Review: Titanium LG Voyager

by Steve Ragan - Nov 10 2008, 11:34

The Tech Herald had the chance to test drive the Titanium Edition LG Voyager from Verizon. The Titanium Edition is the same Voyager you already know, but with lots of expanded functionality. The upgraded specs include Rhapsody support, Visual Voicemail, and Mobile TV.

Almost ten months after Voyager reached the masses, Verizon offered a firmware upgrade and a new case to the classic Voyager. Existing Voyager owners can visit the Verizon store and get a firmware upgrade free, but if you are ready to upgrade, just get the new handset.

The Titanium edition is the same as the original, when it comes to how the handset feels and functions. The long, narrow, folding design rests comfortably in your hands and the keyboard design makes text messaging and navigation easy to accomplish.

 

However, for those of you with large hands, you will have a bit of a challenge at first when using the keypad. Likewise, the right side of the keypad has a joystick navigator. The navigator moves you through the various menus with ease, but only after you master the sensitive touch.

After you get used to the keypad and joystick, perfecting the task of fat-finger avoidance, the Titanium version of the Voyager is – bluntly put – a kick ass little phone.

Mobile TV:

When watching TV on the Voyager the images are crisp and clear. You can pick the channel from a decent range of offerings (CBS, MTV, Comedy Central, MSNBC, Fox and more) with an onscreen TV Guide-like menu.

The internal LCD (262K Color TFT) at 400 x 240 pixels offers deep colors and solid image resolution. The external touch LCD (same specs as the internal screen) offers the same high-quality image resolution when watching TV.

During the test, CBS Mobile was the station picked. The show, CSI:NY, was entertaining. Like normal broadcast television there are commercials, and these centered on adverts for various CBS shows, Public Service Announcements, and CBS Mobile. There is also the constant CBS Mobile branding, which while not blocking the show itself, can be distracting.

The sound is surprising for such little speakers, there were no problems hearing the video content.

One drawback is the show, no matter what you watch, will get choppy at times. There is also the occasional pixelation of the screen, much like DIRECTV or digital cable at times. It never lasted for longer than a few seconds during the test, but there is no proof if this was a location error, a network error, or perhaps both.

Another potential problem is the antenna that comes with the Voyager to help Mobile TV viewing. It’s thin, and if not handled with care, you will break it. If you end up buying the Voyager, get the optional insurance and protection plan just in case.

 

Visual Voicemail:

The Visual Voicemail feature on the Voyager is a killer addition to the phone, but there is a cost of $2.99 a month per line to use it. This feature should be free, but is worth the cost to anyone who gets a lot of voicemail and would like focus on the important messages first.

Verizon’s Visual Voicemail is no different than any other the others you might have seen. A simple display allows you to select which voicemail, if any, that you want to hear first. If you wanted, you can forward, reply or delete the message without ever playing it. If the person who left a message is a Verizon customer, you can leave them a voicemail in response.

The information available on each message offers all the important details. If the person is in your address book, you will see their name and number. You can see how long the message is, and when it arrived as well.

There is a 40/40 limit on the Visual Voicemail. This means that you can store 40 messages for 40 days at a time.

 

Rhapsody:

VCast Music with Rhapsody works well with the Voyager. Those tiny speakers allow a solid sound to escape when streaming music, or playing music that is added to the phone from your PC using the Rhapsody software.

The Voyager, with the added features of Rhapsody, supports MP3, AAC or AAC+ (Unprotected), and WMA. Storage is a max of 8GB using a microSD card.

All of the limits with Rhapsody, such as link limits and costs, apply with the Voyager, so there is nothing new in that aspect of the feature.

Some of the other features of the Voyager include a 2.0 Megapixel Autofocus Camera / Camcorder. The camera captured a sunny albeit cold, Sunday morning, and for the scope of the camera got a great image.

This image was cropped using the phone, and along with cropping the camera photo editing tools allow a 2.5x zoom and rotation. Resolution is 1600x1200 as default, however 1280x960, 640x480, and 320x240 are also available.

 

Surfing the Web on the Voyager, thanks to the navigational controls, was simple and offered no problems during testing.

The Voyager’s browser was able to surf just about everywhere, but as with any mobile browser, there are strict script limitations.

City ID, new in this revision of the Voyager and available for $1.99 per month, worked as advertised, when a call comes in the city and state of the caller is displayed. While a nifty feature, not sure if this is a real value-added service worth an extra $1.99 a month.

Call quality was clear, and there were no service interruptions during the testing period. Using Bluetooth, the calls echoed somewhat, but were still clear to the person on the other line, so there is no performance loss.

Other features, like the IM abilities, are decent. The Voyager supports AIM, MSN, and Yahoo. Looking at email, the Mobile Email application ($5.99 a month), supports POP or IMAP. There were no other Email applications loaded on the device, but if it is something you have to have, some calling plans include this service as a part of the base charge.

Like the LG Dare, the Voyager takes advantage of a touch screen to control the phone when it is closed. Unlike the LG Dare, this touch ability is not as sensitive, a slight learning curve will still apply here. However, the touch screen was much easier to use the second time around

The display itself, with normal usage, is great. The display is clear, bright, and easy to see no matter the external lighting conditions. There reflective glare that was seen in the LG Dare is not present. The navigation menu on the phone is simple to navigate and the locations of various settings are easy to locate.

 

The battery life lived up to the promise of 240 minutes talk time and 480 hours of standby. However, if you watch TV, or play music or games, you will notice the battery life drop. Yet, this is to be expected, so there is no surprise to this aspect of the test.

In short, buy this phone. Out of all the Verizon phones reviewed by The Tech Herald to date, the Titanium Voyager is by far the stand out favorite. While there are some minor issues, for a multimedia phone, you will be hard pressed to find a more rounded offering in Verizon’s lineup.

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