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LG enV2 Cell Phone Review

Alfredo Padilla Published on May 09, 2008 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

There's a lot to like about the LG enV2, including a nice QWERTY keyboard, GPS and very good battery life. Although there are flaws like lack of email and organizer support, the enV2 is a solid all around handset. There's few things it's outstanding at, but there are also few things that are truly terrible. We feel comfortable saying that anyone who doesn't need advanced smart phone features but do want a QWERTY keyboard will probably enjoy the enV2; and at $129.99 with a two-year contract the price is pretty reasonable as well.

Section	The Good	The Bad
Tour & Design	All the women we asked like the styling	All the men we asked did not
Audio Quality	Sound received by the phone could be worse	Almost all aspects of the audio quality could be better
Imaging	Video recording is good for a cell phone	Photo resolution is pretty atrocious
Making/Receiving Calls	Dialing a number was very quick	You can't use your own music files as ring tones
Messaging	Text messaging support is solid	There's no built in email client so it's web based only
Organizer	Fast access to organizer features	No task support and no synchronization
Multimedia	Nothing's that terrible	But nothing's excellent either
Software	Speedy interface	Terrible web browser
Battery Life	Solid battery life across the board	Nothing to say here
Connectivity	Fast EVDO data and solid Bluetooth support	Wi-Fi would have been nice
Hardware	Fast typing on both the keypad and keyboard	D-Pad and soft keys should be closer together
Other Features	GPS and modem support	You have to use Verizon's software for the GPS
Value & Comparisons	Reasonably priced at $129.99 with a contract.	Still a little rich for many

[page title="Tour & Design"]

The LG enV2 has undergone some design changes over the original enV2. The phone is slightly smaller, which makes it more portable, and the exterior controls have gotten bigger and more stylized.

Front Closed
When closed the front of the LG enV2 is dominated by the newly styled keypad. Above the keypad are the control keys and above them a small 1.45 inch display.

Front Open
When you open the enV2 up you reveal the QWERTY keyboard on the bottom half of the phone with control keys to the right of the keyboard and a 2.4 inch display on the upper half of the phone flanked by a pair of speakers.

Left
The left side of the LG enV2 holds the volume rocker keys  and a dedicated camera button.

Top
There is nothing on the top of the device.

Bottom
The bottom of the phone has a  Micro USB port for data with a tethered cover.

Right
On the right of the enV2 is a Micro SD card slot near the bottom with a tethered cover and a 2.5mm headphone jack near the top.

Back
On the back of the LG enV2 is the battery cover with a release switch just below it. Above it is the lens for the two megapixel camera.

Battery Out
The battery is attached to the cover on the LG enV2 so when you release it it comes out all in one piece. There are no significant features under the battery.

In the Box (1.0)
The LG enV2 does not ship with many accessories. Aside from the manual all you get is a travel charger. We would have liked to see a stereo headset included as well, and perhaps a memory card.

Handling (6.0)
When closed the LG enV2 fits comfortably into the palm of your hand. Weighing in at 4.23 ounces it's about middling in terms of weight, and it does seem to have some heft to it when you hold it. The back of the device is plastic but isn't slick so you won't be dropping it too easily. When open the enV2 is meant to be held in two hands. We found the keyboard was a little wide for those with smaller hands. The screen locks in two spots at about a 45 degree angle and flat. We would have liked more continous adjustments so you can set it to the angle you want. Overall it's fairly comfortable to handle given it's fold out form factor.

Portability (0.0)
When closed the LG enV2 i smaller than the original enV measuring 4 x 2.13 x .65 inches. Although it's not slim, it is small enough to fit into most pockets, unless you like the really tight pants. It should also fit comfortably into most bags. It's no Razr, but it's not as huge as many other phones that have QWERTY keyboards like the Sidekick LX or the LG Voyager.

Aesthetics (7.0)
The enV2's stylings have changed a bit compared to the original enV. The external keypad and controls have particularly changed from an original that looked almost toy-like to a more stylized approach. We have to say that we like the look of the changes and we imagine that a lot of other people will as well. Throw in the wow factor of having a fold out QWERTY and you will probably turn some heads when you whip out the enV2. We do have to say that it's a little short of sexy, however. But we do think that it looks better than the SMT5800 or LG Voyager. Given how subjective aesthetics are, however, your mileage may vary.

Durability (6.5)
The LG enV2 feels like a well put together device. We didn't note any creaks or obvious loose bits ont he device. Any phone with moving parts concerns us and you have to worry about the hinge on the enV2. It does feel fairly solid, however, and the fact that it locks in two places rather than being continous means it's probably less likely to get loose.

[page title="Audio Quality"]

We were not impressed by the LG enV2's performance in our audio tests. Both audio sent and received was slightly off while sidetone, the small amount of your own voice that is piped back into your ear, was much too low.

General Audio
The quality of the audio your phone sends and receives is one of its most important features. As such we use professional hardware and software to test it. To simulate the human head and ear we use a Head and Torso Simulator (HATS) and to analyze the sound produced we use Listen Inc's SoundCheck software. This is the same combination of hardware and software that many hardware manufacturers and carriers use. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article

Sound Receive Frequency Response (7.63)
This test looks at the quality of the sound received by the LG enV2. Below you see a chart that outlines the quality of the sound. The blue line indicates the enV2's performance while the two red lines are the limits against which we test.

You can see that the LG enV2's performance is a little off. It rises above our limits slightly at the lower frequencies and then drops off too quickly at the high end. This means that those with deeper voices may sound slightly exaggerated and those with higher voice may sound slightly clipped. Neither deviations are huge, however. You can see in the tables below that we've seen worse performance from phones like Samsung SLM and  Sidekick LX.

Cell Phone	LG enV2	HTC SMT5800   (on Verizon)	Samsung SLM (on AT&T)
Score	7.63	7.92	7.49
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX (on T-Mobile)	LG Voyager (on Verizon)	Samsung M520 (on Sprint)
Score	6.74	7.84	9.12
Received Sound Frequency Response Graph

Sound Send Frequency Response (7.47)
Here we look at the sound sent by the LG enV2, so this is how you will sound to others. As with our chart above the chart below indicates the enV2's performance with a blue line while the two red lines represent the limits against which we test.

As with our previous test the LG enV2's performance in this test has a few problems. You can see that the phone rises above our limits across low to mid range frequencies. It then drops off to quickly at the high frequencies. Once again the deviations are relatively minor, but because there are more of them the performance is hurt more. You can see in the table below that only the Sidekick LX performed worse in this test than the enV2. The practical impact is that your voice will sound exaggerated if it's lower and clipped if it's higher.

Cell Phone	LG enV2	HTC SMT5800 (on Verizon)	Samsung SLM (on AT&T)
Score	7.47	8.00	8.68
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX (on T-Mobile)	LG Voyager (on Verizon)	Samsung M520 (on Sprint)
Score	5.35	8.51	8.21
Sound Sent Frequency Response Graph

Handset Side Tone (4.79)
Side tone is the small amount of your own voice that the phone pipes back into your ear so you can judge how loudly you are speaking. Below you see the performance of the LG enV2 in decibels across frequencies.

The average volume level for the enV2 is -23.21 decibels. You can see from the table below that this is significantly off from the average from all phones. Our goal in this test is to get an average sidetone of -18 decibels, you can see that the enV2 is significantly lower than this. The result is that the LG enV2's performance in this test is amongst the worst we've seen. The practical result for users is that you may find yourself raising your voice too much because you will think you're speaking too softly.

[page title="Imaging"]

The LG enV2's imaging capabilities are decent for a cell phone. Although the resolution of photos capture was pretty terrible we were happy with the color fidelity. We also liked the interface of the camera. The video capture was better than the average cell phone, good enough to throw up on Youtube.

Resolution (1.61)
To test the resolution of photos captured by the LG enV2's two megapixel camera we take photos of an industry standard resolution chart. We then run these photos through Imatest software, which produces a score called line widths per picture height (lw/ph), a measure of how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they begin blurring together.
The LG enV2 did not perform well in this test. It scored 601 lw/ph horizontal and 631 lw/ph vertical. You can see in the tables below that there's a wide range of scores in this section but only the Samsung M520 and Samsung SLM performed worse on this test than the enV2. We're never particularly impressed by the quality of photos taken by a phone's camera, but this is pretty poor even for a cell phone.

Cell Phone	LG enV2	HTC SMT5800	Samsung SLM
Score	0.48	4.93	0.88
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	601/631	1053/836.7	444/476
Image of Resolution Chart

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	LG Voyager	Samsung M520
Score	2.55	2.93	0.32
lw/ph horizontal/vertical	782/662	837.9/838.9	266.9/200.2
Image of Resolution Chart

Color (6.39)
The LG enV2 performed much better in our test of color fidelity than it did in our resolution test. To get this score we take photos of the industry standard GretagMacbeth color chart, which displays 24 different colors. We then use Imatest software to compare the colors captured by the phone's camera to the original colors. Imatest produces two charts, which you can see below. The chart on top shows you the original color chart with the captured and original colors in different boxes.

 

The chart on the bottom shows you how far off color were graphically. The squares on this chart represent the ideal while the circles represent the actual captured colors. You can see by the relatively short lines between the two that the LG enV2 did a solid job reproducing colors. There was some drift in almost all areas, but none of it was huge. By contrast take a look at the color line charts produced by the SMT5800 or Samsung SLM below to see what truly poor color capture looks like.

Cell Phone	LG enV2	HTC SMT5800	Samsung SLM
Score	6.39	2.48	2.15
Color Checker Chart

Cell Phone	Sidekick LX	LG Voyager	Samsung M520
Score	4.00	5.31	5.45
Color Checker Chart

Noise (0.41)
Noise is always a problem for cell phone's You can see in our chart of scores below that not a single phone got a score above two while the average for all cell phones was just about one. This is because of the small sensors that are used in cell phone cameras. Even considering this, however, the LG enV2 stood out for its poor performance. To get this score we take photos of the same GretagMacbeth color chart at four different lighting levels. We then use Imatest to get the noise at each one. We look at both overall noise and consistency across lighting levels to produce our final score. The enV2 actually did fairly well, for a cell phone, at the three brightest lighting levels, but it's performance at the lowest lighting level was so poor that it dragged down its overall score.

Live Preview (5.0)
You can use the camera on the LG enV2 with both the phone closed using the small external display or wiht it open using the much larger internal display. We can't imaging that many will choose to use it closed as the external display shows just a very small sliver of what you actually capture, making it almost completely uselss. The internal live preview is much better by dint of being larger, it takes up the entire 2.4 inch display. It also does a good job reproducing what the actual photo will look like with good color fidelity. The refresh rate is solid, even when you pan across it won't blur much. The only issue is that the phone is a little awkward to hold in this manner, especiallly since the camera lens is on the right side of the back of the phone when held horizontally and you'll find that your finger naturally covers it up. Apart from this, though, the live preview when the phone is open is pretty good.

Unlocked Standby to First Shot (6.67)
This test looks at how long it takes to go from phone closed on the home screen until you capture a photo. The LG enV2 took three seconds to complete this process. As the external display is almost useless for capturing photos we took the time to open a phone up to take the photo. You can probably be a little faster if you use the external display, but as we mentioned above you're not going to know what you're capturing. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shot to Shot Time (0.78)
Shot to shot time is a measure of how quickly you can take a series of photographs. When possible we use a phone's burst mode for this test, unfortunately the LG enV2 lacks a burst mode so we had to take the photos manually. Doing this it took us 19.2 seconds to capture five photos, which works out to 0.26 frames per second (fps). This is pretty poor, we found that we were slowed down because we couldn't turn off the photo review, so after each one we had to tell the phone to save it, which then took even more time. You can see from the chart below that we've seen performance this bad before, but we've also seen much better. The take-away here is that the enV2 is not a good phone to take action shots where you want to be able to take a bunch of photos quickly in a row in the hopes of getting at least one good one. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Shutter to Shot Time (3.64)
This tests looks at how long it takes for the phone to actually capture a photo once you've hit the shutter key. We found that it took 0.55 seconds to capture the photo once you've hit the button. This is decent for a cell phone, it's good enough that when you tell people to say "cheese!" you'll probably be able to capture what you want. The problem with phones that have really slow shutter to shot time like the Sidekick LX is that you risk having the scene change before you capture it. This shouldn't be an issue with the enV2. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Interface (7.0)
We're not even going to talk about the camera interface with the external screen, suffice to say you don't want to use it. Thankfully the interface when you open the LG enV2 up is pretty good. The entire screen is taken up by the scene with some white icons overlaid to give you information about photo size, storage location and labels for your soft keys. The left soft key takes you to your album software while the right soft key opens the menu system.

The menu is very camera-like, with a series of tabs along the bottom of the screen and options that appear above the selected tab. You move between tabs by using left/right on the D-Pad and make a selection within a tab using up/down. The nice thing about the menu is that you still see the scene in the background so you can make an adjustment to something like white balance and immediately see what the effect will be. We were quite pleased with the LG enV2's camera interface.

Photo Album Software Internal (5.0)
The LG enV2's album software is pretty typical for a cell phone. When you launc it you get a 3 x 2 grid of thumbnials. As you selet each thumbnail you see the name of the photo at the top left while at the top right is a counter that shows you how many photos you have in the album and which particular photo is selected. The left soft key is assigned to erase the currently selected photo while the right soft key opens the menu. The D-Pad moves about the thumbnails and pressing the center select button will enlarge the currently selected thumbnail.

Under the options you can do things like send a photo, rename them, print (via Bluetooth), or set the photo as a background or assign it to a contact. You can also choose the option to manage your photos, which allows you to select multiple photos to delete or send them. Unfortunately there is no way to create a photo slideshow and there's no support for organizing your photos into albums or folders. All you can do is move them between the phone memory and an external card. For what it does the interface is solid, but we're missing better organizational features.

Manual Control (0.0)
The LG enV2's camera does not offer you any manual controls.

Zoom (0.0)
The LG enV2 does have a digital zoom, but unfortunately it's not available at the highest resolution level. This makes what is already a not very useful feature, since all digital zoom does is crop and enlarge what you're seeing, into an almost useless one, so we won't be awarding any points for it.

Focus (0.0)
The LG enV2's camera is a fixed focus camera, which means what you see is what you get. We don't award any points for fixed focus cameras, reserving points for auto-focus cameras that generally allow you to take better photos.

Flash (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not have a flash.

Metering (6.0)
Unlike most cell phones the LG enV2 does provide you with some metering options. Metering controls are used to adjust from which point or points in the scene lighting is judged. On the enV2 you can choose between average metering and spot metering, the latter uses the center of the scene rather than the average of the entire scene. The enV2 also includes manual brightness controls that you can access by pressing up/down on the D-Pad while taking a photo.

White Balance (2.0)
Like most cell phones the LG enV2 allows you to choose from a few white balance presets. These include Auto, Sunny, Cloudy, Flourescent and Glow. There are no manual white balance controls and no way to set white balance using a white card.

Image Handling (6.0)
The LG enV2 allows you to make a couple of adjustments to images. You can rename them as well as rotating them and cropping them. More advanced features like red-eye removal, color correction or resizing images is not supported.

Video

Video Quality (5.0)
The quality of video captured by the LG enV2 is pretty good, for a cell phone. The camera captures at a maximum of 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second. We found that the video quality was good enough that you could probably us it for Youtube and even wathcing it full screen on our laptop screen wasn't that terrible. It's not going to look good on a TV screen, however. Color fidelity in the video was decent, but we did see some compression artifacting, not surpsing given that it uses 3GP compression which absolutely smashes the video. We also saw some blur with fast motions like a person waving their hand, but panning slowly worked pretty well.

Video Resolution (8.79)
To test the resolution captured by the LG enV2's camera we took video of an industry standard resolution chart and then ran stills from the video through Imatest. Imatest produces a line widths per picture height (lw/ph) score, which tells us how many alternating black and white lines can be discerned before they start blurring together. The LG enV2 performed pretty well in this test with 293 lw/ph horizontal and 300 lw/ph vertical. You can see from the table below that this is much better than our comparison phones, ableit not quite as good as the top performers in this area like the Nokia N82.

Cell Phone	lw/ph horizontal/vertical	Score
LG enV2	293/300	8.79
SMT5800	125.6/127.9	1.61
Samsung SLM	155/144	2.23
Sidekick LX	n/a - no video recording	0.00
LG Voyager	222/211	4.68
Samsung M520	121.4/118.4	1.44

Video Compression (2.0)
The LG enV2 only captures video in 3GP, which is the standard for mobile video. Although this does a good job of producing small file sizes it also degrades the quality a good bit. We are already pretty happy with the enV2's video capture performance, but we wish that you could choose an alternate for of compression like H264 to get even higher quality video out of it.

Interface (7.0)
The video capture interface on the LG enV2 is very similar to the stills capture, with the entire screen taken up by the viewfinder with a few labels overlaid. The menu system is the same tabbed style, albeit with fewer options. We were quite happy with the stills interface and this is also true for the video interface. In particular we're happy about the entire screen being used for the viewfinder, on many cell phones the vidoe viewfinder is reduced to a small postage stamp sized section of the screen.

Manual Control (0.0)
There are no manual controls on the LG enV2.

Zoom (1.0)
There is a digital zoom on the LG enV2's video camera. You can access it by pressing left/right on the D-pad. We only give a single point for digital zoom since all it does is crop and enlarge the scene. Given the relatively low resolution of mobile video anyways this isn't very useful.

Editing (0.0)
There are no video editing options on the LG enV2.

Modes (3.0)
You can set video recording on the LG enV2 to be limited for MMS video and there's also a night mode available.

[page title="Making/Receiving Calls"]

Dialing a number on the LG enV2 was very fast, and the ring volume was reasonably loud. We wish you could use your own music as ring tones, however.

Dialing Speed (8.26)
Dialing a number on the LG enV2 was very quick at an average of 2.42 seconds. You can see from the chart below that this is significantly faster than average and the best score amongst our comparison phones by a decent amount. The enV2 is helped out by the fact that the new external keypad is large and comfortable to use, we had no problems accidentally hitting the wrong number. Dialing with the number keys above the QWERTY keyboard whent he phone is opened is a slower process, taking about four seconds. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Send and End Buttons (7.0)
There are two sets of send and end buttons on the LG enV2. The ones on the exterior of the device, which you'll probably be using more often, are large and comfortable to use. They could use a little more key travel, tactile feedback and differentiation from surrounding keys, but this is made up for by their large size. The send and end buttons on the interior of the device are two small chiclet buttons that sit above the D-Pad found to the right of the QWERTY. These buttons are better differentiated from the surrounding buttons, but their small size means they're harder to hit. We feel that most users will find themselves using the external send and end keys far more so we decided to score based on our impressions of them. If we had scored the internal buttons they would have received a 4.0.

Call Management (6.0)
As we expect to see in a lot of places ont he LG enV2 the call management features are sharply different when you access it via the external interface via the internal one. Using the external controls you can bring up a list of all your recent calls by hitting the send button. The small size of the external display means you can only see about one and a half item at a time and you don't have any sorting options since the external controls only allow you to move up/down. All you can do from here is select the item you want and hit the send key again to dial the number.

Opening the phone up gives you access to a more fully featured call history. Here you can move left/right with the D-Pad to filter the call history by missed and dialed calls. You can use the left soft key to send a message to that number and the right soft key opens a menu where you can do things like save the number to your contacts, erase the history or view your timers. The call timers are very good with information about all, last, received, dialed and roaming calls. There are also counters for data available.

During a call you also have different experiences depending on whether the phone is closed or open. When closed you can access options by pressing up to access your contacts, down to create a new message or go to your inbox or hit the OK button to open an options menu. Here there are six options: Mute, Messaging, Contact List, Recent Calls, Bluetooth Menu and DTMF tones. If you open the phone up mute is assigned to the left soft key while the right soft key opens an options menu with a couple of additional options like recent calls, notepad and voice record.

When scoring this we decided to score the LG enV2 on it's full feature set but deducted a point because many of the options are not available when the phone is closed.

Startup to Call (6.10)
The LG enV2 was very quick to start up and make a call, an important feature for anyone who turns their phone off a lot but need to be able to get it out and make a call quickly if needed. It took the enV2 only 16.4 seconds to do this, less than half the time of our average phone and significantly faster than any of our comparison phones. We were quite happy with the enV2's performance in this test. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Ring Volume (9.52)
We measured the LG enV2's maximum ring volume at 95.2 decibels. You can see from the chart below that this is just about average. Similarly amongst our comparison phones the Samsung SLM and M520 both did worse than the enV2 while the other phones performed better. 95.2 decibels should be sufficiently high that you probably won't miss the ring tone when a call comes in, unless you're at a rock concert or something.

Ringtones (0.0)
Unfortunately the LG enV2 does not allow you to use your own music files as ring tones, instead you'll have purchase additional ring tones from Verizon.

Non Audio Alerts (6.5)
The LG enV2's vibration alert is pretty good. You'll notice it easily in your pocket and you'll even have a good chance of noticing it in a bag or jacket pocket. Unfortunately the on-screen display is not as good, mostly because it's so small, you aren't gauranteed of seeing it even if you happen to be looking at the phone at the time.

[page title="Messaging"]

With a full QWERTY keyboard many will look at the LG enV2 as a messaging device, and it does a solid job for text messaging. If you want email capabilties, however, you'll need to look elsewhere as only web-based email is supported.

Supported Email Services (0.0)
Unfortunately, despite it's messaging focus, the LG enV2 does not come with a built in email client. You can use web based email, which is accessible in the messaging menu, but we don't award points for web based email because it does not allow you to download messages onto your device for viewing when you might not be connected to the internet. You also have the option to purchase an email client for your device for a charge of $5 per month, but we don't award points for additional service such as this either. As a result the enV2 will receive a zero 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 Email Message (0.0)
No email client.

Email Usability (0.0)
No email client.

Instant Messaging (0.0)
The LG enV2 has an instant messaging client that allows you to access AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo messaging services. One nice feature of the client is that you can be logged into multiple services at a time, a feature that is not available on the Sprint IM client that we saw on devices like the Samsung M520.

Unfortunately Verizon, like most carriers, have set up their IM client to charge users a text message for every instant message sent or received, even if you have an unlimited data plan. As such we won't be awarding points for it. We feel that users who have unlimited data plans should have unlimited access to all data services, not be nickel and dimed for additional services.

MMS Support (7.0)
The LG enV2 has solid support for MMS messages. It is well integrated into both the camera, camcorder and album software. In the messaging software you do have to choose the type of messag you want to send, we prefer an integrated interface, but all message types do go to the same folders so you don't have to go to a different inbox for MMS like you do on devices like the SMT5800.

 

SMS Smiley Face Interpretation (0.0)
Unfortunately the LG enV2 does not have support for smiley faces. Not only does it not turn smiley faces received in a text message into graphical equivalents, it also doesn't have a menu where ou can easily insert smiley faces into a message you're composing. This is dissapointing as everyone loves smileys and we would expect a messaging focused device like the enV2 to do a better job with them.

SMS/MMS Ease of Use (7.0)
Like many other software features on the LG enV2 the SMS/MMS interface has two modes, one when the phone is closed and another when opened. When the phone is closed you can acess the messaging features by pressing down on the two-way control. This brings up a menu where you can create new text message or view your inbox. A more complete interface is available when you open the phone up.

Here you can enter the messaging menu by hitting the left soft key on the home screen. This menu allows you to access your folders like inbox, drafts and sent messages as well as create a new SMS/MMS message. Unfortunately you can't create your own folders and there are no search functions available. When you are in any of the folders you use up/down on the D-Pad to navigate between messages and press the center select key to open it. You can reply, delete, forward and otherwise  delete messages from here. We like that all message types share the same folders, as we discussed above, and there are a few nice extra features like the ability to extract the text from a message and save it for future use.

Overall we found the SMS/MMS interface to be easy to use, but it lacks some of the more advanced features we like such as threaded messaging and a unified composition window. Most users should have no problem learning it, however.

Time to a New SMS Message (6.67)
As we mentioned above you can create a new message both when the phone is closed and when it is open. When closed you can get to a new message interface in a blazningly fast 0.3 seconds. Simply press down and then hit OK. Opening the phone up takes 2.7 seconds, as you imagine it takes more time and it's not a two button push operation as you have to hit the left soft key to open the messaging menu, then hit the center select key twice to get a new dialogue on screen.

We imagine that given the QWERTY keyboard on the LG enV2 is one of its key features that most people will open the phone to create messages but we can't ignore the fact that creating a new message via the external interface is so fast, especially give that the large buttons on the external keypad are very comfortable for typing. As such we are averaging the two times and awarding our score based on that average. You can see below that the average time of 1.5 seconds is significantly faster than average and amongst our comparison phones only the Samsung SLM and LG Voyager beat it out. The enV2's external interface time of 0.3 seconds, however, is amongst the fastest we've ever seen, so if you need to create a quick SMS that's the way to go. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

[page title="Organizer"]

We liked that the LG enV2's organizer features were quickly accessible, even though they were generally buried in the menu system. They are not very fully featured, however, this phone won't replace a PDA or smart phone.

Synchronization (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not come with any software or a data cable that would allow you to synchronize contacts and other information with your computer.

Alerts (3.0)
Alerts on the LG enV2 can only be set for calendar appointments. Alerts can be set for one of several preset times before the appointment ranging from on time to two days before hand. By default it's set for fifteen minutes before. We wish that you had more control over the exact time, but the list of presets should suffice for most. We do like that you can set the specific tone for each alert and choose whether to enable vibrate alert as well. Recurrence is a little limited, however, with the only choices being daily, weekly, monthly and yearly. We would have liked to see the options for weekdays and weekends as well.

When an alert sounds it shows up on the exterior display with the option to view it later or open the phone for more options. When you open the phone it gives you the option to view the alert later, which means it will sound again in five minutes, or view the appointment. If you miss the alert it will sound again in five minutes. Overall the alert system is fairly solid for a regular cell phone, it's not as flexible as some smart phones like the SMT5800.

Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The enV2 does not support synchronizatin of PIM information over the air as you can on some smart phones like the SMT5800.

Address Book

Adding Contacts (8.21)
Adding a new contact to the LG enV2 took only 12.18 seconds in our test. This is very speedy, you can see below that it's faster than the average phone and amongst our comparison phones only the LG Voyager performed better in this test. Like so many things on the LG enV2 you can add a contact either via the external keypad and interface or by opening the phone up.

We found the fastest approach was a hybrid, we used the external controls to get to a new contact interface and then opened the phone up so we could use the QWERTY keyboard to enter the name and phone number. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Looking/Sorting/Search (4.5)
Contacts on the LG enV2 are sorted alphabetically by name. You can search for a contact by typing the name, however you can't search for text within a name, instead you have to search for the name starting with the first letter of the first name. For example when searching for Joe Bob it won't work if you search for Bob, instead you'll have to search for Joe. Alternatively you can view your contacts by group as well. You can view your contacts on the exterior or interior display, with the same searching options, but you can't view them by group on the external display. We didn't find the sorting and search options on the enV2 to be very powerful. In particular we didn't like that there was no way to search for part of an individual's name.

Fields (2.2)
When you create a new contact in the LG enV2 you have a choice of eleven fields including: name, two mobile numbers, home number, work number, two email addresses, group, picture, ring tone and fax. This isn't a particularly impressive set of fields for a phone, even a non-smartphone like the enV2. We would have liked to see a few additional fields like notes or birthday.

Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.0)
The LG enV2 supports speed dial and speaker independant voice command, it does not support voice tags that you program the phone to recognize. To launch voice command you hit the CLR key from the home screen when the phone is closed or hit the space key from the home screen when the phone is opened. The voice command system did pretty well, recognizing four of our five test contact names.

 

Calendar

Adding Calendar Items (9.36)
Adding a calendar item to the LG enV2 was very quick at an average of 10.68 seconds. You can see below that this is significantly faster than average and amongst our comparison phones only a couple edged it out for fastest time. This is despite the fact that we had to open the enV2 up and the calendar is kind of buried in the menu system.

We found that we were helped out by the QWERTY keyboard in typing the title and changing the time for our appointment and the fact that the calendar automatically added a fifteen minute reminder also helps out. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

 

Calendar Views (3.33)
The calendar on the LG enV2 provides you with three different views. By default the calendar opens in the monthly view, which shows six weeks at a time. Weekends are highlighted in blue with the current day in red and the currently selected day with a red background. On the right side of the interior screen you see the number of events on a given day. Frankly we think this is a bit wasteful, we think it would have been much more useful to get an actual list of the upcoming appointments for the selected day there instead.

The weekly view is similarly limited. It shows a grid with days along the top and hours on the left. Appointments are blocked out during the time they are scheduled, but there's no way to get details about the events from this view, so it's really only useful as a free/busy indicator. The daily view is the one that provides the most information. This is a simple list of all the events on that day with start time, title and indicators for things like an alert or recurrence.

We don't feel the LG enV2's calendar views will be useful to those who need a powerful calendar tool. In addition to the limitations of the monthly and weekly view we mentioned above the calendar also doesn't support categories or filtered views. If all you want is a place to jot down a few appointments it'll be fine, but anything more and we recommend you look into a smart phone instead.

Fields (5.0)
When you create a new appointment on the LG enV2 you don't have a lot of options to choose from. In addition to title and start/end time you can also set recurrence, limited to a few presets, and an alarm. You can also set the ring tone for each appointment individually. There's no support for location, categories or notes. As we mentioned above this does not make it a good tool for those who need powerful calendaring tools.

ToDo/Tasks

Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not support to-do lists, as such it will receive a zero in these sections.

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

Fields (0.0)
No tasks.

Notes

Adding Notes (4.63)
Adding a test note to the LG enV2 took an average of 10.8 seconds in our test. This is fairly speedy, you can see from the chart below that it's faster than the average phone and amongst our comparison phones only the Sidekick LX performed better. This despite the fact that notes are buried in the menu system and we had to open the phone up to access it.

We were helped out by using the number keys as shortcuts to launch menu items and typing on the QWERTY was pretty fast. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Note Interface (4.0)
The note interface on the LG enV2 is very simple. When you launch the application you get a simple list of notes with the time it was last edited and the first line of the note as a title. The left soft key lets you create a new note while the right soft key is used to access erase functions. There is search functionality, a nice feature that we don't often see, which let's you search the titles of notes by simply typing out what you're looking for with the list of notes being filtered automatically as you type. We like the simple interface as it made the application very easy to use and the search functionality is a nice bonus.

Note Formatting (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not offer any formatting options for notes. There's no way to change the font type or size and you can't make things bold, italics or underlined. You also can't add photos or other multimedia options, the notes are pretty bare bones.

Voice Memo (6.0)
You can record voice memos on the LG enV2 in one of three ways. With the phone closed press and hold the CLR button and you will be prompted to begin recording. With the phone open pressing and holding the space key will do the same. Alternatively you can navigate to the My Sounds section of the Music & Tones menu to see a list of all your existing voice memos as well as the option to record a new one.

From here you can send, rename, move or erase voice notes. We like the support for shortcuts to quickly record a note, although it would have been nice to have the list of voice memos differentiated a little from other sounds on your device. As it is all sounds are sorted into the one My Sounds folder.

[page title="Multimedia"]

The LG enV2 is a music oriented handset and it does a resonable job, but we have to say we're not fond of the Verizon V Cast music software. On the video front we liked the reasonably sized screen and decent video controls, but the software for organizing video isn't up to snuff.

Accessing Music Software (4.65)
The fastest way to get music playing on the LG enV2 is to hit the music button on the front of the device and then hit the center select key to Play All. This took an average of 4.3 seconds in our test, which isn't particularly speedy. The most time was taken while the phone actually loaded the music software. Once it was launched getting a song to play was quite quick. Still, the LG enV2's performance wasn't terrible, you can see below that it was actually faster than average, but you can also see that a couple of our comparison phones, the Samsung SLM and Sidekick LX, both performed significantly faster. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Dedicated Music Controls (6.0)
While music is playing on the LG enV2 the external control keys allow you to control music playback. The OK button acts as a play/pause button, up takes you to the next track and down takes you to the previous track. The volume keys also control music volume. There's no way to send the music program to the background on the enV2 so that isn't an issue. This is a decent amount of control, anything more will require that you open the device up, however.

Music Software Functionality and Organization (5.8)
The LG enV2 uses Verizon's music software, which does a solid job but could be better. Playlists are supported if you synchronize them from your desktop and you can create and edit playlists on the device.  Unfortunately standard .pls and .m3u playlists we placed on the device were not recognized. Tags for Mp3, AAC and WMA music files were all recognized correctly. Music can be viewed by genre, album, artist or title. You can also search for music on the device.

Background play is not supported, so you can't do anything else while music is playing, and neither are ratings or visualizations. Your music library is automatically updated with any songs you put on the memory card in the My Music folder. Album art is supported as long as it is embedded in the file. It won't pick up album art that is saved as a separate image file on the memory card.

Our biggest issue with the V Cast music software has been and still is its layout. At the top of the screen you have a grey bar with three controls: Home, Search and Help. Below this everything is red, with a graphic separating the grey bar from two columns of commands that allow you to navigate through your music. For many the grey bar will appear to not even be part of the interface. We also found it annoying that once a song was playing navigating to another part of the interface will stop the playback. We understand that some phones aren't powerful enough to support multi-tasking, but you certainly should be able to have music playing while you're adding other songs to the playlist, for example.

Overall the V Cast music software provides solid functionality but Verizon should go back to the drawing board in regards to user experience. If they want their phones to be taken seriously as music devices they need to do a better job.

Online Song Downloading (7.0)
You can download songs directly to the LG enV2 from Verizon's V Cast music store. The music store is built into the music software, you can use the left soft key to toggle between the two. As with the music software we didn't find the experience of purchasing music to be particularly impressive. In particular once you get into the store a bit it's a pain to get back to the music player. Also the search feature didn't do a very good job finding the songs we were looking for. Our other major grip about the V Cast music store is pricing, at $1.99 per song it's twice as expensive as Sprint's music store and online retailers.

Streaming (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not support streaming Mp3, Windows Media or Real Audio from the web. There are some streaming audio services available from Verizon, but you'll have to pay for these.

Podcast Support (0.0)
There is no support on the LG enV2 for downloading or organizing podcasts.

Music Sync with PC (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not support synchronization of music between your PC and the phone. It doesn't even ship with a data cable to facilitate this. Instead you'll have to pull out the Micro SD card and use a card reader to move songs onto it manually.

Music Formats and DRM (3.5)
The LG enV2 supports WMA, Mp3 and AAC music files. The only form of DRM it supports is Verizon's proprietary format that is used for their Music Store.

Music Interruption (10.0)
The LG enV2 does a solid job when a call interrupts music. The music is automatically paused so you can take or reject the call. When the call is completed it waits for a few seconds so you can see the call details and then goes back to playing music from the point at which it was interrupted. About our only annoyance was that the end and start of the music was a little abrupt, it would have been nice to get a nice fade out/in effect like the iPhone has.

Video

Video Software Access (0.0)
It took us 4.2 seconds to get a video playing on the LG enV2, which is a pretty speedy time. You can see below that it's almost three seconds faster than the average time for a phone and amongst our comparison devices only the LG Voyager did better. This despite the fact that we had to opend the phone and go deep into the menu system to get a video playing. We were quite pleased with the enV2's performance in this test. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.

Video Controls (8.0)
Video playback controls on the LG enV2 are straightforward and well laid out. The D-Pad is the center of playback control with the center select button controlling play/pause, up taking the video full screen and down stopping the video. Left and right fulfill dual purposes with a single press in either direction moving to the next or previous video while holding them down will fast forward or rewind. The left soft key is assigned to the mute function while the right soft key opens a menu with only two options: set the video as wallpaper and get file info. The volume keys do their thing, of course. Overall we were quite pleased with the ease of use. We were particularly happy that unlike some other phones all the controls were unique and useful.

Video Software & Organization (1.5)
The video software on the LG enV2 is not particularly sophisticated, basically it's just the album software as it's really just there so you can view videos you record on the enV2. When launched you get a grid of 3 x 2 video thumbnails. The left soft key is assigned to erase the selected clip while the right soft key opens a menu with additional options like recording a new video or managing your videos, which basically means selecting multiple videos for deletion or to be moved.

There's no support for more advanced features like playlists, genres, or ratings. You can't even create folders to organize your videos better. Although the decent size of the enV2's screen and the good video controls may lead you to want to use the device as a video player, the organizational features aren't going to be as good as on more advanced devices like the SMT5800, which uses Windows Media Player Mobile.

Video Sync with PC (0.0)
As with music synchronization there's no data cable so you'll have to pull out the card and put videos in the My Videos folder on it using a card reader.

Video Formats (5.0)
The LG enV2 was able to play back all three of our 3GP encoded video and our Mpeg-4 and H264 encoded videos. It does not support Flash, Quicktime or Real video.

Video DRM (0.0)
The LG enV2 does not support any form of video DRM.

Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
We were pleased to see that the LG enV2 was able to play back all five of our video test files, with bitrates up to 768 kbps. This means you can watch reasonably high quality video on the enV2.

Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The enV2 does not support any direct video download services.

Video Streaming unscored
As there is no standardization of mobile video streaming we don't score this section, but we do look at several services to see if the device can handle them. Unfortunately the LG enV2 was unable to play videos from any of the services we test like Youtube Mobile, Zoovision.com or Windowsmedia.com. Verion has its own V Cast streaming video service with various content available, but like so many things from Verizon you'll have to pay for it.

[page title="Software"]

The LG enV2's software interface will be faimilar to anyone who uses Verizon phones. The BREW interface does a reasonable, if unspectacular, job of providing a usable cell phone interface. We wish we could say the same for the browser, unfortunately it's one of the worst we've ever seen on a mobile device.

OS (4.0)
The LG enV2 runs Verizon's BREW interface over LG's proprietary operating system. This means that anyone who is familiar with Verizon phones will feel at home with the enV2 as the interface is very similar to other handsets from the carrier. We're not big fans of this sort of standardization of interfaces by carriers as we feel it stifles innovation in the marketplace, but we do have to admit that Verizon customers who don't care about innovation are probably appreciative of the consistency.

In quality the BREW interface is not great, but it's not terrible eithers. We don't like that they try to shoehorn everything into just a few super menus, for example why would we go into the settings to get to our calendar? Most things are fairly intuitive, however, and it makes good use of the soft keys. It's certainly no worse than most other proprietary operating systems we've seen on other devices. Our score for proprietary cell phone operating systems is capped at five points. We reserve higher scores for more advanced smart phone operating systems like Windows Mobile and Palm OS.

Home Screen Score (5.5)
Due to its dual screen construction the LG enV2 can be thought of to have two home screens, one external and one internal. Of course the external display is tiny, it's no bigger than the small external displays you find on many flip phones, but despite it's small size it provides more functionality than most external displays.

The home screen on the external display is dominated by the clock, which takes up the center of the screen. above it are indicators for things like signal strength, battery life and internet connectivity. Below it is a small bar where you see information about alerts like missed calls or calendar alarms. There are no soft key labels or any other interaction aside from the fact that pressing OK will bring up a short menu of options, up will bring up your contacts list and down will bring up your messaging interface. You can change the background picture in the display settings.

When the enV2 is opened up you get a much more traditional home screen. The top of the screen once again shows information about signal strength, battery life, etc. The bottom of the screen has the alerts bar and below it are the labels for the two soft keys with the label for the center select button of the D-Pad in between. The left soft key is assigned to messaging while the right soft key is assigned to contacts. The four directions of the D-Pad are also assigned to shortcuts, by default these are down for Calendar, up for Web Browser, right for the My Shortcuts menu and left for My Account. You can customize the items in the My Shortcuts menu and the functions assigned to the four directions of the D-Pad and you can change the background in the display settings.

As we feel that most users will be using both home screen interfaces about equally we've decided to score both of the home screens and take the average for our final score. The external display received a score of 4.0 beause of its small size and limited functionality. The internal dispaly received a score of 7.0 as it's well laid out with a lot of customization options.

Extensibility (1.0)
The LG enV2 is not a very extensible device. Basically it can only run BREW applications, which are approved by Verizon. This means your universe of additional apps is very small and generally will cost you monthly charges, like their email application. Unlike most phones the enV2 won't run Java applications and there are no native applications available.

Customizability (4.0)
As we mentioned in the home screen score the LG enV2 allows you to change the background picture of your home screen and the shortcuts that are available in the interior display. You can also change the style of the menu from a grid to a list, but you can't reorganize the menu. You have a choice of four built-in themes for the device and you can download more from Verizon, for a price of course. We were pleased to see that font settings are a little more extensive that on most phones. They are divided into three areas, one for Dial Digits, one for Menu & Lists and another for Message. For each of these you can set the font size to Small or Large. There are no optons to change the font type. Overall the customization options are a little better than the average phone, but still not as good as an advanced smart phone offers.

OS Responsivness (7.0)
We found the LG enV2's operating system to be remarkably responsive. There were a few exceptions, for example the music software took a while to load as does the browser, but for the most part the phone responds almost instantaneously to your commands. We were pleased that the enV2 was more responsive than the LG Voyager or the SMT5800.

Browser Features (5.0)
The browser on the LG enV2 is not very advanced. It is capable of displaying both mobile WAP pages and standard HTML pages. It also supports images, cookies and encryption. It does not support many web technologies, however, including javascript, java, flash, frames and saving items from a web page like an image. More advanced features like RSS feeds, password management and filling fields are also not supported. Frankly this is one of the least capable we browsers we've seen on a modern cell phone. We much preferred the browser found on the LG Voyager, which supports far more web standards.

Browsing Interface (3.0)
The browsing interface on the LG enV2 is not particularly impressive. All pages are immediately reformatted to fit on a single page width, there's no option to view the page as it would appear on your desktop. Entering URL's and managing bookmarks is done via a web page rather than being built into the browser software, this means you have to wait for the pages to load before you can do anything, an annoyance. History is a simple list of sites visited.

The controls aren't laid out particularly well either. You move from link to link on a web page, which means link heavy pages take a long time to get around. There's also duplication of function as the left soft key is assigned to activate the currently selected link, which is the same thing the center button on the D-Pad does. The back function, meanwhile, is assigned to the CLR key, which isn't immediately apparent. The right soft key opens a menu with additional functions. Overall we have to say that our impressions of the browser are rather poor. We feel for anyone who wants to do serious web browsing on the enV2.

Browser Access (6.67)
Luanching the web browser and then browsing to our site takes six steps on the LG enV2. This is a little better than average, as you can see below, and amongst our comparison phones only the Sidekick LX performed better in this test. We use steps instead of a timed test here because we don't want network issues to get in the way of the test. In terms of real time, however, we'll note that the web browser was one of the slowest programs on the enV2 to launch and once it had launched we had to wait for the page to enter an address to load as well, which we didn't particularly like.

Gaming (2.33)
The LG enV2 does not ship with a single game. This is very poor, we expect every phone to ship with at least one reasonably diversionary game. There aren't even any demonstration games on the LG enV2, although we don't think much of them either. The internal D-Pad on the enV2 would do a reasonable job as a game controller, but if the game required you to use soft keys as well their placement far away from the D-Pad will make playing that game awkward. The selection of games for the enV2 is limited to those you can buy from Verizon, which provides a reasonable selection.

Calculator (3.0)
The calculator on the LG enV2 is pretty simple. You use the D-Pad to access arithmetic functions like add, subtract, multiply and divide. The number keys above the QWERTY are used to enter numbers. Our biggest annoyance is that # and * are used to access the +/- and decimal point respectively. The annoying part is that these are secondary functions of the 3 and 8 buttons on the QWERTY, which means you'll have to use t