LG Ally (Verizon Wireless) – Good QWERTY keyboard
For:
Sturdy device along with Android 2.1, good QWERTY keyboard, nice feature set
Against:
Photo quality is a bit low, doesn’t have Verizon’s V Vast applications.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
LG Ally has a 3.2 inch WVGA capacitive touch screen with 480 x 800 pixels resolution. The 3.2 MP camera can also capture 640×480 pixels VGA video. Features for the camera include Auto focus, LED flash, Scenes, Self timer, Panorama, Effects, White balance, and Macro mode. Supported video formats are WMV, 3G2, 3GP and MPEG4. Supported audio formats are WMA, AAC, AAC+ and MP3. The phone has 512 MB internal memory and the external card slot can take up to 16 GB of cards. S-GPS and A-GPS are also included.
The phone is based on Android 2.1 OS and is powered by MSM 7627, 600 MHz processor. Ally has 512 MB ROM and 256 MB RAM. Other features include 802.11b/802.11g/802.11n Wi-Fi, 2.1 Stereo Bluetooth and 3.5 mm headphones jack. The 1500 mAh has rated talk time of 7.5 hours and rated standby time is 500 hours. The phone book supports features like Caller groups, Mutiple numbers per contact, Search by second and first name, Picture ID, Ring ID. PIM features includes Calculator, Calendar and Alarm. Voice features are Speakerphone, Commands, Recording and Dialing. Email features includes IMAP, POP3, SMTP, Microsoft Exchange, Push e-mail.
Razzle Dazzle:
The design of this phone is a lot like LG EnV Touch. It has a rectangular and blocky design. The phone comes wrapped up in silver and black exteriors. The handset is 4.56 inches long, 0.62 inch thick and is 2.22 inches wide. On the sides, there are ergonomic angles and curves which make it comfortable to hold in the hand. Weighing in at 5.57 ounces, we won’t call this phone lightweight but it still lighter as compared Motorola Droid and Devour.
Inside Dope:
This is the first Android phone by LG to hit the American shores. Previous Android devices by the manufacturer came out only in the Asian and European markets. We really liked this phone even though there is nothing spectacular about the feature set. This is because everything has been kept neat and tidy in the phone. The display is pretty good, the slide out keyboard too is good and the performance too lived up to our expectations. The phone comes with Android 2.1, the latest version of the OS. The price is the phone is $99.99 and it comes with two year contract obligation. The phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera along with flash but the quality of images wasn’t as good as we’d expected. There are other features on the phone that will be of great use like stereo Bluetooth, EV-DO Rev. A. and Wi-Fi. Apart from that, we liked the solid design of the phone; the weight contributes a lot to make the phone durable. The phone has a rated battery life of seven and half hours.
Display
LG Ally has a 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen which gives a resolution of 800×480 pixels along with support for 262k colors. The display is made up of tempered glass and the images look vibrant and crisp. The screen was good even in bright sunlight.
Navigation array and keyboard
Underneath the display, there are two touch sensitive buttons for Search and Back functions. Below this duo, there are four buttons for End/Power, Home, Call and menu pop-up. On the phone’s left, there is a charger jack and volume rocker. On the right, there is a camera shutter key and microSD card slot. Sliding the screen on the right reveals a four row QWERTY keyboard. The orientation automatically changes from portrait to landscape when you slide the keyboard out. We really liked the keyboard, it has roomy buttons and hence feels comfortable to type on. The keys also give tactile feedback when pressed. On the keyboards right, there is a square navigation toggle which is a nice alternative, if you don’t want to use the touch screen.
Android features
If you have used Android 2.1 cell phones before, you wont need much time to get used to the LG Ally. This handset offers seamless integration with Google apps like Google Talk, Gmail, Google Search, YouTube and Google Maps along with Google Maps Navigation.
Phone book and PIM features
LG Ally’s feature set includes multimedia and text messaging, visual voice mail, voice commands, speech-to-text recognition, A-GPS, Stereo Bluetooth and Wi-Fi. Android browser, which is one of our favorites, is also included. You can tap for zooming in and out but pinching feature, which we have seen on iPhone, is not supported. There is also the Android Marketplace which lets you download games and apps.
Music player
For music enthusiasts, LG Ally comes with a built in music player which is quite similar to other Android phones. You can edit and create playlists and usual shuffle/repeat modes are also there. Amazon MP3 Store lets you buy/download tracks. For storing music, there is 512 MB of internal memory and the external card slot can take up to 16 GB memory cards. This phones doesn’t come with applications for V Cast video streaming or V Cast Music along with Rhapsody. Fortunately, there is the browser for Flash Lite videos and for music, there is always the Amazon MP3 store.
Camera
LG Ally has a 3.2 megapixel camera which gives five options for resolutions and three settings for quality. There are other options like 5 scene modes, 8 color effects, 5 white balance presets, self timer, 4 shutter sounds along with a silent option. There are 5 special shot modes which include Panorama shot as well as the Smile Shot. The latter automatically detects the smiles on the subject’s faces.
Call quality
Call quality of this phone was OK but we did feel that our friends sounded hollow. On the other side, they too reported that we were sounding as if we were calling from a tunnel.
Verdict:
LG Ally has a great design and feature set. This is LG first Android phone for the US market and we like this first attempt.
