured once you've hit the shutter button. We expect phones with auto-focus cameras like the LG Voyager to do worse on this test than those with fixed focus lenses simply because of the time it takes for the camera to put the scene into focus. The Voyager lived up to our expectations, taking 1.3 seconds between shutter and shot. This is a long time, even compared to other auto-focus cameras. The Nokia E90 is also an auto-focus camera, but it did  pretty well in this test. What it comes down to is this: if you want to take advantage of the auto-focus, make sure your subject is sitting still, and if they're not switch the auto-focus off.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	1.3	1.54
HTC Touch on Sprint	0.26	7.69
Pantech Duo	1.03	1.94
Nokia E90	0.247	8.10
Helio Ocean	0.6	3.33
Apple iPhone	0.4	5.00

Interface (7.0)
We like the camera interface on the LG Voyager. When used in closed position, which is where we expect most people will be taking their photos, the entire screen is taken up by the viewfinder. At the top right are two small icons, one of which shows you are in still capture mode and the other shows what resolution you are capturing. At the bottom right is an options button. The left has a brightness control. Along the bottom are a series of icons for various controls like white balance, timer and mode. Tapping on one of these icons will bring up a small menu with the corresponding settings. Everything is in a white stencil so you can still see what you're looking at with the viewfinder, which we appreciate. Overall the interface is very camera-like and intuitive.

Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The photo album software on the LG Voyager is pretty basic. There's a three by three thumbnail grid with a larger preview of the currently selected picture above or to the right of this grid, depending upon which screen you're looking at it on. We were happy to see that thumbnails are rendered very quickly. You can view photos in a larger view and from the menu you can also select a full screen view that takes up the entire display. Your photo management options are very basic, you can send a photo via MMS or Bluetooth and there's also a separate "Manage My Pics" view where you can select multiple photos to be moved, deleted etc. There's no support for folders and no option to change the sorting of your photos. You can print from the album software via Bluetooth if you have a compatible printer and you can set the photo as your wallpaper or assign it to a contact. Overall the software is very basic, about what we would expect from a regular cell phone and not as good as the Gallery software you get on Series 60 devices or even Windows Mobile's Pictures & Video software, both of which support things like folders and re-sorting.

Manual Control (0.0)
The LG Voyager's camera does not provide you with any manual controls.

Zoom (0.0)
There is no zoom, either digital or optical, on the LG Voyager.

Focus (5.0)
The LG Voyager has auto-focus, which activates when you press the shutter key. We like auto-focus cameras because they help you take better photos, however they also slow you down as the camera puts the scene into focus.

Flash (0.0)
The LG Voyager lacks a flash for the camera.

Metering (6.0)
The LG Voyager is one of a small selection of new phones we've seen with advanced metering controls. Most phones have simple manual brightness controls to adjust the brightness of the photo you capture, and the Voyager has these. It also has true metering controls, albeit only two options: average or center-weighted. Metering controls such as these allow you to indicate from which point or points in the scene lighting is judged.

White Balance (2.0)
The LG Voyager has a selection of White Balance presets, like most camera phones we've seen. It does not have evaluative white balance, which determines true white using a white card.

Image Handling (4.0)
The LG Voyager provides you with only a couple of basic image handling options. You can rename and rotate photos. There's also the ability to zoom in on a photo you are viewing, but this is not saved like a true crop would be.

Video

Overall Video Score (2.0)
The LG Voyager captures video at a maximum resolution of 320 x 240 and 13 frames per second. This is decent quality on paper for a cell phone, unfortunately the actual video produced doesn't live up to the specs. We found the video the LG Voyager took was very pixelated, even when viewed at only twice it's actual size on a computer screen. Forget about viewing it full screen or on a television. We would even hesitate to use this video on Youtube. Really it's only going to be good for sending via a multimedia message where you know people are going to view it on a small screen.

Video Resolution (4.68)
To test the resolution of videos produced by the LG Voyager we take video of the same industry standard resolution chart we use for our stills resolution test. We then run frames from this video through Imatest to produce a line widths per pixel height (lw/ph) score, which measures how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The LG Voyager produces a reasonable score in this test of 222 lw/ph horizontal and 211 lw/ph vertical. This is similar to what we've seen from the HTC Touch and Helio Ocean. It's far worse than the Nokia E90, which is one of the few phones on the market that records video at 640 x 480 and 30 fps.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
LG Voyager	222/211	4.68
HTC Touch on Sprint	204/221	4.51
Pantech Duo	247/215	5.31
Nokia E90	351.4/345.2	12.13
Helio Ocean	283/160.1	4.53
Apple iPhone	n/a - no video recording	0.00

Video Compression (2.0)
The LG Voyager captures video in a variant of 3GP with the .3G2 extension. This is the standard for mobile video and is fine for multimedia messages, but the use of this compression may also contribute to the poor overall quality of the video. It would have been nice to have the option to capture in a more robust codec like H264.

Interface (7.0)
The camcorder interface on the LG Voyager is very similar to the camera interface. The major differences include a zoom at the top of the screen and fewer controls along the bottom. We do like the camera-like interface, the fact the whole screen is used as a viewfinder, and the stenciled icons so you can still see what you're shooting when adjusting controls.

Manual Control (0.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't offer any manual controls for video capture.

Zoom (1.0)
Unlike the stills camera the LG Voyager's video camera does have an optical zoom. Of course all optical zoom does is crop and resize what you're seeing so it has the effect of severely reducing the quality of the video. Still, it might be useful in some circumstances so we award one point for it.

Editing (0.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't offer users any editing options like trimming the end of videos or adding a voice over.

Modes (2.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't offer any specific modes for MMS or Email video and unlike the stills camera there are no metering options. You do have some presets for white balance however.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing Speed (4.63)
To see how easy it is to dial on the LG Voyager, we time how long it takes to dial each of five different test numbers, starting from the home screen. We then average our times. The LG Voyager took an average of 4.32 seconds to dial a test number. This isn't the worst score we've ever seen, you can see below that the HTC Touch did significantly worse, but it is a little on the slow side. Most of our comparison phones were able to dial a number faster than the Voyager, including the iPhone, which also has a touch screen interface for dialing.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	4.32	4.63
HTC Touch on Sprint	6.98	2.87
Pantech Duo	2.89	6.92
Nokia E90	2.36	8.47
Helio Ocean	3.1	6.45
Apple iPhone	3.96	5.05

Talk and End Buttons (5.5)
Like the Nokia E90, which shares the clamshell QWERTY form factor, the LG Voyager has two sets of send and end buttons. The first set is on the outside of phone near the very bottom of the phone. This is an awkward placement, especially when dialing with one hand. The buttons are slightly textured to look somewhat like the speaker at the top of the phone. They can be easily overlooked, especially when the backlight is off, as the indicators turn black. The buttons themselves seem to sit on a rocker that stretches the width of the handset. In addition to being difficult to see, they are also difficult to find by feel alone. When pressed they do have a decent amount of key travel and the tactile feedback is good, but not great.

The interior send and end buttons are much more pedestrian. They are two small black buttons located above the D-Pad to the right of the QWERTY keyboard. Although small, they are much more conveniently located and easier to find by feel: a small silver bar divides the keys. Key travel when pressed is only slight, but tactile feedback is good. We liked these much better than the exterior buttons. Because we can't predict which set of keys users will use most often, we scored both sets of buttons and took the average for our final score. We gave the exterior buttons a score of five points and the interior buttons a score of six points.

Call Management (7.0)
Like many phones the LG Voyager offers you two ways to get to the call history. The easiest way is to hit the send key on the home screen, but there is also a call history item in the menu. This takes you to a chronological list of all your calls. Selecting an item from the list will give you information about the time and duration of the call and the ability to save the number to your address book. You can filter your calls by missed, received, dialed or all calls. There is also a good selection of timers that include information about data sent and received.
During a call the touch screen is locked by default, with an unlock icon that you can tap to access it. When you tap this icon you are given two rows of icons near the bottom of the screen. The first row gives you access to messaging, phone, bluetooth and contacts. Below this is a mute and end button, a clear button and an options button that opens a menu where you can access additional features like the notepad, record and main menu. About the only feature we saw missing was the ability to turn on a speakerphone. To do this you will need to open the phone up and hit the dedicated speaker phone button to the lower left of the D-Pad. It seems silly to us to not have this option available from the exterior display. Aside from this issue, the LG Voyager provides an excellent selection of call management features.

Startup to Call (3.96)
For this test we time how long it takes for the phone to be turned on and make a call. This is useful information for those who turn their phones off often and need to be able to pull it out and get it to start up quickly for a call. We do this test five times and take the average for our score. The LG Voyager took an average of 25.26 seconds to start up and make a call. This isn't the speediest time we've seen, but it isn't bad either. You can see below that the Helio Ocean was the only phone to do significantly better than the LG Voyager in this test, while some phones, like the HTC Touch, did much worse.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	25.26	3.96
HTC Touch on Sprint	70.24	1.42
Pantech Duo	43.67	2.29
Nokia E90	32.12	3.11
Helio Ocean	9.5	10.53
Apple iPhone	26.12	3.83

Ring Volume (0.0)
To test the ring volume of the LG Voyager we turn volume up to the maximum and measure how loud each ring tone on the device gets using a sound pressure meter. The LG Voyager's ring tone measured a maximum of 85.6 decibels, which is right about average for phones. You can see below that most of our phones fall into a narrow range in terms of ring volume.

Cell Phone	Volume (decibels)	Score
LG Voyager	85.6	8.56
HTC Touch on Sprint	84.8	8.48
Pantech Duo	85.7	8.57
Nokia E90	85.4	8.54
Helio Ocean	85.4	8.54
Apple iPhone	84.9	8.49

Ringtone Customizability (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not allow you to use your own music files as ring tones. Even when we placed the files in the "my sounds" folder created on the memory card they did not show up in the list of ring tones.

Non Audio Alerts (12.0)
We found the vibrate alert on the LG Voyager to be pretty good. We were easily able to feel it in our pocket and it was good enough that you even have a chance of noticing it in a coat pocket or hearing the vibration in a bag. When a call comes in you can't miss it if you're looking at the screen. It lights up with the incoming number and gives you the option to accept, reject or mute the ringer. We very much appreciated the decent vibrate alert on the Voyager. It isn't great, but considering most phones are decidedly mediocre, just being decent is a step up.

[page title="Messaging"]

Supported Email Services (0.0)
Like many phones from Verizon there is no built in email client on the LG Voyager. Instead there's a web based email client that you find buried in "Get It Now -> On the Go" menu along with the Verizon Navigator application. We guess there's some logic here, but frankly we would have preferred access from the standard messaging menu. Either way we don't award points for web-based email on phones because it precludes you from doing things like checking your mail or composing a message when you don't have data access like on a plane or the subway. As such the LG Voyager will not receive any points in many of these sections.

Push Email (0.0)
No email client.

Multiple Email Accounts (0.0)
No email client.

HTML and Attachements (0.0)
No email client.

Email Customizations (0.0)
No email client.

Time to a New Message (0.0)
No email client.

Email Usability (0.0)
No email client.

Supported IM Services (0.0)
The LG Voyager has the typical Verizon Wireless instant messaging client that gives you access to Yahoo, Windows Live and AOL's IM services. Unfortunately, like many IM services on phones Verizon charges users for a text message for each instant message sent or received using this service. Considering that instant messaging is just a data service we feel it's unfair to charge people text messaging rates for IMs, especially for those who are already paying for a data plan. As such we will not award any points for the LG Voyager's IM capabilities.

MMS Support (6.0)
Multimedia messages, or Picture Messages as they are known on the Verizon network, are well integrated on the LG Voyager. You can easily send an MMS from the camera or the album software. Unfortunately creating an MMS is not integrated with text messages, instead you will need to choose which type of message to send before starting composition. Thankfully you don't have to deal with two inboxes as all messages regardless of type go into a single mailbox.

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not interpret smiley faces received as graphical images, rather they are left in text format. There's also no option to insert smileys into a message you are composing, instead you will need to type them out. This is a grievous blow to all those who like smileys.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.0)
The SMS/MMS interface is a simple menu that gives you access to your inbox, sent and drafts menu along with shortcuts to a new message and other messaging services like voicemail and instant messaging. The mailboxes are shared between SMS and MMS, which we like to see, but unfortunately you do still have to choose what type of message you will create before you compose it. When you do create a new message you are first asked for the numbers/contacts you want to send the message to and then are able to create the body of the message. We were happy to see that under the options menu when composing you can format text with options like alignment, font size/style, text color and background. These are options that you don't often see when creating SMS/MMS messages. Apart from this, the interface is pretty typical and easy to use.

Time to a New SMS Message (9.09)
To see how easy it is to create a new test message on the LG Voyager we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a new SMS dialogue on the screen. We do this test five times and take the average for our score. The LG Voyager took an average of 1.1 seconds to complete this process, which is a pretty good time. You can see from the table below that it's significantly faster than any of our comparison phones. We were helped out in this test by the LG Voyager's shortcut menu, which can be accessed by tapping anywhere on the home screen's wallpaper. This menu gives you quick access to a variety of functions, including composing a new text message. This makes creating a new SMS message a two tap procedure.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	1.1	9.09
HTC Touch on Sprint	3.98	2.51
Pantech Duo	2.39	4.18
Nokia E90	1.99	5.03
Helio Ocean	3.1	3.23
Apple iPhone	2.62	3.82

[page title="Organizer"]

Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not come with software that allows you to synchronize the personal information on your phone with a computer. As such it will receive a zero here.

Alerts (2.0)
Alerts on the LG Voyager can only be set for calendar appointments. You have to choose from one of five preset times before an event for the alert to go off, there's no way to set your own custom time. You can customize the ring tone that will sound for each alert individually, and you can choose whether the phone vibrates as well. When an alert sounds the screen lights up and you are prompted to unlock the phone. When you do you have the choice to view the appointment now or later, although unfortunately the Voyager doesn't take advantage of its screen real estate to give you any information about the appointment here, this despite the fact that the full screen is used for the alert dialogue.

When you choose the view later option the alert is snoozed for five minutes and then sounds again with the same options. There's no way to simply dismiss an appointment without actually viewing it. Although we like the customizability of the alert ring tones we found most of the Voyager's alert functionality to be sub par, especially when compared with a full featured smart phone like the HTC Touch.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not allow you to synchronize personal information over the air.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (8.50)
To see how easy it is to add a contact to the LG Voyager we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a contact name and phone number. We do this for five different test contacts and take the average time for our score. The LG Voyager did well in this test, taking an average of 11.76 seconds to add a new contact to the address book. You can see below that only the Pantech Duo put up a similar score, with our other comparison phones taking twice as long or more than the Voyager. We found adding a contact on the LG Voyager to be helped by the use of both the external and internal interfaces. We started by hitting the Address Book icon on the home screen and then tapping the new button to get a new contact started. We then opened the device up to enter the name and phone number, which is faster than dealing with the virtual keypad on the exterior screen.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	11.76	8.50
HTC Touch on Sprint	29.42	3.40
Pantech Duo	11.72	8.53
Nokia E90	17.48	5.72
Helio Ocean	21.24	4.71
Apple iPhone	20.86	4.79

Looking/Sorting/Search (5.0)
Contacts on the LG Voyager are organized alphabetically by name. There's only one field for the name, so however you decide to enter it into that field is where it will show up in the list. Although you can assign contacts to groups there's no way to view your contacts by group from the standard contacts interface. Instead, you need to go into the menu, choose contacts from there, and then choose groups from the next list of options. This seems a bit circuitous. You can search through your contacts by hitting the "Go To" button on the exterior screen or just start typing in the interior QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately this search only applies to the contact name starting with the beginning, so for example Joe Bob will only be found on a search if you start typing "Joe". If you type in "Bob" it won't appear. On the exterior display you also have a bar along the top that divides the alphabet into four sections that you can jump to quickly. We were not impressed by the LG Voyager's sorting and search options for contacts.

Fields (2.2)
When you create a new contact on the LG Voyager you are given a pretty basic selection of eleven fields. These include name, multiple phone numbers, an email address, group, ringtone and picture. This should be sufficient for most users but anyone who wants to manage a large and complex set of contacts on the Voyager will probably feel constrained by the dearth of contact fields. By contrast smart phones like the Nokia E90 or Pantech Duo provide users with 40+ fields.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.67)
Speed dials are supported on the LG Voyager, with up to 98 slots available. There is no support for voice tags but we found the included voice command software to be pretty good. We're usually fairly unimpressed by voice command on phones, but the Voyager was able to recognize all five of our test contacts, which have diverse names. This leads us to worry less about the lack of voice tag support, where you can train the phone to recognize certain names.

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (10.78)
To see how easy it is to add a calendar appointment to the LG Voyager we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have added a lunch appointment with a reminder 15 minutes beforehand. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The LG Voyager only took an average of 9.28 seconds to add our test appointment. This is a pretty good score, you can see below that only the HTC Touch was faster than the Voyager on this test, with the Pantech Duo equaling it. The Ocean, E90 and iPhone were all significantly slower. We found ourselves again using a combination of the external and internal interfaces to get this test done. We first tapped the home screen wallpaper to bring up the favorites menu and launched the calendar from there rather than going through the more labyrinthine menu system. We then opened the phone up, navigated to the next day and hit the soft key for new to start entering our information.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	9.28	10.78
HTC Touch on Sprint	7.94	12.59
Pantech Duo	9.28	10.78
Nokia E90	16.367	6.11
Helio Ocean	24.2	4.13
Apple iPhone	18.92	5.29

Calendar Views (3.1)
The LG Voyager provides you with three calendar views. The default view is monthly where you see a full month on screen with the currently selected day highlighted in red. At the bottom of the external screen or to the right on the internal screen you see the number of events on a given day. We think this is a little silly, if you're going to set aside that additional space why not give us a list of the actual appointments rather than a count.

Daily	Weekly	Monthly

The weekly view is a typical grid with days along the top and hours along the left. Appointments are blocked out so you an see your free/busy time, but this is really all it's good for as there are no details about any appointment actually provided. The daily view gives you a simple list of the appointments on that day with start time, title and some icons for things like alerts. This is the most useful view in our opinion. Categories are not supported so there's no way to filter your view, nor is there a search feature. Overall the calendar views were pretty disappointing, it certainly isn't as good as the more powerful calendar views you see on smart devices like the T-Mobile Shadow or Nokia E90.

Fields (5.0)
When you create a new calendar appointment on the LG Voyager you only have a few fields to choose from. Title and start/end time is supported, as are alerts and recurrence. The recurrence options only allow you to create some basic recurrence patterns, daily, weekly, monthly or yearly. There's no way to create a custom recurrence pattern nor are there options for things like weekdays or weekends. There also are no advanced fields that are found on smart phones like categories, invitations or notes.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not support tasks, as such it will receive zeros in these sections.

ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
No tasks program.

Fields (0.0)
No tasks program.

Notes

Adding Notes (4.59)
To see how easy it is to add a note to the LG Voyager we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have created a new standardized note. We repeat this test five times and take the average for our score. The LG Voyager took an average of 10.9 seconds to add our test note. This isn't the fastest we've seen, but it's pretty good. You can see below that it's faster than any of our comparison phones except the Pantech Duo. Unlike the other timed tests in this section we weren't able to use a shortcut on the exterior display to launch the notes program. Instead we had to burrow into the menu system, which took most of our time. For this reason we found it faster to just open the phone up and use the D-Pad and soft keys to get the notes program launched rather than using the exterior touch screen.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	10.9	4.59
HTC Touch on Sprint	17.64	2.83
Pantech Duo	9.82	5.09
Nokia E90	16.73	2.99
Helio Ocean	16.06	3.11
Apple iPhone	12.66	3.95

Note Interface (3.0)
The notes interface on the LG Voyager is pretty simple. There is a list of notes with the newest at the top. There is one button assigned to create a new note and another to erase all notes, in the interior interface these are the functions assigned to the soft key. When you open an existing note you are shown what is in the note but have to press another button to edit it. Another button in this view is assigned to delete just this specific note. When composing a note one button allows you to insert symbols while another brings up a menu where you can cancel the edit or copy/cut text. Overall the interface is simple and straightforward due to the lack of many menus. On the other hand we find the three step process to edit an existing note to be a little clunky.

Note Formatting (1.0)
The notes program on the LG Voyager doesn't allow you to edit the font type or size, nor can you do things like bold, underline or italicize text. You can however add symbols and copy/cut text, which are nice extras that aren't often found in notes programs. As such we are awarding the LG Voyager a point in this section.

Voice Memo (0.0)
Unlike most phones the LG Voyager does not allow you to create voice notes. This might be understandable in an entry level phone, but in a $300 device it's a silly oversight.

[page title="Multimedia"]

Accessing Music Software (2.44)
To see how easy it is to access music software on the LG Voyager we time how long it take to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a song playing on the phone. We do this test five times and take the average time for our score. The LG Voyager did not perform very well in this test, posting an average time of 8.2 seconds to get music playing. You can see below that this is the slowest time amongst our comparison phones with most putting up times significantly faster than the Voyager. We found the trouble with the Voyager's music program is that it takes several seconds to actually load the program; once you've launched it, everything else is pretty quick. Still, 8.2 seconds to get a song playing is pretty poor performance no matter how you look at it.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	8.2	2.44
HTC Touch on Sprint	7.8	2.56
Pantech Duo	3.39	5.90
Nokia E90	7.31	2.74
Helio Ocean	5.2	3.85
Apple iPhone	3.1	6.45

Dedicated Music Controls (1.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't have any buttons that are specifically dedicated to music playback control. Thankfully the volume keys do control music volume while it's playing. This actually isn't too big an issue: since the Voyager doesn't support multi-tasking, if you're playing music you're going to be staring at the music program and all of its controls. In this section we only award points for hardware buttons that allow you to control music playback. As such the LG Voyager will only receive one point for volume control.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.8)
The LG Voyager uses the same music software we see on all Verizon V Cast phones. This means that it's very red, not very well organized, and more focused on selling you music than actual playback. On the Voyager the software has two different interfaces because of the two different input methods. The big differences are that on the exterior screen music playback controls are arranged to the left and right of the interface for use with your fingers; on the interior the D-Pad is mapped to music controls with additional controls available via the soft keys. You should also know that on the exterior screen the music interface is rotated to be used in landscape orientation. It is a little annoying to have to rotate your phone to use the music interface, but on the other hand we do think the landscape orientation makes better use of space.

Playlists are supported, but not standard .pls or .m3u playlists, instead you only get those that are synchronized over from your computer using Windows Media Player or Verizon's V Cast desktop software. You can also create new playlists on the Voyager or edit existing playlists. Tags are supported for Mp3, AAC and WMA music files but there's no equalizer or ratings support. We also didn't like that there's no background play, so while you're listening to music you can't do anything else on the Voyager. Your music can be organized by genre, artist, album or title. There are also search features so you can find a song in your library. Our biggest problem from a usability perspective is that so much of the music interface is tied to the V Cast music store. We understand having multiple points of entry, but there are at least half a dozen icons trying to get you to buy music. Although the Verizon music player hits a lot of the feature check offs from a usability perspective it's just not there.

Online Song Downloading (7.0)
The LG Voyager supports Verizon's V Cast music store, so you can purchase and download music directly to your device.

Streaming (0.0)
The LG Voyager does not support streaming Mp3, AAC or WMA music. There also isn't any form of carrier-supported streaming music. We expect Verizon prefers pushing their V Cast music store instead.

Podcast Support (0.0)
There is no software on the LG Voyager to download and/or manage podcasts.

Music Sync with PC (7.0)
The LG Voyager can be synchronized with a desktop computer using either Windows Media Player or Verizon's V Cast desktop software. We prefer the usability of Windows Media Player, but if you purchase a lot of music from the V Cast music store you'll have to use that software to manage your purchases.

Music Formats and DRM (3.5)
The LG Voyager is capable of playing back standard Mp3, AAC or WMA music files. The only form of DRM it supports is Verizon's proprietary DRM for V Cast music.

Music Interruption (3.0)
There are several problems that occur when your music playback is interrupted by a call on the LG Voyager. The initial interruption is fine, the music pauses and you are taken to the phone interface. The problems arise when the call ends: when you hang up initially the music doesn't start up right away. You are instead taken to a summary screen that shows you how long the call lasted. You wait for a couple of seconds and the screen doesn't go away, so you think to yourself, "I guess I have to cancel out of it," and hit the end key to exit it. This doesn't get your music playing again: it takes you to the shortcut menu in the exterior display or the "Music & Tones" section of the "Get It Now" menu instead. Now you have to wait several more seconds while the music software gets launched again, and when it does you're back out at the main menu instead of the point where you left it. Confused yet? It gets worse.

If you're patient enough to wait a whole seven seconds until the call timer screen disappears, your music actually does start playing again from the point it ended. But now, if you're on the external touch screen if you try to interact with the music you will find the touch screen doesn't respond. What happened? Well, it seems that when you are on a phone call the screen locks itself, which actually makes sense, but the screen stays locked when you go back to the music software, so now you have to use the hardware switch to unlock your music and start interacting with it again. Between ridiculous delays and unintuitive interface actions this is one of the worst phones we've seen in terms of music interruption.

Video

Video Software Access (4.98)
To see how easy it is to access video on the LG Voyager we time how long it takes to go from the home screen unlocked until we have a video playing. We do this test five times and take the average for our score. The LG Voyager took an average of 4.02 seconds to get a video playing, which is a very good time. You can see below that only the iPhone did better in this section than the Voyager. This is even more impressive when you consider that there's no shortcut to the My Videos section of the album software, which is where your videos are managed. Instead you have to go through the main menu, then Get It Now, then Pictures & Video and then My Videos, then you have to tap on your video to get it playing. So how did the Voyager do so much better here where you have so many steps as compared to the music software which has a shortcut two taps away? The key thing is that there was no lag in any of the menus or in getting the video playing while the music software took an interminable amount of time to launch.

Cell Phone	Time (sec)	Score
LG Voyager	4.02	4.98
HTC Touch on Sprint	8.6	2.33
Pantech Duo	5.8	3.45
Nokia E90	7.55	2.65
Helio Ocean	5.5	3.64
Apple iPhone	3.2	6.25

Video Controls (6.0)
When playing music on the Voyager you have several convenient controls. First of all are five controls arranged in a cross with play/pause at the center, full screen toggle above, stop below and fast forward and rewind to either side. On the exterior screen these are operated via touch while in the interior the D-Pad is mapped to these functions. There's also a volume control on the exterior screen that can be controlled by touch or with the volume keys, while in the interior you have to use the volume keys. Finally there's a mute button that sits on the lower left on the exterior display and is assigned to the left soft key in the interior display. When you put it all together it's a decent set of controls, although we do wish that you could switch to the next or previous video from the controls rather than having to back out to the album software instead.

Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The video software on the LG Voyager is actually just the album software as found on most other Verizon phones. This is unfortunate as it's not very full featured. Given the Voyager'a two quality displays, we would think video playback would be a priority. There is support for viewing videos full screen, although in the interior display "full screen" actually only takes up about two thirds of the screen. Thankfully on the exterior display it is actually full screen. Landscape orientation is supported in full screen on the exterior display and of course you're always in landscape in the interior. Thankfully the software is pretty easy to use, but this also means you don't get many features.

Rating videos is not supported, nor can you create or synchronize video playlists. There's no search functionality and the library organization is just a big collection of thumbnails of your videos. There's no support for sorting videos by genre like TV or Movies, nor is there any way to change the sorting options, which we can't figure out since it doesn't seem to follow any logical format we know of. You can't even create folders to put your videos into manually. This is just really poor video management software for anything except dealing with the small videos you might want to take on the phone itself. It's nowhere near the quality of the video software seen on the iPhone or Windows Mobile devices.

Video Sync with PC (0.0)
Synchronization of videos with your PC is not supported.

Video Formats (5.0)
The LG Voyager was able to play back all three of our 3GP encoded files and was also able to handle our Mpeg-4 and H264 video files. It does not support Flash, Quicktime, Windows Media or Real video.

Video DRM (0.0)
The Voyager doesn't support any form of Video DRM.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To see how well a phone can play back video, we attempt to play back five different files of increasing bit rates. We were happy to see the LG Voyager was able to handle all five of our test files -- up to 768 kbps -- even in full screen mode. Given that the LG Voyager is actually able to play back decent quality video it's even more of a shame the video management features are so poor.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The LG Voyager doesn't support direct downloads of videos to your handset.

Video Streaming unscored
Because online streaming video protocols are all over the place, we don't score this section. We do test a few sites, however, to see how well they work. The LG Voyager was able to handle streaming 3GP video fr