LG Voyager Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Alfredo Padilla Published on December 04, 2007 Comment on this |
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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)
| 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 from both Youtube Mobile and Zoovision.com. It wasn't able to handle streaming Windows Media video however. There is also streaming video content available from Verizon's V Cast service, although clips will cost you, either on a per-video basis or via a monthly subscription.
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