LG EnV Touch (Verizon Wireless)

Pros: Touch Screen + physical qwerty keyboard make for a versatile experience for all sorts of situations. Phone layout is intuitive and easy to navigate. Both screens are bright and vibrant. USB cable for charging. 3.2mp camera.

Cons: The phone is considerably narrower than the previous V, enV and enV 2 making it much less comfortable to type on the physical qwerty keyboard. The battery life is much less as well. Can't remove the charger connection cover (permanatly attached).

Summary: I owned the LG V (vx9800) for over 3 years and really loved it. It was very hardy phone enduring all sorts of misery. My hope is that the enV touch will perform just as admirably. Having had the phone now for just over a week, I can say that it is a very nice phone, with very good call quality and many fun and useful features. I found the functionality to be just as good as my previous phone, if not slightly improved. Both screens are bright and vibrant delivering excellent picture quality. The sound quality of the internal stereo speakers is also slightly improved over the previous versions (but only slightly). And the phone still supports all of the apps of the previous generation. But that brings me to probably the biggest beef I have with the phone. And it's really not so much a problem with the phone as it is with the way Verizon is marketing the phone. I've seen half a dozen online banners from Verizon sporting how this phone is supposed to be some "App" powerhouse. Sorry Verizon, I've been a long time customer and love your service, but this "App" store is weak. Apple has thousands of Apps for the IPhone developed both inhouse and by homebrew developers. Verizon's App store for this phone sports the same 12 or so apps that were available with my 3 year old V. Games.......are a different story. Lots and lots of games (Most priced at $3.99 for a per-month subscription or $7.99 outright). But lots of games do not an App store make. I can only hope they plan to add additional apps in the near future. I have two other small gripes, which for me in no way detract from the overall phone quality. The first is that the charging port cover on the bottom of the phone is not removable and is permanently attached. I have always preferred to remove these as they tend to annoy me when I'm trying to quickly plug in for a quick charge. And the second is that because of the new narrower form the phone does not fit in my hands nearly as well when texting as the previous (but much bulkier V and enV). However, it is a worthwhile trade off to have it be as light as it is. I quickly became acclimated to the new layout of the keyboard and I am typing just as quickly as before. I am some what disappointed with the battery life between charges but the new USB data cable / charger is really welcome. For my previous phone, I spent almost Fifty dollars to get an extra wall charging cable and separate data cable (had to buy the expensive VCAST music essentials kit to get it). This is so much more versatile. Plus, this time, I spent less then $10 for an extra cable online so I can have one in my desk drawer at work. I do find though that I have to charge it quite a bit more often than I had expected. The battery is almost dead by the end of the day and goes on the charger each night. This may be an issue for long trips where outlets or USB ports are unavailable. Here again, though, there are car travel adapters for less then $10 available online. Anytime you can pick up essential phone accessories for less than 10 bucks is an occasion to smile. As far as the touch screen, well, it's a touch screen. It's better than some, not quite as good as others. It takes a bit of acclamation, but it is generally responsive and mostly accurate. As well, up to this point the accelerometer has been a very pleasant surprise and is very quick. I will rave a little over the 3.2 megapixal camera. The quality is there and it's what made this phone a dealmaker for me. I'm just thrilled that LG has finally brought a phone with this level of picture quality to market. Add to that the fact you can now use the camera as a full camcorder as opposed to the near useless little 15 second clips of previous generations, really ups the ante. Overall, I am very happy with the call quality, the functionality, appearance and general feel of the phone. It feels like the next logical step in the enV line (or Voyager line, depending on how you look at it). I played with both the Andriod G1 and the BlackBerry Storm and, for me at least, this phone just comes in ahead. It's feature rich and suffers none from it's few shortcomings. Hopefully it will be as faithful for me over the next 3 years as my old LG V has been over the previous 3.

Updated on Jun 20, 2009

Totally forgot to mention 3.5mm Head Phone jack! Thank You LG for getting that right. bummer that I can't use my older expensive proprietary 2.5mm Verizon head phones, but now I have a huge choice of 3rd party head phones to choose from. Choice is good. Thumbs up on that.