LG VX10000 Voyager – and it isn’t without merit. For starters, the feature-packed candybar sports a 2.81 inch exterior touchscreen paired with second display of equal size and a full keyboard on the inside. In the media department, the handset features a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus, video camera, expandable memory via microSD up to 8GB, and VCAST services of both the Music and TV varieties. Do the features stack up in Verizon’s favor?

19.jpgThe Internal QWERTY on the LG Voyager is nice, but a little flat for our tastes. We prefer HTC’s excellent keys, like we found on the AT&T Tilt. The Voyager’s onscreen keyboard, however, is the best software keyboard we’ve seen on a phone. It beats the Apple iPhone with its haptic feedback, though its design is otherwise very similar. Unfortunately, like the iPhone, the Voyager doesn’t let you use the wide, touch QWERTY keyboard everywhere you want, and gives you a 12-key pad on screen for SMS messaging, or sometimes makes you open the flip to use the hard keys.

The interior of the Voyager is pretty straight forward. The screen is yet another 2.8″, 262k color unit that is a clone of the external display, except for the lack of a touch interface layer. The 4 row QWERTY keyboard is huge, and offers such extravagances as a dedicated row of number keys and separate Fn and Symbol shift keys. The keys offer great feel, and work fantastically in general, but I have to admit that the position of the split space bar took a bit of getting use to. The d-pad and controls that are located to the right of the keyboard are also quite good, and a decent pair of softkeys are found above the keyboard, close to the display.On the right side of the phone is a 2.5mm headphone jack. Unfortunately the standard headphone jack size is 3.5mm, so if you have an existing set of headphones you want to use you’ll need an adapter.

Cnet Reviews As an EV-DO phone, the Voyager supports the full range of Verizon’s 3G services, including the V Cast streaming video service and the V Cast music store. The music player interface has been fine-tuned compared with other Verizon music phones, but it’s still pretty minimalist. Player options include the usual limited shuffle and repeat modes, but V Cast Music also will recommend other songs as based on your playlist. In addition to entertainment applications, the Voyager also comes preloaded with Verizon’s VZ Navigator GPS service.

Pcmag reviews As a phone, the Voyager is fun to dial and use. Tapping the Unlock button on the front screen gives you a main screen with four icons: messaging, phone, address book, and main menu. Tap “phone” and you can dial on a virtual keypad. Thanks to the force feedback, dialing on the Voyager’s virtual keypad is easier than on other touch-screen-only phones.

Cellphoneforums reviews The LG Voyager* is the first phone from Verizon Wireless that features a large external touch screen. Packaged in a lateral-clamshell design that hides a full QWERTY keypad, The LG Voyager is exclusive to Verizon Wireless and comes packed with a number of cool features, including a HTML browser for enhanced Internet browsing, full V CAST-capabilities - including V CAST Mobile TV, V CAST Music and the ability to play .mp3, .wma and unprotected .aac files, and V CAST Video. These capabilities, coupled with Verizon Wireless’ high-speed wireless broadband network, make downloading music or surfing the Web while on-the-go quick and easy.

Product summary-:

The good: The LG Voyager VX10000 has a cutting-edge design with a brilliant touch screen and a spacious keyboard. It offers a generous features set that includes EV-DO support, V Cast Mobile TV Bluetooth, a top-notch Web browser, and an integrated GPS application. And if that’s not enough, its call quality was excellent.

The bad: The LG Voyager VX10000’s camera lacks such extra options as a flash and Wi-Fi. The touch screen can be clunky at times, and the streaming video quality and EV-DO connection speed were uneven.

The bottom line: Though we had some minor complaints here and there, the Voyager’s sleek design, generous feature set and excellent performance make it the best LG messaging and multimedia phone by far.

Specs: Band / mode: CDMA 800/1900; Talk time: Up to 240 min; Combined with: With digital camera / digital player

Cnet Rating 7.4/10

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