LG Venus Review - Usability & Performance

The integrated speakerphone was okay in a pinch but not great, and the phone worked well with mono and stereo 2.5mm headsets (not included).  I was able to easily pair Venus with a variety of mono and stereo Bluetooth headsets, and music playback sounded pretty good via the internal speaker and very good via stereo Bluetooth headphones. 

Now back to that dual display layout.  Think of the lower display as a navigational array from the future; it doesn’t display any calling/messaging information or media, but rather acts as a combination five-way D-pad and softkey layout.  This area changes depending on what you’re doing with the phone.  For instance, from the home screen the nav screen shows a round “Menu” button in the center with Message, Contacts, Shortcut, and All Calls buttons at the four corners.  Delve into any of those areas, say Message, and the layout will change to show context-sensitive options.  It’s a handy system, and the text and icon “buttons” look great on the little screen - both the main and secondary displays on Venus are top-notch.  But what at first seemed like enhanced functionality soon descended into border-line gimmick territory for me. 

Venus’ morphing menus are super cool to look at, and they do make it easier to learn the phone.  And I liked the haptic feedback confirming my virtual button presses.  After awhile, however, I really started wondering why LG and Verizon didn’t just make a full-touchscreen device like the Alltel Glimmer - also by LG.  Between the physical dialing keypad, virtual navigation area, and main display, I was left wanting for a bit more of a seamless experience.  That’s not at all to say that Venus was hard to use - the morphing menus definitely added a level of user-friendliness not found on most feature phones.  Rather, I wanted Venus to go a step further with a fully-touchable display bolstered by a physical dialing keypad, like Glimmer and HTC’s Touch Dual offer.  With Venus I kept finding myself trying to poke the main display to navigate menus or make selections, and then felt a bit let-down to realize that I had to move my finger off of the main display and back down to the nav. area.