LG Vu Plus Review

Introduction:

The LG Vu might have been one of the originals to help aid the ball rolling for touchscreen devices on AT&T's lineup, but since its initial release almost 3 years ago, there are probably plenty of owners who are now ready to do an upgrade. Last year, we witnessed the LG Xenon which actually has a lot in common with the just released LG Vu Plus GR700 – which incorporates some improved specs over the Vu and an added physical QWERTY. Priced at $149.99 on-contract, does it have the guts and appeal to give longtime LG Vu owners a reason to switch?

The package contains:

Design:

All remnants of the LG Vu's design are non-existent on the LG Vu Plus, but instead, it looks more in line  to being an upgraded version of the LG Xenon. Shedding the plasticy nature of the Xenon, the LG Vu Plus implements a gunmetal finish which is accented with a subtle chrome border around the touchscreen. Both the top and bottom edges are rounded for this normal sized looking handset which feels well constructed all around – even despite retaining a mostly plastic exterior, it surely feels more durable. And to top things off, it doesn't feel hefty (3.95 oz) at all when it's tucked away in your pocket.



You can compare the LG Vu Plus with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

There is no other improvement with the touchscreen aside from the switch to a capacitive one instead of resistive – the latter of which was used for the LG Vu and Xenon. You'll be presented to a 3” capacitive TFT display with its 240 x 400 pixel resolution and support for 262k colors – all of which are fitting for this handset. Granted though it's more than responsive to the touch and text is legible to make out, colors looked washed out and lacked saturation. However, setting it to the maximum brightness enabled us to view the display in difficult situations where the sun is constantly in our direct line of sight.

Beneath the touchscreen, you'll find a few adequately sized physical buttons for the send, end, and back/clear keys – all of which had a tactile response. The same applies to the rest of the dedicated buttons surrounding the sides of the handset which were naturally distinctive and easily pressed. Although we're glad to see the microSD card slot on the right edge of the phone for quick access, there is no dedicated 3.5mm headset jack. Rather, the microUSB port located on the top side will be used for pretty much all connectivity – charging, PC connection, and headphones. Regrettably, the packaging does not include a pair, so you'll need to provide your own one. Flipping it to the rear, you'll find the 3-megapixel auto-focus camera with LED flash and speakerphone next to it. Removing the back cover can be done by just sliding it which will then provide you access to the battery and SIM card slot.




There's a nice sliding mechanism when opening the phone to give you access to the 4-row landscape style QWERTY keyboard. It's completely flush to the surface, rectangular in shape, and with no spacing in between buttons – making it difficult for those with larger fingers to feel out. However, we didn't find it to be much of an issue after getting adjusted to it since the buttons offered a decent click when pressed down – plus the back-lighting was more than sufficient to make out characters. Aside from a few dedicated buttons found on the left side of the QWERTY, it also adds in directional keys to make it easy to move around long messages as opposed to tinkering with the touchscreen. All in all, the QWERTY is more than usable for just about anyone and we found the experience gratifying with very little travel required by your thumbs.

Interface and Functionality:

In another twist to the supposedly improved LG Vu Plus, the interface employed on the handset is the same exact one found on the LG Xenon – which actually borrows a lot from the LG Vu. At this point it looks and acts rather archaic versus some of the appealing looking ones from the competition. The main home screen is broken up into three panels which provide some personalization as you're able to place specific widgets, contacts, and shortcuts. Needless to say that it isn't as smooth as others in the scrolling department, but it gets the job done. Four icons are plopped towards the bottom which will give you instant access to the phone dialer, contacts, messaging, and main menu. When you hit the latter, you'll get into the same main menu interface that's witnessed on the LG Vu – which of course feels outdated at this point. Even though we're revisiting the same experience that was felt back a couple years ago, it's straightforward enough for anyone to learn.



You'll be limited to creating 1,000 contacts on the handset, but there are plenty of specific pieces of information you can save to each – such as phone numbers, email addresses, and even birthdays.


Since you'll have a good experience typing a quick text message with the phone's physical keyboard, we also found the on-screen keypad to be equally usable thanks to its quick response – even more so when T9 is enabled. Email is pretty much similar to other AT&T feature phones where it'll automatically set up some of the popular ones, like Gmail, by basically providing your email address and password. Specific pieces of information may be required, such as server addresses, to complete the process for custom accounts. iskoot's AT&T Social Net app should be a sufficient client for those social networking individuals hungry to access popular services like Facebook, Twitter, and MySpace. Additionally, the IM app will get you in-sync with friends by using either AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo! Messenger.


Some of the other included third party apps found on the LG Vu Plus include Mobile Banking, Pocket Express, XM Radio, YPmobile, AT&T GPS, and a handful of demo games. Finally, it supports AT&T's Mobile TV service which is powered by Qualcomm's MediaFLO network – just like the Vu. So if you're in an area that has coverage, you can take advantage of this $9.99 per month feature.

Camera and Multimedia:

Packing a 3-megapixel auto-focus shooter, which is marginally improved over the Vu and Xenon, the Vu Plus managed to take some pretty decent looking images. Thanks to the auto-focus, there were fewer instances of blurriness as it boasts some pretty good detail. Colors were a bit soft and lacked saturation to make them jump – especially more in very sunny conditions. However, the quality of course decreased indoors with poor lighting as there was more evidence of fuzziness in our shots, but overall they are bearable. The flash though did very little to make it better as photos looked more out of focus than anything else.




With QVGA (320x240) video recording on board at 14fps, it will surely hit a sour note for most people with its uninspiring quality that will make you quickly look the other way. Not only are they extremely pixelated looking, but there is a noticeable amount of jerky movements to them – so it's probably best reserved for MMS use.

LG Vu Plus sample video at 320x240 pixels resolution.

There's nothing too out of the ordinary or spectacular with its music player – although its appearance remains relatively unchanged, there are some options at your disposal to liven the presentation. Naturally the album cover, track information, and on-screen player controls are displayed, but you can also turn on one of three visualizations. Audio quality from its speaker should satisfy most people with its audible tunes which strains very slightly at the loudest volume. To cater specifically to a genre of music, there are 5 equalizer settings to choose from which will optimize the experience a little bit.


Appropriately sized videos, like the MPEG-4 one at 320 x 240 resolution that we used, managed to play fairly well with no evidence of lag being witnessed during its playback. Unfortunately, the handset doesn't look like it'll be able to handle anything else larger than its display resolution.


Internal memory is limited to a paltry 50MB, which is safe to say insufficient for media buffs, but fortunately you can supplement it with microSD cards up to 16GB in capacity.

Internet and Connectivity:

The gene pool remains the same with the LG Vu Plus with its quad-band (850/900/1800/1900 MHz) GSM and dual-band (850/1900 MHz) UMTS connectivity. It's graced with 7.2 Mbit/s HSDPA speeds for some quick connections where available.

Opera Mini is the browser of choice on the handset and should provide an experience that's gratifying and somewhat faithful to what's seen on a desktop. Text is rendered appropriately to the width of the display – which will easily fill the screen when you zoom in. Scrolling is tastefully good and should be more than acceptable, however, you can only use it in landscape as it's not supported for a portrait orientation.

Performance:

Calling quality proved to be acceptable thanks to the natural sounding voices on our end with little to no evidence of any static or background noise. On our caller's end, they said that we sounded a little metallic to their ear, but still good enough to distinguish our words. However, switching to the speaker phone we experienced some extremely muffled sounding voices that even sounded crackly to the ear.

The LG Vu Plus handled well in retaining a solid connection to the network as we did not experience any fluctuations with signal strength on the handset in the greater Philadelphia region.

Using a 900 mAh battery, we were impressed with the 5.5 hours of talk time we achieved with the handset when the manufacturer has it rated for 3 hours of talk and 288 hours of standby time.

Conclusion:

By far the biggest eyesore going for the LG Vu Plus is its bloated $149.99 on-contract price which brings it into the upper echelon of the spectrum and is a bit much for a feature phone. Usually, at that level, consumers begin to check out other options that are more fitting – like smartphones. Not only that, but it doesn't innovate in a broad range of categories where a “Plus” model should. In fact, its design might be the biggest change over previous LG touchscreen phones for AT&T, but opting to stick with the same interface found on the long forgotten LG Vu is one major drawback. However, there are some bright points worth noting – like its 3-megapixel shooter, calling quality, and QWERTY. In the end, it's going to take a serious amount of persuasion to swallow its higher than expected price point.

LG Vu Plus Video Review: