Verizon
LG Chocolate 3 Cell Phone Review
The Chocolate has historically been a sleek and stylish slider phone, but imagine our surprise when the latest iteration of the Chocolate showed up at our offices as a flip phone. Yes, you read that right - a flip phone. With more onboard memory than before and a good integrated music player, the Chocolate 3 lives up to its music-oriented reputation and can still double as your digital music player, but its camera is just good enough for quick pics and video, and its battery life could let you down.
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by Marianne Schultz
2008-09-02 16:20:00
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LG Dare Cell Phone Review
The LG Dare is another touch screen device that is pointed directly at the iPhone. Verizon has been moving strongly in the direction of touch screen phones with devices like the LG Voyager and Samsung Glyde. The Dare is the best of the bunch so far, however. It has superior software, a very responsive touch screen, an excellent 3.2 megapixel camera and very good battery life. Is all of this enough to beat out the iPhone 3G and get Verizon customers to shell out $199 with a two-year contract for the Dare instead? Read on to find out.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2008-07-10 21:46:00
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Samsung Glyde Cell Phone Review
The Samsung Glyde's signature features are a touch screen interface and a slide out QWERTY keyboard. Unfortunately neither impressed us very much. We found the Glyde's touch screen was unresponsive and difficult to use. The QWERTY faired a bit better, we could type relatively fast on it, but we found the keys clicky and the top row too close to the upper part of the slider. The Glyde does have some good points, it's two megapixel auto-focus camera took better than average shots, battery life on the handset was solid and it sports some advanced features like Verizon's TV service and GPS. Does the good outweigh the bad? Read the review to find out.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2008-05-28 22:10:00
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LG enV2 Cell Phone Review
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.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2008-05-09 16:01:00
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Verizon SMT5800 Cell Phone Review
The SMT5800 looks like a typical Windows Mobile candybar phone at first glance, but it hides a slide-out keyboard for those who love to text or email. In all other respects the SMT5800 will bring all the good, and bad, that you would expect from Windows Mobile Standard, which is the non-touchscreen version. We liked the phone's looks and durability, and if professional good looks were everything the SMT5800 would be ahead of the game. Unfortunately a very limited battery life should cause anyone looking at this device some pause.
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by Mark Brezinski
2008-03-17 16:13:00
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Motorola Q 9m Cell Phone Review
The Motorola Q 9m from Verizon is an average smart phone in many ways, and a below average smart phone in more. This flat, BlackBerry-esque handset doesn't boast much other than what Windows Mobile Standard typically offers. Its camera is bad, the handset itself isn't particularly attractive, battery life wasn't notable, and the phone is slow to respond. The home screen features a media player plugin which would be a great feature if it was either a fully-featured media player or it worked in tandem with the phone's version of Windows Media Player. It's a separate entity, however, and programmed carelessly: you can actually get two songs playing at the same time.
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by Mark Brezinski
2007-12-31 07:52:00
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Motorola W315 Prepaid Cell Phone Review
What sort of cell phone does $25 get you? To find out, we cracked open the Wirelessinfo.com piggy bank and went shopping for a pre-paid cell phone that didn't tie us up with a long contract. What we found was the $24.99 Motorola W315 running on Verizon's INpulse pre-paid service. This phone surprised us in many ways; for something that costs less than dinner for two at a fast food restaurant, the W315 has a decent set of basic features that make it a good deal for the user who just wants to make calls.
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by Richard Baguley
2007-12-29 13:58:00
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Motorola W385 Cell Phone Review
The Motorola W385 is an entry-level device available from Verizon for free with a contract. Since it's such a basic device, it doesn't offer much other than the ability to make calls. It does have a camera, but the pictures are nothing you'd want to print out and frame. Interestingly, however, it does come with more photo editing software than most smart phones. The phone is also not capable of music or video playback. It does have a calendar and notes application, but they're also fairly basic. The phone is pretty good looking for a free device, however, and fairly slim as well. If you're in the market for a free handset, the W385 will give you basic functionality and throw in a bad camera for good measure.
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by Mark Brezinski
2007-12-28 13:29:00
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BlackBerry Pearl 8130 Cell Phone Review
The Pearl 8130 is a slightly updated version of the original Pearl 8100. The differences are so small, in fact, that it’s hard to call it much of an upgrade. Some of the new features include an improved browser and camera. The changes to the browser are fairly significant, and propel it pretty far up our list of proprietary browsers. The camera is now 2-Megapixels and capable of capturing video. The quality hasn’t really improved much, however, as we noticed our captures tended to suffer from horizontal bands of noise. Though both of these are improvements, neither can compete with Nokia’s offerings: their proprietary browser is the best out there, and the N95 has one of the best cameras on a cell phone.
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by Mark Brezinski
2007-12-18 13:41:00
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LG Venus Cell Phone Review
The LG Venus from Verizon has the looks of a sleek business device and the functionality of a mid-range music handset. It's basically a Chocolate Vx8550 with a nicer-looking case and a small touchscreen where the D-pad array should be. In fact, the software is so similar we're not sure why it wasn't just marketed as an evolution in that line. Other than a sleeker interface, the only real improvement the Venus has over the Chocolate is its touchscreen. Typically phones either go for a full touch screen or none at all; the Venus is unique since its touchscreen is below and separate from the main screen, and only replaces D-pad functionality.
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by Mark Brezinski
2007-12-05 08:58:00
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LG Voyager Cell Phone Review
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.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-12-04 17:53:00
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Samsung Juke Cell Phone Review
According to the Juke's marketing, it's an MP3 player that just happens to be a phone. We think this is a very accurate portrayal; It doesn't offer much in the way of software other than an above-average music player, and this is the only phone that we've seen recently that doesn't support video playback or capture, doesn't have a browser, and can't send e-mail. But what it does have is 2 GB of internal memory, so it can hold can hold more music than your typical cell phone.
Physically, the Juke is surprisingly tiny and fat. It's certainly one of the smallest phones we've come across at 2.82 ounces, 3.82 inches high and 1.18 inches wide, but it's more expansive than photos make it look, at a rather chunky 0.82 inches thick. The phone is shaped like a small candy bar, but has a new swing-open design that we haven't seen before. Though it seems a bit gimmicky, this design actually gives you faster access to the keypad, which meant it was quick at dialing and not bad at sending text messages. The Juke is currently priced at $99.99 with a two-year contract from Verizon and after a $50 online discount. It's available in Teal (shown on the right), Red and Navy.
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by Robin Liss
2007-11-05 08:36:00
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Motorola Razr2 V9m on Verizon Cell Phone Review
Motorola is rolling out versions of it's new Razr2 on all four of the major U.S. Carriers in an attempt to capture the higher end of the market, which other Razrs have ceded. Verizon's version is called the V9m and despite some significant hardware upgrades we found very little new under the hood. The design is still attractive, and audio quality was solid. The 2 megapixel camera produces much better photos than the older Razr V3m, and also does a slightly better job than Sprint's version of the V9m, probably due to software differences.
On the other hand we found Verizon's music software to be less than intuitive and are disappointed by the limited browser and organizer. We feel this handset could have been so much more if greater effort had gone into upgrading the software. We know that Motorola has a Java/Linux operating system that can be used on the Razr2 V9m, and we wish that Verizon had gone with this upgrade. As it is, it feels like a great handset that's let down by weak software.
The Razr2 V9m is currently available from Verizon for $249.99 with a two-year contract or $349.99 without. Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile and Alltell also offer their versions of the handset.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-09-12 18:45:00
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LG Chocolate VX8500 Cell Phone Review
We reviewed the LG Chocolate on the Verizon Wireless network. This handset is not available from any other major carrier. When the LG Chocolate was originally released last year it was marketed as the harbinger of a new era of music handsets. With its sleek good looks, support for Verizon's Vcast music store and perhaps not so coincidental similarity to the iPod, many predicted that the Chocolate would help popularize the idea of music handsets. We found the Chocolate to have promise but with some drawbacks that kept it from being a true ground breaker.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-03-16 03:35:00
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Verizon Motorola Razr Maxx VE First Impressions Review
The Motorola Razr Maxx VE is a little larger than previous Razr models, but it is stil svelte, and we liked the mirrored front and soft touch paint on the back. We also liked the upgrade to a 2 megapixel camera with auto-focus lens. Like the Razr V3m, the Maxx supports MicroSD cards so you can put up to 2GB of storage on the device. It also addes touch music controls on the front face and a larger external screen than the V3m. But under the hood, we did not find any significant upgrades; this an evolutionary, not revolutionary phone. We took a look at a final production model of the new phone at the CTIA show in Orlando Florida.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-03-30 08:45:00
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Palm Treo 700p Cell Phone Review
We reviewed the Treo 700p on Sprint, it is also available from Verizon. The Treo 700p is the successor to the Treo 650, running the Palm operating system. On the outside the 700p stays true to the tried and tested Treo form factor, sporting a full QWERTY keyboard and a large 320 by 320 pixel screen. Although there are a few software updates, as well as improved memory under the hood, the Treo 700p is very much an evolutionary upgrade to the 650.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-03-15 10:35:00
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Motorola RAZR V3m Cell Phone Review
We reviewed the Motorola Razr V3m on Sprint; the phone is also available from Verizon. The Motorola Razr V3m is the latest iteration in Motorola’s lineup of Razr. The Razr series has to be considered one of the most successful families of phones of all time. Their success has been drive by looks, as the Razr pioneered the “thin” look. The Razr lineup has never wowed with specs and the V3m attempts to address this by adding an updated 1.3 megapixel camera and music playback capabilities.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-03-16 10:34:00
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Motorola Q Cell Phone Review
Motorola has been best known in the cell phone market over the past few years for their Razr range of thin, lightweight phones. With the Q ( priced at $299 from Verizon and $99 from Sprint with a two-year contract.), they are looking to break into a new space; the smart phone market, where users look for features like easy emailing and big, bright screens, but without the cost of the more expensive Pocket PC and Palm phones that include touch screens and the like.
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by Richard Baguley
2007-03-08 09:44:00
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Blackberry 8700 Cell Phone Review
We reviewed the Blackberry 8703e on Sprint. 8700 series Blackberries are available on all of the other networks so you can shop around for the network provider you prefer. The 8703e, like most Blackberries, is a messaging centric device uniquely suited for enterprise environments. Push email using a Blackberry server is the killer feature for this phone, but the integration with Exchange server doesn’t hurt either. The 8703e is firmly targeted at business users. Although not as fully featured as some other phones, the Blackberry 8703e’s reputation centers on the fact that what it does, it does extremely well. Let’s see if it lives up to that reputation.
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by Alfredo Padilla
2007-03-16 19:44:00
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