LG VX9800 "The V"

Check out our review of the LG VX9900 "enV" which replaced the V in Novemeber 2006.

From time immemorial, Verizon had the most lackluster selection of phones, but their quality of service and fast data offset their tepid handset offerings. This year, Verizon has turned things around with a selection of truly compelling phones that have been released or will be released by Q1 2006. The LG VX9800 is one of those hot new phones, and we're ecstatic it made it to our shores rather then remaining in Korea, where all the amazing but unobtainable CDMA phones live.

The VX9800 has a long laundry list of compelling features, including a color outer display, a stunning 320 x 256 pixel landscape oriented inner display, Text to speech, EVDO, excellent speakerphone, Bluetooth, stereo speakers, 1.3 megapixel camera with flash, 56 megs of available memory, miniSD card slot, MP3 player, voice recorder, Verizon Wireless Sync compatibility, extremely sturdy build and best of all a QWERTY keyboard with dedicated number row inside. It was announced in the US on the Verizon network on Sept. 20, 2005 and appeared in most Verizon stores early October. Verizon targets this $299 with new activation phone at those who need HTML browsing and easy messaging but don't want the price tag, added heft or complexity of a PDA phone such as the Samsung i730 Pocket PC Phone or the Palm Treo 650. The high resolution 262,000 color inner display, stereo sound and strong performance are also perfect for multimedia mavens, and it's currently the best phone on the market to take advantage of VCast media on Verizon's EVDO network. The VX9800 is currently Verizon's most expandable feature phone. You can save photos and videos taken with the camera directly to the miniSD card by default. There's no need to email them to a desktop email account or use Verizon's web-based free service; just pop the card in your PC's card reader to view, edit and manage them. And you can copy your MP3 library to the card using your computer and a card reader.

Design and Ergonomics

The VX9800 looks like a candy bar phone yet it's really a clamshell phone that opens on the long side rather than top to bottom and has a full QWERTY thumb keyboard inside, similar to the Nokia 9300 design. It's a great deal smaller than the Nokia though it's a bit larger than most feature phones.

The LG weighs 5.19 ounces and measures 4.57 x 1.97 x 1.0 inches. That's heavy for a cell phone but light by PDA phone standards. Once you feel the build quality and sturdiness of this device, you may not complain about the weight. This phone is built like a tank, and feels much better than the GSM network LG F9100 offered by Cingular. In fact, the VX9800 is much better throughout: the F9100 has a slider rather than clamshell, a single display that was oddly offset when the device is open, no dedicated number row, no expansion slot and no Bluetooth.

Two large hinges hold the two halves of the clamshell together and there's no lateral movement or play in either open and closed positions. The display locks to a 45 degree angle and can also lock flat open for easier texting. The 45 degree angle is ideal for speakerphone use, video and MP3 playback when sitting on a desk or table. Speakerphone automatically turns on when you open the clamshell and turns off when you close the phone. When playing MP3s through the speakers, you'll want to keep the unit open since the speakers are on the inner display surface.

The Samsung i730 and LG VX9800

Back of the LG VX9800. Note the large camera lens and portrait / macro slider.

When the unit is closed, it does double duty as a candy bar phone and you can send and receive calls, initiate voice dialing, dial using the roomy external number pad with raised, lighted keys, and navigate a subset of the LG's menus using the outer LCD. You can even use T9 if you wish, though the QWERTY keyboard beckons for all your input needs. You can read text messages on both the inner and outer displays, change Bluetooth settings by pressing the down arrow on the directional pad, view call history, access contacts, take photos and videos- no need to open the clamshell. The phone has a camera quick launch button on the left side along with a volume rocker. When in certain apps the volume rocker changes context: in the web browser it acts as the page up / down control and it changes photo orientation in the camera application.

Open the clamshell and you'll have full access to all menus, the keyboard and the better than QVGA display. The inner clamshell has a direction pad on the right, call send and end buttons and two soft keys for messages and contacts when in the main screen, and other contexts in other menus and applications. You can easily dial a number with the clamshell open: simply enter numbers and hit the send button. As with most phones, the d-pad functions as an application quick launch pad when in the main screen, offering quick access to the web browser, Verizon's Get It Now service, Pix and Flix (camera, photo / video viewer and VCast) and Calendar.

The miniSD slot is located on the right side (under a protective plastic door) as is the 2.5mm stereo headset jack. No headset is included, but you can use standard mono headsets or LG's stereo headset which is perfect for MP3 playback. The jack uses a 3 ring connector that's relatively long, and the only 3rd party 2.5mm headsets we found which worked are Motorola's HS120 and a Jabra headset.

Keyboard

The VX9800 has a full QWERTY thumb keyboard that's a joy to use. It's one of the best we've ever used on phone or PDA and in a few hours I was typing at 45 wpm. The spacebar, located to the right rather than dead center is the keyboard's only oddity. As a fast touch typist, I was sure that would be a deal breaker but acclimated to it in an hour or two. Since the phone has a dedicated number row up top, there's no need for num lock, and the phone has shift and shift lock as well as a Symbol key. The Fn key launches a list of your 10 favorite applications, which you can customize. Like the outer keypad, the silver keys are backlit with light blue letters and you can adjust the timeout from a few seconds to never turn off. The key lighting is very effective yet unobtrusive, and all keys are easy to see in the dark.

Reception, Voice and Phone Features

CDMA LG phones generally have middle of the road reception. The VX9800 does one better, offering strong reception compared to other recent Verizon offerings despite the internal antenna. Though it might not beat the top RF Motorola V710 and E815, it comes reasonably close. It beat out the LG VX8100, Treo 650 and the Samsung i730 and always offered excellent incoming and outgoing call quality and volume. Voice quality through the full duplex speakerphone is the best we've heard and call recipients had no idea we were using speakerphone, even when calling from a car. The phone can be set to auto-answer when the flip is opened. When the flip is opened, the LG will automatically switch to speakerphone mode and the phone will not hang up when you close the flip— so you can converse using speakerphone in the car, then close it and talk normally once you leave the car. Speakerphone isn't available with the flip closed.

Like the LG VX8100 we recently reviewed, the VX9800 has voice command software and text to speech. You need not record voice tags since the phone uses true voice command which works rather well, even over Bluetooth headsets. You can tell the phone to call someone in your contacts list, digit dial, call voicemail (it will tell you if you have messages and how many). Text to speech can state an incoming caller's name or phone number if desired and can read text messages to you. The phone uses a female voice with sometimes amusing pronunciation but overall it's very usable, even over Bluetooth.

The phone's address book can hold up to 1000 contacts with fields for name, 5 numbers, 2 email addresses, notes, group and picture ID. You can assign a photo to a contact as well as a customized ringtone for voice and a customized tone for incoming messages. You may also assign contacts to groups; either one of the canned groups or one of your own making. In addition, the LG has 99 speed dial slots, with the last three assigned to commonly used Verizon functions (#BAL, #MIN and #PMT) and 1 assigned to voicemail. There's also a basic calendar with day, week, and month views. You can create your own appointments and reminders and set recurrence as needed.

Data: EVDO, VCast, Browsing and Messaging

The LG has separate voice/1xRTT and EVDO signal strength meters. In our San Francisco Bay Area haunts, EVDO is live and we got excellent throughput for VCast video and web browsing. The large, vivid display and stereo speakers are the perfect companions for VCast video and you'll have no trouble hearing soundtracks in all but very noisy locations.

The phone's OpenWave 6.2.3.2 web browser is fast and renders pages in an attractive manner. The browser uses Verizon's Mobile Web 2.0 service ($5/month or included in the $15/month VCast plan) and their VZW Today start page with links to news, weather, email, sports, entertainment and more. The browser supports standard HTML web sites as well as WAP sites and offers SSL encryption, but doesn't support Javascript. Hint: to visit the web site of your choice, select the Search tab in the browser, then the Go to URL function to enter any web address you wish. That's not exactly intuitive, alas. You can also enter web site URLs into your favorites list, thankfully.

The included IM client allows you to chat on AIM, MSN and Yahoo instant messaging. As with most phone IM clients, it uses text messages to send and receive IMs. These messages aren't included as part of Verizon's "In" messages, so opt for one of their non-"In" text message plans rather than an "In" package (they offer several non-"In" text message packs, though these aren't listed on their web site). Messages were reasonably quick over an EVDO connection (since these are text message based, connection speed shouldn't be important), though it's not nearly instantaneous as true IM-ing using a smartphone or PDA phone. The client can stay active in the background, notifying you when new messages come in. The keyboard makes IM-ing a breeze and you may find yourself leaving plain old text messaging behind.

Oddly, the phone doesn't come with an email client and currently there isn't one available for download under Get It Now. Since the phone is new, Verizon may yet offer an email client. We certainly hope they do, because the only other alternative is Verizon's $20/month Wireless Sync service which you'll install on your PC and phone and then set your PC to redirect emails to the phone. Wireless Sync also syncs Outlook data from your PC to phone which is an attractive proposition to business users who need both email and PIM syncing (though Wireless Sync isn't compatible with all corporate firewalls). Those of you who wish to use popular email services such as Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and AOL Mail are in luck as the browser offers support for these. If you're a GMAIL fan, simply go to gmail.com to check your mail.

Display, Sound and Multimedia

The inner display is phenomenal: very bright, contrasty and colorful. It's excellent for viewing photos and videos. By feature phone standards, this is a very high resolution display that beats Pocket PCs by a few pixels, coming in at 320 x 256 pixels. The landscape TFT LCD measures 2.4" diagonally and displays 262,000 colors. Text is sharp and easy to read, with a default of 15 lines and refresh times are good for video.

The outer display is very good by external display standards. The 65,000 color TFT LCD has a resolution of 160 x 128 pixels and displays 9 lines of text. It's bright, colorful and easy to read. Since the inner and outer displays are TFT, they are at their best indoors, though they remain readable outdoors. You can set inner and outer display backlight timeouts independently and you can set different wallpapers for each display. If you wish you can use your own images (or videos taken with the camera) as wallpapers. These can be on a card and images need not be taken with the phone's camera.

The LG VX9800 sound system is super by phone standards. The large stereo speakers are plenty loud for video and MP3 playback, though you'll get the best sound from stereo headphones. In fact sound through headphones (we used the Motorola HS120 since we couldn't get a hold of the LG stereo headset) is excellent for MP3 playback. Get yourself a large miniSD card and you've got a good MP3 player with EQ, shuffle, repeat and visualizer. The LG comes with 7 EQ settings including 3D surround, rock, jazz and classical. If there were a way to create playlists, the MP3 player would be complete.

Video playback is excellent and the screen resolution and quality make a good experience even better. The included video player can play videos taken with the camera, videos downloaded through Verizon's VCast service (mostly .wmv format) and streaming VCast video.

Camera

US camera phones aren't generally anything to write home about, though Nokia's megapixel offerings are quite nice. What a pleasant surprise the VX9800's 1.3 megapixel CMOS camera was. Better than the LG VX8100's and even one of my personal favorites, the Nokia 7610, the VX9800 takes very sharp photos with good color accuracy and lighting. Like most cameras, it does best in moderate to well lit environments, though low light shots taken with and without the flash aren't horribly grainy but they do lose some color. In general, the camera takes photos that look good on your monitor, not just the phone's LCD and they're worth saving.

The LG offers a variety of camera controls and has an LED flash which helps a bit at close range in poorly lit environments. You can adjust brightness, white balance, turn on night mode, use color effects, enable/disable the flash and change or turn off the shutter sound. The phone can take photos at a maximum resolution of 1280 x 960, and can shoot photos at a variety of lesser resolutions. You can set the camera app to save photos and videos to either internal memory or the miniSD card. Of course, you can send your photos and videos via MMS, or send them to Verizon's PIX Place as well. There is no shutter lag and images save very quickly.

We weren't wowed by the VX8100's videos but the VX9800's are head and shoulders above not only that camera phone but much of the US competition. The camera can shoot video with audio at 320 x 240 and 176 x 144 resolutions at 15 fps in .3G2 format which is supported by Quicktime on the desktop. Videos, even at the higher resolution were smooth not blocky, with good color, sharpness and sound quality. Nice going, LG! Video clips are limited to 15 seconds in length, even when saving to a card, which is a shame.

Bluetooth and miniSD Slot

Yes, the LG VX9800 has Bluetooth, and by Verizon's standards, it's a bit less hobbled than usual. The phone supports headset and hands free profiles for use with Bluetooth headsets and car kits. We tested the LG with the Gennum Zen, Motorola HS820, Motorola HF800 car kit, Plantronics M3500 and South-Wing SH305. All worked well, offering good range, volume and clarity as well as compatibility with text to speech and voice command, though the South-Wing did occasionally suffer from static and didn't offer as good range.

Surprisingly (for Verizon), the LG also has Bluetooth OBEX support for vCard transfer to and from other phones, PDAs and computers. You won't be able to push any other data using OBEX however. We sent contacts to the phone using an HP iPAQ hx2490 and Outlook on the desktop and it worked well with two caveats: phone number fields won't transfer unless you remove spaces, dashes and parenthesis, and the phone accepts contacts with the last name first (handy for viewing but weird for voice dialing). Bluetooth DUN (dial up networking) is enabled, though it seems Verizon may have changed the way their servers handle authorization so you may not be able to take advantage of DUN. Of course, DUN is prohibited by most mobile carriers including Verizon so use this at your own risk.

The fully functional miniSD slot is another surprise on a Verizon phone. You can save photos and videos taken with the camera as well as recorded sounds by default to the card. This is an improvement over the LG VX8100 where you had to save these to internal memory then transfer them one by one to the card. In addition you can put your MP3s on the card using a card reader on your computer (put them in the MY_MP3 folder and don't create any subdirectories in that folder because the phone won't see them). When you insert a card into the VX9800 for the first time, it will create the necessary directories for you, so you need do nothing. Videos are saved to the MY_FLIX folder, photos to MY_PIX, sounds to my_sounds and MP3s to MY_MP3. Since Verizon wants to sell you ringtones, there's no way to transfer sounds or MP3s to internal memory unless you want to try the free Bitpim application on your computer to manage your phone's internal memory. Bitpim is very powerful, but not for the faint of heart, however.

Battery Life

The standard 1300 mAh Lithium Ion battery is generous by phone standards. Our two units managed 3 days on a charge with heavy use (each day we were talking on the phone for an hour, surfing the web for an hour, listening to MP3s through headphones for 30 minutes, playing games for 20 minutes and watching a few VCast videos). With light use, the phone lasted 4 days on a charge. If you're in an EVDO area as are we, you should get this kind of battery life since EVDO is easy on the battery. If you're in a fringe area or one where Verizon is building out the service, you'll get considerably shorter runtimes because the phone will hunt for that trace EVDO signal throughout the day. This is true of all Verizon phones with EVDO we tested (Audiovox XV6600, Samsung i730 and LG VX8100), not just the VX9800. Should you need even more stamina, LG offers an extended 2100 mAh optional battery available for purchase separately.

Bluetooth didn't affect battery life greatly because the phone sleeps the connection when not active. Playing games and watching VCast videos did drain the battery more quickly than other activities, as will using the camera's flash very frequently. While most PDA phones have flight mode, few feature phones offer it. The LG has flight mode (called "standalone mode"), so you can turn off the phone's radio for use on airplanes or anywhere else you'd like to use the phone's PIM, camera, MP3 player, gaming and other features without having the phone's wireless radio on.

Other Software

In addition to Contacts, Calendar, IM, camera, photo viewer, video viewer and the web browser, the LG comes with a notepad, alarm clock, calculator, EZ Tip Calc, World Clock. You can download other BREW (Java) applications including games using Verizon's Get It Now service. LG includes "Name Card Reader" which is really a business card reader that works in conjunction with the camera. Yes, it's a nifty party trick but it's actually useful too. Put the camera in macro mode using the switch on the back, take a photo of a business card and the VX9800 will then use OCR (optical character recognition) to turn the words in the image to text. It will walk you through assigned the text on the business card to fields in the address book.

Conclusion

If you're looking for something short of a PDA phone but need more than a feature phone, the VX9800 should be on your short list. The superb keyboard makes messaging and data entry easy and the phone's multimedia prowess put it above the feature phone pack. The unit has excellent build quality, great displays, an impressive camera that does a great job of both photos and videos, Bluetooth and an MP3 player. Throw in EVDO and VCast and you've got an excellent communications and entertainment tool, as well as a strong phone with good voice manners, excellent speakerphone and strong usability and one-handed operation. Heck, I liked it so much, I bought one!

Pro: Excellent keyboard, strong built quality, clever industrial design. Candy bar ease of use is good, with a large lighted number pad, d-pad and easy access to basic menu functions, Bluetooth and the MP3 player. Speakerphone is top notch, as is voice quality and volume. Camera takes photos and videos that are worth saving. Bluetooth works reliably and is less hobbled than usual for a Verizon phone. Good phone reception, great MP3 playback quality, miniSD card slot is great for transferring photos, videos and MP3s. Good IM support with included client. Backlit keyboard eases nighttime texting. Browser can handle normal HTML web sites as well as WAP.

Con: No email client included. Though not a behemoth, the phone isn't petit or light. IM client uses text messages and Verizon's text message plans aren't a bargain.

Price: $299 with 2 year contract, $469 without contract

Web Site: us.lge.com, www.verizonwireless.com

Specs:

Display: Outer display: TFT color LCD, 160 x 128 pixels (9 lines). Inner display: TFT 262K colors, 320 x 256 pixels.

Battery: Lithium Ion rechargeable. Battery is user replaceable. 1300 mA. 2100 mA extended battery available for purchase. Claimed talk time: 4.16 hours. Claimed standby: 8.3 days.

Performance: Undisclosed processor. 128 megs flash ROM, 64 megs RAM with 56 available.

Size: 4.57 x 1.97 x 1.0 inches. Weight: 5.19 ounces.

Audio: Built in stereo speakers, mic and 2.5 mm headphone jack. Voice Recognition software included. Full duplex speakerphone (works only when clamshell is open). 72-Chord Polyphonic Sound Support, Voice Memo Recorder (1 Minute Each; Up to 200 memos total). Has vibrate feature and comes with 16 ringtones.

Phone: Digital dual band: 800 MHz CDMA and 1900 MHz PCS bands (no analog). Supports both EVDO and 1xRTT for data. Has Get It Now and VCast and can run BREW apps.

Camera: 1.3 MP camera with LED flash. 4x digital zoom. Camera Resolutions: 1280 x 960, 640 x 480, 320 x 240, 176 x 144, 160 x 120 pixels. Video resolutions: 320 x 240 and 176 x 144 pixels, 3G2 format. Close-up switch on lens for macro shots.

Bluetooth: Supports headset, handsfree, VCard transfer over OBEX and DUN profiles. Bluetooth 1.1, class 2 radio.

Software: Contacts, Calendar, text and MMS client, instant messaging (AIM, MSN and Yahoo), photo and video viewer, camera, Get it Now (download Pix and Flix, ringtones, BREW games and other apps) and Open Wave HTML/WAP web browser for use with Verizon's Mobile Web service 2.0. In addition, T9, Notes, World Clock, Alarm Clock, EZ Tip Calc, Calculator, Name Card Reader (take macro photo of business cards) and Voice Command.

Expansion: 1 miniSD (Secure Digital) slot.

LG VX9400

We frequently speak of convergence devices on this site: those that combine a PDA and phone, or a GPS and PDA for example. But in the US, this is the first time we're covering a new kind of convergence: broadcast TV and mobile telephony. Europe had been doing trials of broadcast TV service in mobile phones for years, but we in the US have jumped into the game late (as we always seem to when it comes to phones). But with a remarkably fast rollout, Verizon and Qualcomm's MediaFLO have gotten the service running in several major metro regions, with an aggressive plan to blanket many more areas this year (and in the coming years).

What exactly is this? No, it's not the usual V Cast video clips, in fact the service doesn't use the phone's data connection. Rather it's digital broadcast TV over-the-air, much in the same way traditional TV broadcast works. This means that phones like the LG VX9400 and the Samsung u620 (the other Verizon phone that supports TV) have tiny TV tuners and not so tiny antennas that you'll telescope up when you want to watch TV. Verizon calls this service V Cast Mobile TV, and it currently has an 8 channel lineup (we're sure more will come in the coming years) that runs 24/7. Like regular TV, you'll see a TV programming grid when you press the dedicated TV button, and channel programming is always running in real time: there's no on-demand or DVR. This means you'll need to catch your favorite show when it's broadcast, and it means content is always changing, unlike stale video clips. The schedule doesn't match regular local TV broadcasts, which means you can catch a CSI show at 10am, but your favorite CBS 10 a.m. show might air at a very different time.

This Verizon service costs $25/month for all 8 channels plus V Cast (video and music) and Mobile Web. The $13/month Limited package gets you 4 channels and the $15 TV Basic package gets you all 8 channels but no V Cast video/music or Mobile Web. The 8 channels are NBC, NBC News, Fox Mobile, MTV Mobile, Comedy Central, CBS Mobile, Nickelodeon and ESPN. We're in one of the metro areas with Mobile TV service and reception is generally good. The picture is stunningly clear and sharp when in a good reception area but can drop audio and/or video frames in marginal coverage areas (say in a large building or in the center of a large house). When in a good coverage area you'll have no problems recognizing your favorite actor's mug, but digital blockiness and dithering in weak coverage spots will make it harder to ID his or her tiny visage. Remember, this is a broadcast digital TV service from MediaFlo and it does not use Verizon's voice and data networks, so your phone's 1x and EVDO signal bars bear no relation to the TV signal.

Yes, there are commercials; the CBS news show broke for commercials just as it would on home TV and NBC had several commercial breaks during a 1 hour show. What happens if a call comes in when you're watching TV? The phone rings and you can answer (or ignore) the call as per normal. TV video and audio playback pause when the phone rings, and resume once the call has ended. The LG VX9400, like the Samsung U620, can play in both portrait and landscape modes and there's a full screen option that fills the display.

How do the VX9400 and Samsung u620 compare? The Samsung is smaller (surprisingly small) with a shorter antenna, and both are reasonably attractive and well made. The VX9400's larger display is preferable for watching TV, as are its better flesh tones (the Samsung's flesh tones are too white).

The LG VX9400 and Samsung u620

To watch TV in landscape mode and reveal the number pad, twist the front display clockwise. When closed, the two softkeys, clear and TV buttons, send and end keys as well as the directional pad are accessible (only the numbers are hidden under the display section). The design is interesting, and it's one of those you'll either love it or hate it things. The telescoping TV antenna is a whopper: thin but long with a large plastic end cap. Fortunately you need only raise this when watching TV. In a decent signal area you can get away with having the antenna at half mast with minor degradation, but you won't see or hear much of anything if the antenna is completely down.

The display is superb: very sharp and clear with vivid colors and a glossy look. In general, LG phones have very good displays and the large 2.2" VX9400 display is at the top of the heap among feature phones. Sound through the rear firing speaker is plenty loud and clear enough for TV watching, though you'll want to use a wired headset for better stereo sound when using the music player.

The keypad is roomy, and I had no trouble dialing or texting one-handed (I do have long fingers). The keys are backlit, but the letter farthest to the right on each key is more faintly lit than the rest. The number key area is quite flat, though still more tactile than the RAZR. The VX9400's thicker bottom portion feels good in hand, providing a good grip and naturally orienting the thumb tip toward the number keys. Though different looking when in landscape mode, the phone is attractive and feels well-balanced. Should a call come in while the display is in landscape orientation, the earpiece will be offset to the right side (since it lives above the display relative to portrait mode). This means you'll need to angle the top back toward the rear of your head to center the speaker at your ear. This is easy enough to do and doesn't make the phone uncomfortable. You can also swing the display back to portrait orientation when in a call, it won't hang up the call.

The camera and loudspeaker buttons as well as the microSD card slot are on the phone's right side and the volume rocker, voice command button and 2.5mm headset jack are on the left. As you'd expect, the camera lens, LED flash and battery door are on the phone's back. The LG's loudspeaker is on the back as well, next to the camera lens.

Performance and Software

The LG VX9400 is a fast and responsive phone with a generous 60 megs of internal memory and a microSD memory card slot. Menus and windows open quickly, the web browser offers good speeds and music/video/game downloads are fast. The LG has a slight edge over the Samsung u620 for download speeds, but the Samsung is faster for gaming (note that most games run in landscape QVGA mode on the LG and portrait QVGA on the Samsung). The phone runs Verizon's Flash user interface which is intuitive and it supports animated desktop images and offers two themes (VZW and LG). The upside is that the learning curve is very low but those who like variety will be bored with the same old UI on most all Verizon phones.

Like all Verizon feature phones, the VX9400 has basic PIM applications: contacts (500 contacts max), calendar and notes. It uses the same USB data cable as other recent LG phones like the Chocolate and VX8600, but so far there is no BitPim support for syncing (BitPim is a free syncing application for Windows and LG phones). Also included are a music player, V Cast video player, camera application, a Mobile Web 2.0 compatible browser that handles WAP sites, web-based email and basic HTML sites in single-column view and messaging for SMS and MMS.

Phone Features and Reception

The LG is a digital dual band CDMA phone with EVDO for data. Reception is good and is a bit better than the Samsung u620. We had no problems downloading apps and music nor did we drop calls in a very signal-challenged area that gets 0-1 bar of 1x and 2 bars of EV on average with most Verizon phones. The LG managed 3 bars of EV and held onto that single bar of 1x for voice. Voice quality is very good both incoming and outgoing, though the speakerphone is tinny sounding (albeit loud) and our call recipients commented on the speakerphone's lesser voice quality.

The LG comes with Voice Signal's excellent voice command software that does true speech recognition (no need to record voice tags). The software can read out the contents of screens to you and it works not just for dialing by name and number but for common actions such as starting a text message, getting account info and launching applications. The voice command software doesn't take dictation (give them a couple more years!).

Camera We were pleasantly surprised by the VX9400's 1.3 megapixel camera. LG generally does a good job with cameras and though 1.3MP is now bottom of the barrel, the phone took pleasing shots. Colors were reasonably accurate, noise is acceptable for a camera of this resolution and the shots were fairly clear by fixed focus lens standards. Not bad! The LG did better than the Samsung u620 with more vibrant colors, less white out and better focus. The 2.2" display acts as the camera's viewfinder and you can launch the camera by pressing the dedicated side button. When in portrait mode the viewfinder takes up only a portion of the display. Switch to landscape mode by swiveling the display and it uses the entire screen. The camera can take still photos in JPEG format in 1280x960, 640x480, 320 x 240, 176 x144 and 160x120 resolutions. There's a self timer (3, 5 or 10 seconds), an LED flash (you can turn it off), white balance settings, 3 shutter sounds plus silent, color effects (sepia, black and white, negative), brightness control and selectable spot or average metering (a feature you don't usually see on low end camera modules). You can save photos to a microSD card or internal memory and view them in the photo viewer application. The camera can record video with audio at 320 x 240 or 176 x 144 which is suitable for MMS. You can set it to record as long as you wish (as long as there's enough room on your storage card) or limit it to 15 seconds for MMS. Video quality is typical camera phone stuff: good color, but there's blockiness, especially if you're moving to follow your subject or there's a lot of movement in the scene. Sound quality is good as is volume.

Music Player and V Cast Video

The music player is Verizon's basic player with support for MP3 and WMA format songs. You can save songs to a microSD card (if you use a card reader to manually copy songs to a card, be sure to put them in the "my_music" folder on the card). The player supports playlists, groups songs by artist, album, song title, genre and has a shuffle feature but no equalizer. You can also use the player to purchase songs from Verizon's download service for $1.99 per track. The player works in both portrait and landscape modes and you can see three song titles listed per scroll in landscape mode and five in portrait mode. Sound quality is good through a 2.5mm stereo earbud headset (not included with the phone) and loud though tinny through the phone's built-in speaker. V Cast videos play smoothly and download speeds are average to a bit better than average. Again, the excellent display makes the most of Verizon's V Cast video service.

Bluetooth

The VX9400 has Bluetooth 1.2 with support for headset and handsfree profiles including car kits. The phone supports voice dialing over Bluetooth and it worked well with a variety of headsets including the Plantronics Discovery 655, scala 700 and Gennum nX6000. Incoming and outgoing audio were loud and clear and average range was good at 20 feet (tiny headsets like the Gennum had shorter range with the LG and all phones with which we tested it). The phone has a wide selection of Bluetooth profiles including DUN (dial up networking), serial port, Object Push and A2DP with AVRC for stereo bluetooth headphones. We were impressed with the LG's audio quality using A2DP with the Plantronics Pulsar 590a: it sounds better than most A2DP phones with strong bass and rich-sounding music.

Battery Life

As with most Verizon V Cast phones, EVDO is hard on the battery. If you're a V Cast video addict, you know what I'm talking about: an hour of V Cast video can eat half the battery. Fortunately, Mobile TV is much more battery friendly since it doesn't use the EVDO radio and the battery indicator didn't change after watching an hour long TV episode. With average use, the LG should last two days on a charge, including healthy use of the phone, texting, some web browsing and music playback. If you're a heavy V Cast video user, expect less and if you watch 4 hours of mobile TV each day, you'll charge nightly.

Conclusion

A very nice offering from LG and Verizon, and an exciting one since the LG VX9400 is one of the first two US TV phones. Even if you're not in a metro area covered by Verizon's new TV service, the VX9400 is worth a look thanks to its good call quality, strong reception, great display and overall good call quality. If you're looking for TV but want the smallest possible phone, the Samsung u620 wins, though we still prefer the VX9400's larger and better display.

List Price: $249 with 2 year contract

Web Site: us.lge.com, www.verizonwireless.com

Shopping: Where to Buy

LG VX8700

Call it the Verizon Shine, since the LG VX8700 is a member of LG's Shine Black Label Series of phones. That's right, the GSM, mirrored KE970 Shine isn't alone, there are actually 5 phones in the series, with the Korean version of the phone we're reviewing and our own as the only CDMA members (CDMA is the network type used by Verizon and Sprint). The Moto RAZR started the fashion trend, and this year is all about looks for phones. While the original RAZR was feature-poor, the LG VX8700 delivers with a good but not overwhelming feature set, which means we get the good stuff, but not so many features that the device becomes confusing and overly expensive.

Though at intro, the VX8700 isn't cheap (Verizon's hot new phones usually fetch a good price), it's not a bad deal at $179 direct from Verizon's web site. After all, the phone has Bluetooth 2.0, a good 2 megapixel camera, a music player, microSD card slot and a stainless steel body. Think of it as the next step up in style, casing durability and camera quality from the already good LG VX8600.

The brushed stainless steel VX8700 is incredibly attractive. Not one to fall for good looks easily, every time I spied it sitting on my desk I remarked out loud that was one nice looking phone (my poor co-workers grew tired of this by day two ). Generally, the prettier they are, the more they show fingerprints. The VX8700 has an advantage over piano black and mirrored fashion phones, it shows fingerprints less. That's less-- you'll still find yourself polishing off the prints from time to time, though mostly off the back and outer display. Verizon and LG include a nice micro-fiber-like slip case that does double duty to polish the phone.

Metal phones feel solid and the 3.77 ounce LG is no exception: it manages to feel reasonably light but seriously sturdy. To be clear, the front and back panels are brushed metal while the bottom cap and keypad surround are plastic. The keypad and d-pad are made from one piece of flat metal like the RAZR not the best for tactile feedback or ease of use, but great for looks and keeping the phone thin. Shallow lines between the keys and depressed numerals give a slight clue as to where your finger is, and the 5 is raised to help home yourself on the keypad. The keys are evenly backlit in white, and are easy on the eyes. The phone is a bit narrower than the RAZR (but not as narrow as the KRZR) which makes for a good fit in average hands. The flip hinge is stiff and sturdy and the battery latch is easy to operate.

The Motorola RAZR V3m and the LG VX8700

The volume controls are on the phone's left side, as are the voice command and combined charging/headset port. The camera launcher button is on the right side (a short press launches the camera and a long press launches the camcorder). The camera lens is on the flip above the display and the battery lives under the back door. Unfortunately, the microSD card slot isn't just under the battery door, it's under the battery itself, so you'll have to power down the phone to insert or remove a card. Such is the price of thinness and fashion.

As outer displays go, the VX8700 has one that's brighter and sharper than many other flip phones on the market. The inner display is excellent: very sharp, clear and colorful. The default animated silver bouncing balls wallpaper and gray theme really compliment the phone's look and show off the display's clarity and contrast.

Phone Reception, Features and Data

Looks are great, but a phone must fulfill its primary purpose: making calls. The LG VX8700 didn't let us down with near-landline voice quality (our call recipients thought we were calling from our desk phones rather than a mobile) and plenty of volume. Crank up the volume to near max and it's more like a speakerphone. The actual speakerphone on the LG is loud but tinny in comparison. Note that closing the phone ends the current call, so you'll use speakerphone with the phone flipped open. Ringer volume is average. Reception is also good, and the phone managed two to three bars of EV and one bar of voice in our severely signal challenged area. We were even able to make and receive calls when the phone didn't register a single bar of 1x, and the call quality was still good. Though it can't beat the Motorola E815 of old (the poster child for amazing RF on Verizon), the VX8700 is pretty good.

The RAZR V3m and VX8700.

Data services over EVDO worked well and are comparable to the LG VX8600 in terms of download speed and video playback performance. V Cast video downloaded with reasonable speed and not too much buffering and the video quality is typical passable (we've been spoiled by Mobile TV on Verizon with the LG VX9400 and Samsung u620!). The phone supports DUN (dialup networking) over Bluetooth for those who need to use the LG as a wireless high speed modem for a notebook.

As with most Verizon feature phones, you get Voice Signal's excellent voice command software that uses true speech recognition rather than recorded voice tags. Voice command works over Bluetooth as well and supports dialing by name, number as well as a basic set of commands for the built-in applications. The LG is compatible with Verizon's VZ Navigator for those who need driving directions on the go (this is a fee-based service).

Multimedia: Music, Video Playback and Gaming

Hard core mobile music users will lament the phone's lack of external or dedicated music controls. Alas, they'd disturb the phone's clean lines. The good news is that the LG has a music player that supports MP3 and WMA formats, and it can play music when the flip is closed and there's a flight mode so you can turn off the phone radio but still listen to tunes. The VX8700 has the same Verizon music player found on most all current Verizon phones. It's not exactly the Cadillac of music players but it does support playlists, sorting by title, artist, genre and more. You can use the player to download songs over the air from Verizon ($1.99 each) and it can sync to Windows Media Player 10 on the desktop (optional cable required).

Since phones are often too thin to house standard 2.5 or 3.5mm headset jacks, thin connectors and dongle adapters are increasingly common. The VX8700 comes with an adapter that allows you to use a 2.5mm stereo headset (headset not included). The adapter is about 4" long with a fairly large block on the end that has both the 2.5mm audio jack and a pass-through sync/charge connector (nice touch!). Audio quality is good through stereo headphones and the VX8700 makes a passable MP3 player, despite the lack of external controls. The phone has 44 megs of internal memory (ours shipped with 30 megs free) and you can store tunes on a microSD card up to 2 gigs in capacity.

We were very impressed with the LG as a gaming device. It handles arcade and action games perfectly and of course has no trouble with less demanding puzzle and board games. If you're into mobile gaming, the VX8700 is a good choice. Video playback as tested with V Cast video downloadable purchased content is good, though not quite as smooth and the LG VX9400 which is the current king of video (and TV) on Verizon.

Camera In the US, you have to look hard and long to find a camera phone greater than the 1.3MP affair that's offered by carriers. Happily, the LG does better with a sharp 2.0 megapixel camera. Though not autofocus, the camera delivers pleasing shots that generally show good focus with less noise than most 2MP and under camera phones. The only thing we didn't like was the persistent brown cast that plagues indoor and outdoor shots. Photoshop's "auto color" had little luck improving things and we had to tweak the colors on our own to reduce reds and yellows while enhancing blues. The camera can take still photos in JPEG format at 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960 (default), 640 x 480, 320 x 240 pixel resolutions. It has no self portrait mirror or flash, but it handles low light decently. The camera offers a variety of settings including spot and average metering, white balance and brightness. The camera has night mode, several shutter sounds (including silent), a self timer and you can save photos to a card by default. It has 2x zoom for all but the highest resolution setting. The video player is also good by US camera phone standards. It can take QVGA (320 x 240) video with audio at 15 fps and 176 x 144 for MMS. The format is .3G2 and videos have good color, not too much blockiness or motion blur. Recorded audio is tinny though. Like the camera, the camcorder has white balance and brightness settings, a self timer and various color effects.

Bluetooth

Want to listen to stereo music with no wires attached? The LG supports A2DP and AVRC (though they don't list that profile) for Bluetooth stereo headphones and headsets. We tested the VX8700 with the Plantronics Pulsar 590a and system sounds, music playback as well as the music playback controls on the Plantronics worked well. Music quality is good with decent bass and an overall clarity that's a distinct improvement over A2DP phones from a year or more ago.

Of course you can use standard Bluetooth headsets and car kits with the phone. We tested a variety of headsets with the LG, including the Plantronics Discovery 655 and the Samsung WEP200, both of which worked well in terms of voice quality and volume. Range was about 10 to 15 feet with these two tiny headsets, but they typically don't have great range with most phones. In addition, the LG has DUN (dialup networking), vCard transfer, FTP, printing, imaging and serial port profiles.

Battery Life

The VX8700 has a 800 mAh Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable. That's a decent capacity for a thin phone (there's less room for a large battery), and the phone lasted us two days on a charge with average use. LG claims 240 hours of standby and 200 minutes of usage (rather than talk time only, they quote usage time). We got 3 hours of talk time which beats LG's claim. As ever, heavy EVDO use, especially watching V Cast video will eat up the battery faster, while playing MP3s with the screen off drains the battery little. The VX8700 is no marathon runner, but it's good by fashion phone standards.

Conclusion

LG marries fashion and function with the VX8700. The phone is stunning, slim and easily pocketed and it has a good camera, great call quality, good Bluetooth performance including A2DP and good overall response times. In terms of both features and looks, it's serious competition for the Motorola RAZR maxx. We like most everything about this phone lots: a better than average camera, nice video recording quality, strong gaming performance, a very good display (though not quite up to the superb LG VX9400's) and a strong Bluetooth implementation. Our only two dings are the inconvenient microSD card location and the flat keypad/d-pad.

Pro: Great looks, slim, good build quality. Strong 2MP camera that takes pleasing still shots and decent QVGA video at 15 fps. Excellent voice quality.

Con: MicroSD card slot is under the battery. Keypad is board-flat and hard to press with little tactile feedback.

Price: $229.99 with 2-year contract ($179 if purchased from Verizon's web site, retail stores may be higher, other online vendors may be lower)

Web sites: www.lgmobile.com www.verizonwireless.com

Shopping: Where to Buy

Sony CLIE� PEG-NX70V Handheld

View Details

Key Features
Operating System	Palm OS
Installed Memory	16 MB
Display	16-bit (64k colors) Transflective Color TFT
Technical Features
Processor Speed	200 MHz
Input Method	Jog Dial • Keyboard • Touch Screen • Handwrite Recognition
Interface Type	USB • Infrared • Serial
PDA Special Features	Sound Notification
Expansion Slot	Memory Stick Slot
Display
Display Technology	Transflective Color TFT
Color Depth	16-bit (64k colors)
Multimedia
Built-in Music Player	MP3 Player
Voice Recorder	With Voice Recorder
Audio Output	Headphone Jack • Built in Speaker
Built-in Digital Camera	Built-in Digital Camera
Digital Camera Resolution	0.31 Megapixels
Communication
Wireless Capabilities	Optional Wireless • Infrared irDA
Battery
Battery Type	Proprietary Lithium
Dimensions
Width	2.88 in.
Depth	5.5 in.
Height	0.94 in.
Weight	8 oz.
Warranty
Warranty (List)	90 Days
Miscellaneous
Cradle type	USB Cradle
Included Accessories	Stylus • Stereo Headphones • Hand Strap • Charger Cradle
Release Date	15 November, 2002
Product ID	20257108
More Information
The new Palm Powered PEG-NX70V CLIE handheld is our most powerful handheld yet, featuring the new Palm OS v. 5.0 as well as an ARM-compliant 200 MHz CPU for enhanced overall performance and exceptional multimedia experience. PEG-NX70V comes equipped with a built-in digital camera for taking digital pictures and video. The camera resolution has been improved to 640 x 480 pixels (VGA) with an option to save the images on Memory Stick media in JPEG format. Furthermore, PEG-NX70V will record and playback video (MPEG-4) and store it on Memory Stick media. PEG-NX70V is equipped with a wireless communication slot for adding optional wireless LAN (802.11b) card. Browse the web, check emails and synchronize data wirelessly with your PC via wireless local area network (LAN access point sold separately and internet service provider required). This new CLIE also incorporates a voice recorder feature to record and playback voice memo. Approximately 535 minutes on 128 MB Memory Stick can be recorded in LP model.

New Linux PDA features camera, cell-phone add-ons

Empower plans to ship a $200 Linux-based PDA with a color display by December. The PowerPlay 1x is based on a dual-core RISC/DSP Texas Instruments OMAP5910 processor, along with the company's LEOs (LinuxDA Embedded Operating System) software platform. Empower has previously sold sub-$100 PowerPlay PDAs based on Palm-compatible hardware, direct and through large Canadian retailers.

(Click for larger view of PowerPlay 1x)

Empower announced in August that it had raised funds, and was planning to launch a new product soon. The company announced yesterday that it had ported its LEOs operating system to the TI OMAP5910 SoC (system-on-chip). The 1x is the first PowerPlay model based on the TI SoC.

According to Empower, the PowerPlay 1x features an easy-to-use interface, built-in MP3 and "MP4" players, a digital voice recorder, and software to synchronize with Microsoft Outlook. It also supports IrDA data beaming with Microsoft Pocket PC and Palm PDA devices.

A camera/smart phone expansion slot accepts an external 640 x 480 camera attachment with rotating lens and "built-in wireframe," or a cell-phone module featuring an earpiece with a "unique design," Empower says.

The Powerplay 1x boots from 32MB of Flash into 64MB of DRAM. An SD/MMC slot provides memory expansion for storage of video presentations, music, etc. It features a 16-bit 240 x 320 LCD color touchscreen display with "built-in, stainless steel wire frame," said to enable the device to function well in landscape or portrait mode, "by means of the stylus or QWERTY keyboard," according to Empower.

Empower will also offer a development version of the PowerPlay 1x, featuring a module with LCD and processor (shown at right) and the LEOs SDK (software development kit). The SDK includes a Linux 2.4.21 kernel with source and drivers for framebuffer, touchscreen, UART, IrDA, SD, USB host, USB client, power management, RTC, button, keyboard, and console. It also includes TI's DSPLink driver for programming the DSP. Additionally, it includes LinuxDA graphics library, sample programs, hand-writing recognition, a software keyboard, and an IP stack.


Architecture of PowerPlay 1x SDK
(click to enlarge)

In addition to the PDA market, Empower appears to be pursuing the consumer audio market. It announced yesterday it was working with Canadian loudspeaker company API on a Linux development project. Earlier, it announced a deal with Spherex to bring XBox Surround Sound to a "completely unrelated channel."

Availability

The PowerPlay 1x unit is expected to become available this December for approximately $199 USD. Previous Empower PDAs have been available through Futureshop, Best Buy Canada, and direct online. Camera and smart phone add-ons will be sold separately.

ViewSonic V36 Pocket PC with Camera

The V36 represents ViewSonic's second mass market Pocket PC effort since the V35 came out late last year (the V37 was not sold retail, rather it was bundled with a $1,000+ Microsoft software development package). While the V36 doesn't differentiate itself that much from other Pocket PCs in many respects, it does add one important feature: an integrated VGA digital camera. While the Palm Zire 71 and several Sony Clié Palm OS PDAs have digicams, this is the first Pocket PC (without a phone) to offer a digicam. The V36 runs Windows Mobile 2003 on a 300 MHz XScale processor and lists for $329. What is Pocket PC 2003, aka Windows Mobile 2003? Windows Mobile 2003 is based on Windows CE 4.2, while prior Pocket PC and Pocket PC 2002 PDAs were based on Windows CE 3.0. Microsoft is calling the new OS "Windows Mobile 2003" and all new PDAs running it are referred to as Pocket PC 2003 devices. What's the difference between Pocket PC 2002 and Pocket PC 2003 PDAs? You won't notice much difference at all. There are numerous bug fixes, improvements in page rendering times for Internet Explorer, a more friendly user interface for setting up network connections and networking changes under the hood. There are two versions of Pocket PC 2003: Pro for the more basic Pocket PC models and Premium for higher end Pocket PCs. The V36 runs the Premium version which means apps like Terminal Services, MS Reader, Spell Checker for Pocket Word and the new Pictures app are built into the OS stored in ROM. Features and Horsepower The ViewSonic V36 has a built-in VGA digital camera, a transflective display, an SD slot that supports SDIO, and standard IR. It runs on an Intel XScale PXA255 processor at 300 MHz, but clocks as fast in our benchmarks as some 400 MHz XScale Pocket PCs. The unit played back MPEG1 videos using Pocket MVP at an average of 24 fps with no dropped frames— very good! It's also great playing intensive games such as Nintendo emulators, Metalion 2 and Warfare Inc. The V36 has a control panel that allows you to to set processor speed to a variety of settings including auto, "superior" and power saving modes. The V36 has 32 megs of NAND Flash ROM and 64 megs of RAM. 57.11 megs of RAM are available to the user to run and store applications. Since it uses NAND Flash ROM, the OS must be copied into RAM when the unit boots, so you'll see a "Please Wait 15 Seconds" message followed by a black screen for a few seconds after soft resetting the V36. The battery is user replaceable, which means you can swap a new one in whenever power's running low, or simply replace a tired battery easily. The V36 comes with a USB sync cable rather than a cradle.

Deals and Shopping! Questions? Comments? Post them in our Discussion Forum! Read our Windows Mobile 2003 Comparison Read our Interview with Marc McConnaughey, Senior Vice President of ViewSonic's Advanced Technology Group!

Design, Buttons and Ergonomics

The ViewSonic is your basic rectangular Pocket PC with lightly rounded corners, and is on the mid-to-large side for Pocket PCs, being just a little bit smaller than the HP iPAQ 5555 (see photo, right). The casing is made of plastic, and the front is silver while the back is black. The camera lens is on the back of the PDA.

The V36 has the four standard application launcher buttons on the front which surround a very nice circular 5-way direction pad that operates smoothly in all directions. The power button is on the upper left side and the record button (recessed enough to avoid accidental presses) is just below it. The headphone jack and SD slot are located on the top edge, as is the IR port. The speaker is located on the lower right corner of the front face, and the mic is located on the lower left front side. The soft reset hole is on the back, and you must unscrew the stylus and use reset pin to reboot the ViewSonic.

Above: comparing the size of the V36 (left) and HP iPAQ 5555.

Screen and Sound

Transflective displays are the best around these days, but the V36's display isn't as contrasty or color saturated as units from HP and Dell. Surprising, considering ViewSonic has an excellent reputation for their CRT and LCD monitors!

The speaker volume is not very loud, and you may notice occasional speaker popping, especially for the first minute after the unit is turned on. MP3s sound good when using stereo headphones connected to the headphone jack. Headset volume is adequate but you won't have to worry about accidentally deafening yourself as you might with the amazingly loud iPAQ Pocket PCs. There are no control panel adjustments for audio output or input.

Digital Camera The V36 has a .3 megapixel VGA digicam capable of taking still images at 640 x 480 and 320 x 240 in size, and movies (with audio) at 320 x 240 or 176 x 144 in size. While VGA CMOS cameras in PDAs and phones don't take glorious pictures, the ViewSonic is among the best, rivaling top dog Sony. Videos are jerky but sharp. Like most cameras in this class, it doesn't have a flash. To take pictures and movies, you'll use the pre-installed VSCam application. This app runs in landscape mode and uses the full screen. It takes a second or two to load, and then you'll see a large on-screen 280 x 210 pixel viewfinder and you'll be ready to take pictures. If you plan on using the camera frequently, you might want to assign one of the 5 application buttons to VSCam. The application is very full-featured; and though the interface isn't very intuitive, once you figure it out, you'll be shooting pix with ease. VSCam allows you to set image resolution, set 2x digital zoom, specify the storage folder, turn on/off the shutter sound, select color saturation from 5 presets, select white balance (auto, Daytime, Nightfall (sic) and Indoor), select brightness from 6 presets, set flicker control and even set right or left handed mode (this controls the screen direction rotation when the app goes into landscape mode). The preview windows updates quickly as you move the camera around (or as your subject moves), and you can either use the on-screen capture button or press the center of the d-pad to take your picture. Still images tend to have a pink to purple cast (regardless of white balance setting) which can be fixed up in Photoshop or other capable image editing applictions. Like all low end digicams, images taken in bright sunlight wash out to white and some odd color shifts may occur. Indoor pictures are reasonably good for this kind of camera, without undue noise (whitish or colored speakles in the image). Microsoft Pictures, a part of the Windows Mobile 2003 Premium OS is the default viewer for your photos. If you wish, you can use any 3rd party image viewer to work with the standard .JPEG images which are ~45k in size at 640 x 480 resolution. Movies are recorded as MPEG files, though I received error messages when I tried to play these files using Pocket MVP on the Pocket PC and on the desktop using Windows Media Player 9 and QuickTime Player 6.4. You can play back the most recently shot movie using VSCam, and that worked fine.

Above, sample photos taken with the Viewsonc V36 built-in camera. The cat was backlit which most low cost cameras have trouble exposing properly. The outdoor scene was shot on a sunny day, and you'll notice the white walls have a majenta cast.. To see the full size image unedited, click on the images above.

Battery Life

The ViewSonic V36 has a 930 mA Lithium Ion battery that's user replaceable (yay!). Battery life when running in Auto mode has been quite good, even with camera use. Under average use, you should get 3.5 to 4 hours on a charge. Like other PDAs with user replaceable batteries, the V36 has a backup battery which preserves the contents of memory when you swap a new battery in. The charger plugs directly into the PDA since there is no cradle.

Software Bundle

This is a budget Pocket PC, but even so, it has less bundled software than other budget models. It comes with Westtek's ClearVue Presentation Viewer and AvantGo! which is free software. Of course, the V36 comes with all the standard Pocket PC applications such as Pocket IE, Pocket Outlook, and Pocket versions of Word and Excel along with various other Microsoft Windows Mobile 2003 apps such as MS Reader, Terminal Services and the Pictures image viewer application. eBackup is pre-installed in ROM and this will allow you to backup and restore the contents of the PDA to an SD memory card.

Optional WiFi Card and Accessories

Optional accessories for the V36 include a sync/charging cradle, a serial cable, folding keyboard and the $129 ViewSonic SD 802.11b WiFi card which we received for review. The card works with the V36's Windows Mobile 2003 OS and its Zero Configuration Connection Manager. In addition the driver offers enhanced features such as a status icon in the system tray that has popup menus which will tell you the current channel, transmission rate, link quality and strength, current IP info and the name of the base station to which the V36 is currently connected. It supports 64 and 128 bit WEP encryption and 802.1X. The driver occasionally caused device slowdowns when we tried to connect to new access points.

The SanDisk SD WiFi card and Socket SD WiFi card work well with the V36 in our tests.

Benchmarks

We've run benchmarks using VOBenchmark 3.0 from Virtual Office Systems. I've compared the iPAQ 1945 and the Toshiba e355, all of which run Pocket PC 2003 on comparable processors. Note the SD card speed isn't that good for the ViewSonic, but other numbers are excellent. Higher numbers are better (shown in bold).

Test (all are Pocket PC 2003 models)	ViewSonic V36 (XScale 300 MHz) Auto / Superior (fastest) CPU Setting	HP iPAQ 1945 (Samsung 266 MHz)	Toshiba e405 (PPC 2003, XScale PXA261 300 MHz)
CPU Floating Point	12.65 / 12.68	9.33	9.51
CPU Integer	26.88 / 26.95	18.41	20.13
Graphics Bitmap BitBlt	57.81 / 65.54	28.06	15.51
Graphics Bitmap StretchBlt	7.80 (grow) 6.00 (shrink) / 12.60 (grow) 8.90 (shrink)	14.40 (grow) 11.50 (shrink)	14.30 (grow), 11.70 (shrink)
Graphics Filled Ellipse	1.84 / 2.56	2.67	3.16
Graphics Filled Rectangle	8.74 / 10.00	5.99	7.38
Graphics Filled Round Rect.	1.56 / 2.09	2.15	2.36
GAPI Lines	12.40 / 15.70	35.90	38.60
Memory Allocation	8.42 / 11.30	8.56	8.42
Memory Fill	1.06 / 1.98	1.34	1.01
Memory Move	0.92 / 1.25	0.77	0.86
Text( ClearType enabled)	4.00 / 5.90	6.20	6.90 with ClearType Enabled
SD Storage Cards	64 meg SanDisk card was used	64 meg SanDisk card was used	128 meg SanDisk card was used
LRR/LRW	0.82, 0.02 / 0.82, 0.02	1.40/0.30	0.56/0.28
LSR/LSW	0.81, 0.02 / 0.83, 0.02	1.39/0.32	0.55/0.34
SRR/SRW	66.88, 0.80 / 72.14, 0.80	419.26 /0.86	184.06 /0.86
SSR/SSW	18.28, 1.01 / 18.94, 1.01	37.69/2.05	14.17/1.91

Conclusion

Pro: If you've been jealous of Palm Zire 71 and Sony Clié NX owners' cameras, then rejoice. Besides being the only Pocket PC with a digicam, it takes very decent pictures for an integrated VGA CMOS camera. The unit is very fast and won't make you wish you'd gotten a 400 MHz model. Battery is user replaceable. Con: The screen isn't as sharp, contrasty and color saturated as HP iPAQs and others. The unit seems a bit on the large size for a unit with no wireless radio or CF slot taking up internal space. Not much bundled 3rd party software.

List price $329. Includes a USB sync cable, charger, battery, stylus, slip cover, printed manual, CD ROM and PDF manuals for the V36 (same as printed manual) and a digital camera manual.