Env3 another great QWERTY phone from LG
Written: Jun 06 '09 (Updated Jun 17 '09)
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Pros: QWERTY keyboard, size, good screens, removable memory, loud
Cons: so-so e-mail options
The Bottom Line: Excellent QWERTY phone makes IM and e-mail easy. It sounds good, looks good, and fits in a pocket better than most of the touch screen phones.
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| jvolzer's Full Review: LG enV3 (Verizon Wireless) |
The enV3 is another good phone in this lineup from LG, with each one getting better. This third iteration is not as drastic of a change as we saw from the original env to the 2nd version, but there are still some nice additions that make it a worthy upgrade as long as you're not paying full retail price. The phone still provides a low-cost alternative to Blackberrys and Windows Mobile phones for those who want a full QWERTY keyboard, even if the e-mail integration options are still each have some issues and downsides. I'm reviewing this from more of a business user standpoint, but it would also be great for those who do a lot of texting. My use is primarily for e-mail and IM to the office. Having just traded in my env2, I'll provide a lot of comparisons in this review, but even if you're not an env2 owner, you should get a lot out of it.
Form Factor
The enV3 is very similar in size and shape to the enV2. It's just a tiny bit taller, but not enough to notice. The width and thickness are identical. The "feel" of opening the phone is the same sturdy feel of the enV2. The front has more of a bevel along the top and bottom edges, making it seem a bit sleeker and the phone fits nicely in a pocket if, like me, you don't like hanging a phone in a holster on your hip. This is one other factor that has kept me from going to the PDA and Blackberry devices.
Keys, buttons and such
On the front, you'll find the standard numeric keys, a four-way controller with OK in the center, and four other buttons, two to each side of the 4-way: Contacts, CLR/Voice-dial, Send, and End/Pwr. The Contacts button replaces the dedicated Music button from the enV2 and is a nice addition. Music is now available on the external menu when you press OK (after unlocking).
While fairly similar to the env2 layout the change of going from just up and down buttons to a 4-way controller is significant. First, the controller is raised and ridged, making it obvious when your finger has moved to it. With the env2, the down button was flat and curved down into the number 2, so I constantly pressed it when intending to dial the number 2. No more! That had become quite an irritant, and dialing, after all, is a pretty core function of a PHONE. The other reason the controller is an improvement is the obvious: you can now do more functions on the external display without flipping the phone open. More on that later.
On the left side, you'll find the camera button and the volume up and down buttons. The hinge design makes these buttons accessible once you open the phone so that you can press them above the internal display. This is identical to the env2 and works well. On the right side, you'll find the microSD slot and headphone port. The power/USB port is on the bottom and is the same as the env2. Interestingly though, when I plugged in the charger from my env2 the phone displayed a warning that this particular charger was not designed for this phone! Maybe it's a scare tactic to make you want to go buy an new, unnecessary accessory. Who knows.
The key layout on the inside is great, just like the previous model. Four rows of keys are provided, with the two soft keys above and the 4-way controller to the right, along with send, end, clr and speaker button. The big change is that the space button now sits between the V and B keys on the bottom row. Personally, I liked it a little better off to the right of the bottom row. Not a big deal though. Once again, the spacing is excellent on this keyboard and I tested a lot of phones. The keys are slightly flatter than on the env2 and don't take quite as hard of a press to activate, so I find that I can type a good bit faster on this model. Nice!
Sound and Reception
Loud and clear. The volume seems louder on this model than the previous one, both when closed and through the speakerphone. Ringtones are quite loud. I find that I'm keeping this phone at least a notch or two lower than I did on the enV2. Nothing outstanding about reception to report.
Displays
The enV3 has two beautiful displays, both larger than the env2 versions. The external display grew more significantly by comparison. Along with the upgrade to a 4-way controller this makes the external display more usable. It's still not a full-function menu like you get with the phone open, but you can definitely do more than with the env2.
The internal display is big and beautiful! It thought the env2 pushed the size to about as big as it could get with this design/size phone, but they managed to push it a little closer to the edges. The stereo speakers are again placed to either side.
Camera
The camera has been upgraded from 2.0 to 3.0 megapixel. I've taken some shot and the look great. A tiny camera phone lens will not compete with even an old point and shoot 3 megapixel digital camera, but it's still quite respectable, especially if you have enough light. They've also added a little LED flash. It helps a little if you're close to your subject. Dark shots with camera phones have always been a problem, but they've made bringing up the brightness easy on this phone - just use the up and down arrow. Options are provided for self timer, panorama, white balance, color effects (why?), and resolution. An odd "smile shot" mode is supposed to detect when your subject smiles. A quick test verified that it sort of worked. You can also take short video clips.
LG's implementation for panorama is very cool and better than what I've seen on real digital cameras. After the first shot, a horizontal line appears on the screen with a target circle on the left and a line-up dot on the right. You move the camera right to simply line up the dots. The camera detects if you move up or down by showing another horizontal line that will drift from the first one. Just keep them lined up. It also detects when you've moved far enough to the right to line up with the target circle and automatically snaps the next shot! Very cool!
Web Browser
The env3 gains a full HTML browser. This is a mixed blessing thus far. First, it only took a few minutes to find the first software bug...I can't click the zoom button that appears in a menu bar at the top of most full HTML pages without causing the phone to reboot (although I can zoom from the menu). I hope that'll be fixed soon. It's good to know I can get to almost any page now, not just specially formatted pages. But navigation is slow when you have constantly click the arrow keys and scroll around. It takes longer to get to the links. At least with the old mini-browser of other phones, it would always jump right to the next link or input field, instead of having to inch a pointer arrow until it gets there. I also noticed my MB usage going up more quickly with loading larger pages with more graphics. So this means if you use it much, you'll quickly need an unlimited data plan for $15. Now that does include the V-cast stuff, but I find that to be mostly useless junk anyhow.
Menu and hotkeys:
Thanks to a bigger display and a 4-way controller, you can now do more with the phone closed. On the external menu you'll find: My Music, Bluetooth, Keyguard, Contacts, Messaging, Recent Calls, and My Pictures. You're still limited to one recipient if you start a text message from the external display.
The external 4-way controller also brings up some functions: Up=My Music, Right=Bluetooth, Left=My Pictures, Down=Messaging. There doesn't seem to be a way to customize these (although you'll find TONS of customization inside, so read on).
On the internal display, the basic menu layout is almost identical to the enV2 and similar to other Verizon phones. It's not an open OS, so they follow similar patterns. You can choose from different themes and such, as you'd expect, and you can set our background picture for the internal and external menu. There are three choices for the menu layout: Tab, List and Grid.
The enV3 offers a feature I've not had on any of my previous phones and is very much welcome: the ability to re-configure the menus. In all three layouts, there are nine main menu items. You can re-arrange them to make your most commonly used ones easier to get to. You also have ability to replace four of them with a completely different phone function. There are over 40 functions in the list to choose from including specific games or applications. Very nice indeed!
You can set shortcuts for three of the directional keys inside. Pressing one of those three will jump right to the function you choose. The right-arrow key is pre-set to bring up a list of four shortcuts to functions of your choosing too. So you really can access 7 items quickly (3 with a single keypress and 4 by pressing the right arrow, then choosing one of the four from a menu).
Another item you can customize is what app opens when you simply open the phone and start typing on the QUERTY keyboard. You can have it start a new note, start a new text message, or search the contact list.
Voice Commands
The env2 was quite poor. The env3 didn't seem any better at first. When confirming a command, both phones had a terrible time simply distinguishing between "yes" and "no", which should be much easier than distinguishing between a whole bunch of contacts. But I did finally find some voice command settings that allow you to adjust the sensitivity and do voice training on a number of key commands and words including "yes" and "no". I'm still experimenting with these. Samsung phones that my family has owned have always been much better than any of the LG phones. Perhaps these tweaks can help close the gap. It's funny how Samsung can nail it every time though even without special training. Get on the ball LG, it's not the 90's anymore!
Dashboard
A new "dashboard" app pulls together different feeds like sports, weather, news and such. It runs in an Adobe environment of some sort, so perhaps we'll see some creative uses of this later. I don't have much need for that sort of content, and most can be found quickly from the opening page of mobile web anyhow, but it's interesting. You have to have a data plan to use it...no per-MB plan here.
Messaging
This is obviously a key area for a phone with a QWERTY keyboard! Typing is fast and easy on the well spaced keyboard with easy-press keys. I've tried a bunch and this is a winner.
A nice touch to text messaging is that you can simply start typing to reply to a text message, without the need to press any menu function or reply button. Another nice addition is threaded message view so that all texts to and from a contact get grouped together. You can turn this off though if you prefer a straight time-based in-box/out-box setup.
Instant Messaging has nothing new to report, other than the fact that I found another bug. When replying to an IM the first character doesn't type, so you have to press it twice. I've reported this and hope a software update in the near future will fix.
Email users have several options. Your choices are Mobile Web e-mail, Wireless E-mail application, or Corporate Email application (provided by RemoSync app).
Mobile Web e-mail: this is the same as with all phones and requires you to wait for the browser to open, then go to the site for Hotmail/Live Mail, Yahoo, etc. This just uses the browser and either your data plan (like the $15 Vcast) or per-MB rate. Old, slow, clunky. If you only need to occasionally check e-mail, it might be okay.
Wireless E-mail: A newer e-mail application available for a number of phones, Wireless E-mail provides a very nice interface that you can configure to check multiple accounts including popular web-based services like Hotmail/MS Live and Yahoo, but it can also be configured to check a POP3 account. If you use an Exchange server at work, you might not be left out if your administrator has enabled POP3 access. It would not pull calendar, contacts, or tasks, but would pull in e-mail. All of the accounts can be configured to notify you when new messages arrive, simulating "push" e-mail. This works very well and be configured to play a single beep if you like. If you're away from the phone, when you return you'll have a message on the screen "email received for mailto:name@domain.com". Unfortunately, unlike a text message, you can't read it on the external screen, but must open the device. The thing I like the least about this application though is that it doesn't pre-fetch the header or any part of the message. Once you open the phone and click "view" you have to wait while it logs into your account and retrieves the message. Bummer. It would be much better competition for Blackberry and Windows Mobile devices if it would fetch this info and have it ready and waiting to read without the delay. Actually the best bet would be if it would provide access to MS Exchange accounts and sync the calendar with the phone's calendar, as well as contacts and tasks. Wireless E-mail is $5 per month, plus data charges either per megabyte (currently an expensive $1.99 per MB!) or on your data plan like VCast.
Corporate Email: This is supposed to be the best way to connect to an Exchange server. RemoSync can sync e-mail, calendar, to-do list, and contacts. This is actually a 3rd party application called RemoSync that runs as a GetItNow application and not an application integrated into the phone. This leads to one of its shortcomings, which is the inability to sync your Exchange calendar with the phone's internal calendar, which is available with a single button after opening the phone. Instead, you have to go into the app itself and use its very ugly and unfriendly calendar. Interestingly though, contacts can, indeed, sync directly with the phone's contact list. While this application does work as advertised, it is pretty ugly and has some annoyances. One such annoyance is the notification sounds for incoming e-mail. The plain ‘ol subtle "beep" simply doesn't work. I actually found that to be true when I tried this on the enV2 6 months ago and the company said they'd try to fix it. They didn't. They provide a few other sounds, but they are all annoying poly-phonic songs and long. I don't want a stupid song playing every time an e-mail arrives! You can also choose vibrate. Another annoyance is that it takes 11 steps to clear an item from your to-do list. Corporate Mail/RemoSync costs $10 per month, plus data usage from your plan or per MB. Between the extra cost and the annoyances, I'll be switching back to Wireless Email and just living without the task list and calendar sync.
Due to the limitations of each of the three e-mail access methods above, those who have used a Blackberry or PDA may find this to be quite limiting.
Music Player
I don't use the music player much, but for those that do, they'll appreciate that it now keeps playing while you go about other functions with the phone. Other than that, it's pretty similar to the env2, providing basic functions like shuffle, playlists, play by album or artist and such. But it's still no where on par to the ease of use of an iPod or sandisk player.
Update: I just realized another new feature to the music player: several sound setting adjustments such as flat, concert hall, vocal boost, bass boost, trebble boost. You can only choose one to be in effect. Concert hall added an extreme amount of echo. The others did make minor adjustments, but nothing too drastic.
Other
- Bluetooth works well. I've used it with a headset and a car hands-free kit. I've also used it as a wireless modem for broadband access to the laptop (you can subscribe just for as long as you need it for travel, then cancel that feature on the plan when you return, unlike having a laptop card that requires its own contract). I've also used the streaming audio function to the car bluetooth kit. All work.
- Battery life seems reasonable, no complaints here
- Some people must have had problems with accidentally unlocking and "pocket dialing" previous models, because there's now an option to require two presses of OK to unlock the keypad.
- The phone does a fair job of pronunciation when reading back text messages to you
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 130
Recommended for: Professionals On-the-Go - Internet and Email is a Must!
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Epinions.com ID:
jvolzer
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Location: Calhoun, GA USA
Reviews written: 74
Trusted by: 4 members
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