LG Dare Cell Phone Review
One thing the Apple iPhone has done since its launch last year is to make other handset manufacturers look seriously at what they were offering and start to do something to upgrade their products. LG was one of the first to come out with a new generation of phones like the Voyager which offered feature that even the iPhone did not have like 3G and mobile TV. Where LG and the others still held back was on design where they played it safe and stuck to known ground.
The LG Dare is nicely named because it dares to tread new ground. This touch screen phone allows you to drag and drop icons on the base screen to create your own shortcuts. It also has a drawing pad where you can sketch what you want and send it off via MMS. This handset has one of the best cameras on a touch screen phone with a 3.2 megapixel resolution and advance features like photo stitching, face detection and more. Okay, so it doesn’t have Wi-Fi and the brower and media player are not up to iPhone standards. But at a price of around $200, it is not competing with Apple’s killer phone.
As far as the phone features go, the LG Dare has all that you would expect from a phone of this price, plus a little but more. These include, full Bluetooth, GPS, mobile e-mail, a thousand entry phone book, note pad, tip calculator and so on.
Although the browser on the phone is adequate, it is not as easy to use as the iPhone’s Safari browser. And the small display means that you have to do a lot of scrolling to see a full page. The display and touch operations are the Dare’s biggest drawbacks. It has a 3 inch display which makes viewing web pages sometimes difficult, but then, with a small sleek phone of this size, there is really not much option. The touch interface requires some getting used to. In the beginning its easy to select something by accident, especially when scrolling. However, after a day to two’s use and setting the touch force to match what you want, the problems tend to disappear.
What makes the Dare stand out is the drawing pad which allows you to apply a variety of pen sizes and colors to whatever you draw. Besides maps and other sketches, it is great for doodling and sending the results to your friends on MMS.
Call quality on this handset is far above average and when tested there was little or no static or echo, even in the most difficult of conditions. Callers too said that although the sound they received was clearly from a cell phone, they had no problems at all with voice quality or disturbance. Even with the speakerphone they were able to hear without any problems.
The LG has a battery that provides talk time of up to 4.6 hours and standby time of up to 15 days.
All in all, except for the slight learning curve involved in using the touch screen, and a few other minor draw backs, this a phone that is well worth the price. It looks like LG’s gamble with the Dare has paid off.