LG Ally VS740 Review

Introduction:

When the Motorola DROID A855 and HTC DROID ERIS ADR6200 were introduced by Verizon Wireless last year, some people were cautious about calling it a success…at first, as those were the first two Android phones for the carrier. But over the weeks and months since their introduction, and the flock of people who have adopted the platform, we have seen more Android-based smartphones released, such as the Motorola DEVOUR A555 and the HTC Droid Incredible ADR6300, each targeted to a specific audience. Now comes a fifth contender, the LG Ally VS740, which is geared mostly to the budget-orientated crowd, but who still desire a smartphone with all the Android features, plus the addition of a physical QWERTY keyboard. Because of its features and price, the LG Ally is mostly in competition with the HTC DROID ERIS and Motorola DEVOUR, with the DEVOUR also including a sliding keyboard.

Included in the retail package is the LG Ally VS740 smartphone, 1500mAh battery, preinstalled 4GB microSDHC Class 4 memory card, wall charger with detachable microUSB cable, and user guides.

Design:

The overall design and appearance of the LG Ally VS740 isn’t that impressive, as it looks like “another messaging phone” with its all-black plastic construction. In all honestly, if we didn’t know that it was an Android smartphone, we might have guessed it was the next version of the LG enV Touch. Be that as it may, the LG Ally does feel comfortable in the hand, due to its rounded corners and the soft-touch coating on the back, but it does feel thicker than the Motorola DROID. Also, the plastic construction feels more durable than the one of the HTC DROID ERIS, but not tank-like, as with the metal constructed Motorola DEVOUR and DROID.



You can compare the LG Ally VS740 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The capacitive touchscreen on the LG Ally VS740 measures 3.2 inches diagonal with a WVGA resolution of 480x800 pixels and supports up to 262K colors. This is nice, as the HTC DROID ERIS ADR6200 and Motorola DEVOUR A555 have similar sized displays, but with smaller resolution (320x480). Because of this, both text and images are sharp and clear without pixelation on the Ally, but the screen does appear dark when viewed in direct sunlight. Under the display are two touch-sensitive buttons for back and search, and four physical buttons for send, home, menu, and end/lock/power. This is the first Android phone for Verizon to have physical buttons on the front for those functions. They work well and provide adequate tactile feedback when pressed. There is also an LED notification light next to the display that will show different colors for new messages, emails, incoming calls, low battery and charging. Located on the sides of the phone are the volume rocker, microUSB port, 3.5mm headset jack, 2-stop camera shutter button, and microSDHC memory card slot, while the 3.2MP camera and LED flash are on the back.




Both the LG Ally VS740 and Motorola DEVOUR A555 are easier to slide open than the Motorola DROID A855, as the mechanism is spring-loaded and doesn’t require you to move it all the way for it to open. The design of the 4-row QWERTY keyboard on the LG Ally is the best we’ve seen on an Android smartphone to-date for Verizon. Each key is separate from one another, with plenty of space between them, and is raised from the surround plastic. There is also plenty of room for people with big hands so that your thumbs don’t feel cramped when typing. The keys provide a nice “click” when pressed and have more feedback than the keyboard on the Motorola DEVOUR. We also like the more traditional square shape of the navigation d-pad on the Ally, opposed to the rectangle shaped d-pad on the Motorola DROID and the optical pad on the DEVOUR. Our only complaint with the keyboard on the Ally is that the space key is a bit too small. One other thing that we noticed is that the LED backlight for the keyboard and the front buttons only light-up for 5 seconds and then turn off. We’re not sure why this is, and there’s no way to adjust the keyboard backlight in the menus. Both of the keyboards on the Motorola DROID and DEVOUR would stay illuminated for the same time period as the display, but that isn’t the case with the LG Ally. Hopefully this will be fixed, as we don’t like the keyboard going dark if we take a short pause while typing.

User Interface:

The LG Ally VS740 runs on stock Android 2.1, which makes using it nearly identical to the Google Nexus One, plus there are only a few “extras” that LG includes. There are 5 homescreens on the Ally that you can move through, which is standard with Android 2.1, though the Motorola DROID A855 only has 3 homescreens (even after the 2.1 update) and the HTC DROID ERIS and Droid Incredible come with 7 homescreens thanks to the HTC Sense UI. Moving through the homescreens on the LG Ally VS740 is simple enough, though we did see a bit of a delay, as they moved slightly behind our finger across the screen. Also included are the Live Wallpapers, which give you a choice of 11 to choose from that will animate the desktop with various scenes and images that change depending on the time of day, music you are playing, or by touching the screen.


There are two themes included on the Ally. The first being Android Home, which has the same layout and 3D scrolling app menu that we saw on the Google Nexus One earlier this year. The second theme is called LG Home and has a standard white app menu, but also adds a quick-launch bar at the bottom of the screen for accessing the phone, contacts, messaging, and web browser. This is nice to have, as the quick-launch bar is always visible at the bottom, regardless of which of the 5 homescreens you are viewing. LG also includes some of its own widgets for the desktop, such the weather, calendar and socialite. The socialite widget shows your friend’s status updates for Facebook and Twitter that you can scroll through, as well as being able to update your own status, view your profile, photos, friends list and inbox. It is designed a bit nicer than the stock Facebook and Twitter apps, but overall it still doesn’t have all the features of the MOTOBLUR interface that is on the Motorola DEVOUR A555 or of the Sense UI interface that is on the HTC DROID ERIS ADR6200 and HTC Droid Incredible ADR6300. Because of this, using the LG Ally feels a bit “vanilla” to us, but it is still OK for those who don’t want or need those extra features.




Contacts and Organizer:

There aren’t any surprises when it comes to the contact integration on the LG Ally VS740, as it pulls contacts from your Google and Exchange accounts, as well as from the socialite app (Facebook and Twitter). It shows all the contacts together and in alphabetical order, but of course lacks the extra features of Sense UI or MOTOBLUR, such as viewing messages from each person separately within the contacts menu.


The calendar on the Ally will pull up all your appointments from your Google Calendar account and display it in the same way you see it online. Multiple calendar events will be displayed in different colors to allow easy distinction between everything. You can also view the calendar in either a daily, weekly, or monthly view. There is also a choice of using the standard desktop calendar widget that comes with Android, or the LG calendar widget, that has the option of being shown as monthly view or events view.


Missing are any tasks or notes apps, but the Android Market has several to choose from. The included clock app gives you access to an alarm clock, picture slideshow, and music player. The basic calculator has an advanced panel, but does not switch to scientific mode when the phone is turned on its side.


There is also a voice command app (separate from the Google voice search) which is accurate as well, however you have to confirm your selection by pressing a button on the screen, which means the device must be with you. We tried it with a few Bluetooth headsets, but unfortunately you cannot activate the voice command feature via the headset, as it must be initiated from the phone itself. This is a limitation of the Android operating system that’s inevitably found on the Motorola DROID, HTC DROID ERIS and HTC Droid Incredible; however the Motorola DEVOUR does come with its own voice command program that was added by Motorola to specifically work via a Bluetooth headset. It would be nice if other manufactures did this as well until it becomes standard with Android.



Messaging:

The LG Ally VS740 has many messaging options. SMS and MMS are encompassed within the included messaging app, and conversations are threaded. One of the new features of Android 2.1 is the speech to text feature that is now available in any text field. This means you can dictate emails, text messages, and web searches…you name it. Unfortunately, the Ally doesn’t come with an included IM client for AIM, Windows Live and Yahoo! Messenger, but several can be downloaded via Android Market; however Google Talk has its own standalone app that comes installed.

The GMail app is still the preferred email solution and we really appreciate being able to have multiple accounts integrated into it. The separate standard email client supports POP, IMAP and Exchange servers out of the box ensuring compatibility with just about any service out there.

There is of course the basic on-screen virtual keyboard that can be used in portrait and landscape mode with T9 text prediction, but who wants to use this when there is a real physical keyboard that slides out from behind the screen? The included QWERTY keyboard is one of the best features of the LG Ally because of its design and usefulness, which we talked about earlier. With it, there’s really no need to use the on-screen keyboards, which are quite small due to the screen size.



Connectivity:

The LG Ally VS740 is a dual-band CDMA (800/1900 MHz) handset with high speed data connectivity available through Verizon’s 3G EVDO Rev. A network or through local Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n. Bluetooth 2.1+EDR is supported with profiles for headset, hands free, object push, advanced audio distribution, audio/video remote control, file transfer, and phone book access.

The web browser is WebKit based and is almost identical to the one used by the Motorola DROID A855. It comes with support for pinch-to-zoom, as well as double-tap, so zooming in or out of a web page is pretty simple to do. Web sites appear properly rendered and are laid out just like they would be on a PC, but unfortunately the browser on the Ally doesn’t come with Flash Lite, which means you’ll have to wait until the official Flash 10.1 release for Android later this year to view Flash content. Even though the display on the Ally is limited to 3.2”, which is similar in size to the HTC DROID ERIS and Motorola DEVOUR, it has a greater resolution of 480x800 pixels, which means text on web sites are sharper and clearer to read, so you don’t have to zoom in just to make the text legible.

Camera:

The included 3.2MP autofocus camera with LED flash isn’t the best we’ve seen on an Android device, but it isn’t the worst. The interface is laid out well and gives you some options to select the resolution, flash, autofocus or macro, scene mode, ISO, white balance, color effect, timer, shot mode, image quality, and geo location. There is a traditional 2-stop shutter button on the side (similar to the Motorola DROID) where as you press the button down half-way to focus on the center of the screen (green box appears) and then press all the way down to capture the picture. Images that we took outside on sunny day are passable, and generally look better than ones taken by the Motorola DEVOUR, as there is plenty of color and saturation, though maybe a bit too much, as we noticed a warm tendency on most images, as well as bright areas being overexposed. Plus, shots are just too sharp, which can result in loss of fine detail. Indoor images taken under bright light come out OK, but once light levels start to get lower, the image quality goes downhill fast with them showing plenty of grain and looking out-of-focus. The single LED flash is pretty useless and doesn’t have an effective range of more than 2-3 feet. The LG Ally VS740 can record MPEG4 3GP videos up to 640x480 resolution at 25fps, though the quality is lower than what you'd experience with the Motorola DROID and HTC Droid Incredible. If you don’t require a high-megapixel camera on your phone and only take the occasional picture or video, then the LG Ally VS740 is a better choice than the Motorola DEVOUR A555, but if you want the best cameraphone images, you should go with the HTC Droid Incredible ADR6300.





LG Ally sample video at 640x480 pixels resolution.

Multimedia:

The biggest change here with Android 2.1 is the 3D overhaul of the Gallery, thanks to the developers over at Cooliris. Much like the live wallpapers and slick animations, this amounts to little more than eye candy, but we still appreciate it very much, as it now sorts files (pictures and videos) by their folder location and by date. Not only does the LG Ally playback H.263 and H.264 encoded MP4 videos, but it is also the only Android phone for Verizon to support the playback of DivX and XviD encoded video files. We tested videos up to 720x304 resolution at 30fps with 1500kbps bit rate, and they all played smoothly and without dropping any frames.


The music player app is the stock one that comes included with Android 2.1. It is rather basic, as it has tabs across the top for the artists, albums, songs, and playlists. While the song is playing, the cover art and other song info is displayed on the screen, but there are no special settings such as a graphics equalizer or tone adjustments. Music quality through the rear speaker is average, as it has good tonal quality, but the volume doesn’t get as loud as on the Motorola DROID or HTC Droid Incredible. You can also listen to music via a pair of 3.5mm earbuds or with a Bluetooth stereo headset.



Software:

One of the benefits of using an Android device is the ability to browse and download countless apps through the Android Market, but some do come preinstalled on the LG Ally VS740. One of the most useful, and one of our favorites, is Google Maps with Navigation. First of all, it's free, unlike VZ Navigator, and uses Google Maps to overlay the interface when using it for turn-by-turn directions. The experience is almost reminiscent of what you find on Google Earth, as the perspective changes to emulate a 3D map that gives you a bird’s eye view. Within the application, you can add additional layers to overlay on the map, and there are presets like traffic view, gas stations, restaurants, and more. We enjoyed using the satellite layer as it gives an accurate representation of your surroundings as you are traveling. We were also amazed by the Google Street View integration, as it will update and show you images of the street you are traveling on, and you can also move around with 360 degree rotation. The GPS is accurate in tracking your location as it zooms out when you're on a highway and zooms back in when you're about to make a turn. Pinch-to-zoom is also supported, so you can easily zoom in or out while in the map view. There is also a Car Home menu where you can make voice command calls and easily access the map and directions. We loved the Google Maps with Navigation when we first saw it on the Motorola DROID A855 last year, and we’re glad to see it on the LG Ally VS740 as well.


A few other apps that come included on the LG Ally are Google Talk, which is Google’s own instant messaging client, and ThinkFree Office, which you can use to view or create Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files, as well as for viewing Adobe PDF documents.


The LG Ally VS740 comes with a Qualcomm MSM7627 processor (the same one found on the Palm Pixi and Motorola DEVOUR) that combines two ARM cores, one operating at 600MHz for applications and one at 400MHz for the modem processor. Internal memory is 512MB ROM / 256MB RAM. The device is by no means slow, but like we said earlier, we did notice some lag when moving between the homescreens.

Performance:

LG phones are usually known for their good call quality, and the LG Ally VS740 doesn’t disappoint. Voices on both ends sound clear and natural, lacking any background noise or distortion, which we consider a step-up from the HTC DROID ERIS as it has a constant “hiss” in the earpiece speaker. Reception was a bit below average, though we didn’t drop any calls, as we got between -97dB and -101dB of signal reception on the LG Ally, while the Motorola DROID and HTC Droid Incredible got 10dB of better reception in exactly the same location. However, this is still better than the Motorola DEVOUR that got down to -107dB.

The included 1500mAh standard battery is rated to provide up to 7.5 hours of talk time or 20 days of standby time on a full charge. After using the LG Ally for a couple of days and performing a few battery cycles, we were able to get on average 7 hours of continuous talk time on a full charge, which is about 30 minutes less than the Motorola DROID, but still 90 minutes more than the HTC Droid Incredible. Under normal mixed usage, which includes some talk, standby, text, email, web, and app usage, we were able to get about 28 hours on the Ally before the battery required charging. This is about average with smartphones, as most standard batteries provide enough power to make it through the day and evening. Those of you that require more usage time between charges may want to consider the 2200mAh extended battery.

Conclusion:

When all is said and done, the LG Ally VS740 is a nice smartphone for those individuals who have been cautious about taking the Android plunge. It is simple enough to use and lacks some of the bells-and-whistles (such as MOTOBLUR and Sense UI) that may cause the average user to stay away. As we noted earlier, the QWERTY keyboard is one of the best features of the device, so if you are looking for a mainstream Android 2.1 phone with sliding keyboard, the LG Ally VS740 doesn’t disappoint at all.

LG Ally VS740 Video Review: