LG enV2: Below the iPhone Benchmark

In the geological record of cell phones, there's before the iPhone and after the iPhone.

Had you placed the enV2 cell phone in my hands two years ago, during what one might call the industry's Jurassic period, I'd have been amply wowed. What's not to like about a full-blown keyboard and a big color screen tucked away neatly inside an incredibly slim handset? And with the enV2, it's clear that LG Electronics has improved dramatically on the prior two iterations of this somewhat revolutionary line of phones that it's developed for Verizon Wireless.

But the enV2 arrives in a vastly different world than its two predecessors. The debut of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone a year ago is the industry's equivalent of that gigantic meteor that's believed to have ruined everything for the dinosaurs. The iPhone has kicked up a colossal cloud of dust that's caused profound dismay across the handset industry, becoming the benchmark for what is possible on a consumer wireless device.

Frustrating Design Feature
It almost seems unfair to be critical. Compared with the enV2, the original V from late 2005 looks like an absolute brick. And let's be clear: I was rather taken with the V, and rather impressed when the next generation arrived last year with the enV. The enV2 is even smaller in size and weight than its predecessors. But the appropriate comparison is no longer yesteryear's accomplishments. The iPhone has shown us what's possible -- and all that a lazy handset industry failed to produce on its own.

That said, if your wireless provider is Verizon (VZ) and you want a full keyboard, the enV2 is worth a look. To make it smaller than its forebears, LG has shrunk the external screen, leaving room for four lines of text. Tiny as that looks, it's enough for a menu of basic tasks such as viewing contacts, recent calls, or an incoming text message. But to do anything much more involved, you'll be using the inner keyboard and screen.

Compared with its flashier predecessors, the enV2 has an understated look. Instead of separate buttons for each numeral and function, there are five horizontal bars, each with three icons. So for example, 1, 2, and 3 share a bar, as do "Send," "OK," and "End." But there's an art deco design accent to these bars that makes it hard to press some of the buttons in the right spot. Two of the bars bulge in the middle, which means the adjoining ones above and below get narrow at the midpoint. Even after weeks of use, it remained a struggle to hit "OK" in the narrowed middle of the top bar. As that was the key needed to unlock the phone, this design proved frustrating.

Easy Navigating
These are some of the quibbles, but the enV2 does sport a number of high-end features, including a 2-megapixel camera, a music player with a quick-launch key on the exterior, and a slot for an SD memory card to hold up to 8 gigabytes of music and pictures. And most important, there's the spacious full-QWERTY keyboard and crisp 2.4-inch widescreen display hidden inside an impressively small package.

The device is just 4 in. long, or more than half an inch smaller than both the V and the enV. It's also a shade thinner than its two predecessors at just 0.65 in. And it weighs only 4.23 ounces, which is a third of an ounce less than the first enV and nearly a full ounce lighter than the V. All told, it's just compact enough to sit in your pocket without discomfort.

Because the letters are spaced further apart on the inner keyboard, typing was easier than on a BlackBerry (RIMM). But that's where the comparison hits a dead end, because where BlackBerry's e-mail software is so very simple to use, the enV2's applications and services demonstrate some of the same bugginess I've seen with other Verizon phones.

Individually, many of these applications are quite robust. Accessing a Web e-mail or instant-messaging account was simple. The VZ Navigator service, powered by Networks In Motion, was also quite easy to use. I plugged in addresses, a breeze with the full keyboard, and Navigator pulled down my coordinates with the phone's GPS satellite receiver. In no time an automated voice was giving me turn-by-turn driving directions while the screen displayed a clear map of the route with the distance to the next turn.

Apple Leads by Example
Yet problems arise as these applications began to collide. If an e-mail alert, instant message, or text message arrives while you're using another application, it'll commandeer the screen and interrupt what you're doing. Then, if you accidentally hit "end" rather than "clear" to get back to what you were doing, you'll close out the first application. Very frustrating, and inexcusable. By now, there are plenty of smartphones out there that can jump between active applications.

And then there's the alleged browser itself. If Apple has taught us anything, it's that you can use the Web on a mobile device the way you do on a computer -- if you have an iPhone, that is. With the enV2, you get Verizon's sculpted version of the Internet. This service, "Mobile Web," is purportedly intended to optimize Web content and pages for the constraints of a tiny phone screen. In reality, Mobile Web is all about steering your surf to Verizon's content partners. You can, with effort, visit Web sites not listed in Verizon's lineups. But many will look truncated or won't load properly on the screen. And why should it? This is not, after all, a regular Web browser like iPhone's Safari.

This may sound like a dippy analogy, yet only because the company happens to be named after a fruit: The iPhone was that first bite of the apple from the tree of knowledge. The enV2 is truly better than most phones. But now we all know how much more is possible. And the dominant names in phones -- purported innovators such as LG -- ought to wear fig leaves to shield themselves from embarrassment over what they failed to produce themselves.