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I recently got the chance to try out one of Verizon’s latest phones in the enV family, the LG enV Touch.  Just released this past June, the enV Touch is an upgrade to the LG Voyager as it features a nice 3.0 inch touch screen on the front and opens to reveal another 3.0 inch screen and a fully QWERTY keyboard.

What is it?

The LG enV Touch is a great phone for those who like touch screens, but like texting and messaging on a full QWERTY keyboard.  In addition, it features a 3.2MP camera with flash and many photo options, full HTML browser, Verizon’s VCast video and music services, and 256MB onboard memory, which is expandable to 16 GB via microSD card.  Be sure to take advantage of its Bluetooth capabilities, Verizon’s games, VZ Navigator, and the ability to put apps on the touch screen for quick access.  The LG enV Touch is currently available at all Verizon stores for $99 with a new two year contract. 

What’s in the box

In the box you will find the LG enV Touch, a USB cable, a wall charger, product manual, and user guide.  Headphones must be purchased separately but it uses a 3.5mm plug which is pretty common to find.

The Good

Using the enV Touch was quite an upgrade over my basic flip phone.  The enV Touch worked great out of the box and I didn’t have to play with the settings too much to get it started.  I could start calling, sending messages, or browsing the web immediately with ease.  The accelerometer helped to change the orientation of the display pretty much immediately upon rotating the phone.

The touch screen was pretty customizable as I was able to place my important apps such as Mobile IM, Mobile Email, YouTube, Facebook, and games on the home screen for quick access.  It would have been nice if LG decided to make multiple home screens to add in even more apps.  I found everything (settings, messaging, recent calls, and favorites) laid out efficiently. 

Mobile Email was another great tool as to use as it conveniently alerted me whenever new email came.  In addition, listening and adding music to the device was very simple and the fact that the phone sports a 3.5mm jack meant no need for odd adapters.  Messages were displayed either threaded by contact or by date received, depending on your preference.  When messaging, I could go from normal T9 (or Word) texting on the touch screen, to a full QWERTY virtual keyboard on the touch screen (similar to the LG Dare and iPhone), to QWERTY texting on the internal keyboard.  However, I was not able to go from internal QWERTY texting to touch screen texting without having to retrieve the message in the draft. 

Both the touch screen and the internal screen displayed bright, vibrant colors and made it very easy to read text.  Surfing the web was extremely easy especially when in landscape mode the options of tabs became available.  Bookmarks of your favorite websites could be made and featured on the home screen for quick access.  Some preset bookmarks include Facebook, YouTube, Myspace, and PhotoBucket.  I found myself using the mobile versions of Facebook and YouTube quite often and browsing on either screen was very easy. 

Playing games on the enV Touch was definitely a lot of fun, except the games were pretty expensive if you wanted to purchase them for more than a month.  Some personal favorites of mine are Need for Speed, Age of Empires 3, and Call of Duty World at War.  Some of the games have the ability to be played on the touch screen, while most of them involve the internal screen and QWERTY keyboard. 

The Bad

Like with every good phone, there are always some bad aspects.  First off, the thing that annoyed me the most was the battery life.  Perhaps coming from a phone that hardly ever needed charging, I found myself charging the Touch once or twice a day.  Granted, I would often watch videos, surf the web, check my email, and text quite a lot throughout the day.  I would like to see the battery life improved, but if I limited myself to minor email, video and web usage, the phone would last well throughout the day. 

Small, compact, and efficient are a few qualities I like for in every gadget.  Unfortunately, the LG enV Touch was larger and less compact for my liking as it often bulged out of my pocket.  With that being said, I prefer my phones to be smaller, but I could deal with the size, as it wasn’t that big of a deal.  I would definitely recommend locking the touch screen part of the phone whenever it is not in use—sometimes my icons on the home screen would be moved around after leaving it in my bag with an unlocked touch screen.  The touch screen can also be ultra sensitive sometimes. 

Possibly due to my location, I found accessing websites to be painfully slow at times.  I only had a few bars for EVDO, which accounted for the slow speeds, but on the road in New York City when my signal strength was maxed, the web definitely became faster.  If Verizon could market an app store in which users could purchase actual games or better “extras” that developers create, I think Verizon would make a lot more money.  The offerings they have are rather small, but are decent. 

The Crux

The LG enV Touch is definitely one of the top Verizon phones available.  Its sleek design complemented with a touch screen, QWERTY keyboard, and web functionality makes it a clear upgrade over the LG Voyager.  For $99 with a new two year contract, the LG enV Touch sports a fair price.  I would give the phone a 4.5/5 rating. 

Check it out [Verizon]

Check out the gallery: LG enV Touch Peep Show