LG Venus - VX8800
After a number of several impressive handsets offered by LG in the past couple of years, they are at it once more with the LG Venus VX8800, or known simply as the LG Venus. And Venus could not have been a more fitting name as this little device screams beauty and grace when viewed at any angle. It has a uniquely designed dual display with a touch sensitive screen. And what we love in its design is extended all the way under its skin. It has loads of features that will definitely make this phone a must have for those looking for a mobile phone with both beauty and brains, so to speak.
For starters, the Venus has the capacity for one thousand contacts which has room for five phone numbers and two email addresses each. Contacts can be organized into caller groups and embed each with their respective photos and any of the sixteen ring tones available. Other important features such as text and multimedia messaging, a calendar and alarm clock – even a world clock, a notepad, calculator, speaker phone and voice memo recorder.
Aside from those usual assortments of mobile phone features, other high end capabilities are also offered by the Venus. These include and are not limited to: Email messaging, instant messaging, USB mass storage functionalities, stereo Bluetooth, Web browser and PC Syncing. And not only that, the Venus also supports 3G, utilizing the great services of EV-DO.
The Venus of course comes with its own music player which supports most popular formats such as MP3, AAC, eAAC, and WMA. The player interface looks neat and has onscreen music controls. Like dedicated media players, the Venus can display album art when a track is being played. The tracks are organized by artist, album and genre automatically, and you may even create your own user playlists. Playback options like shuffle and repeat are also offered. While the sound on the Venus is already exceptional on its own, the user may also apply any of the eleven equalizer presets. Unlike most handsets that offers music playback that shares its memory with the phones other functions, the Venus has a music only dedicated memory of 64 MB right out of the box. And if that proves to be insufficient in the long run, you can add more storage with the use of the expansion slot which supports up to eight gigabytes of microSD.
LG Venus Camera and Display
The LG Venus comes with an integrated 2 mega pixel camera that has capabilities of taking still pictures in four different resolutions – 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 640 x 480 and a minimum of 320 x 240 pixels. It also boasts of photo editing capabilities and options for five white balance settings, spot metering, up to five color effects and three different shutter sounds with a silent option. The lens is also capable of zooming in your subjects digitally, albeit at only 2x. Picture quality with the Venus' camera was also quite good, without the tendency for blurred edges and has accurate and vivid colors.
The lens also doubles its use as a camcorder and it does so with two video resolution options, namely 320 x 240 and 176 x 144 pixels, which can be easily toggled depending on the needs of the user. Image editing options for photos are almost the same with the camcorder functions of the Venus, so the user may tweak videos further. For multimedia messaging purposes, the LG Venus limits video clips to thirty seconds only, which is sufficient for most users. Otherwise, you may capture video for as much as sixty seconds, provided of course the memory can handle it. Video quality was not very satisfactory though and the user should be well advised to keep hands steady as the Venus can not handle fast movements, lest you want to end up watching blurred and jerky home movies.
LG Venus Design and Accessories
As mentioned earlier, the design of the LG Venus looks very impressive. In fact it somewhat resembles the LG Prada which has a full three inch display. The Venus on the other hand has two display screens, with the top being your regular QVGA primary screen while the one at the bottom is the very pleasing touch sensitive screen which houses the Venus' navigation array. Together with the dual screen, the phone's svelte figure, and the luxurious leather-like material covering the back, the Venus looks very sleek and stylish and may fit both male and female users alike. Those skeptical with the touch sensitive controls of this unit need only to experience it once to become converts as the screen needs a firm touch to activate so unintentional pressing of keys do not happen easily.
What sets the LG Venus from other stylish handsets is that this one looks rather minimalist, relying heavily on the understated elegance fashion statement.
Summary of LG Venus Features
- Weight: 108 g
- Width: 51 mm
- Height: 101.6 mm
- Thickness: 16 mm
- Network: CDMA, CDMA EV-DO, CDMA2000 (800, 1900)
- Screen Resolution: 262,144 colors, 240x320 pixels, TFT LCD
- Data: CDMA2000 1xRTT/1xEV-DO rev.0
- Connectivity: USB, Bluetooth 1.2 (Stereo)
- Web Browser:
- Music: MP3, WMA, AAC, & AAC+ formats supported
- Camera: 2.0 mega pixels Resolution, 2x digital zoom
- Messaging:
- Expansion Slot: microSD
- Tones: Polyphonic, Vibrating alert
- Software Features: BREW
- Other Features: Voice Dialing, Voice Commands
- Battery: Lithium Ion 800 mAh, 4 hours talk time, 480 hours stand by time
PROS: The LG Venus totally lives up to its name and looks very stylish and beautiful. The camera produces good still images and the dedicated music memory is more than what competitors can offer. Its unique dual screen design also has a nice and user friendly navigation controls.
CONS: Touch sensitivity settings would have been greatly useful. Also the camera has no flash and videos leave a lot to be desired.
Overall: A beautiful slider phone all around and with its great features will surely end up in a lot of consumers wish list.