LG Dare *Part 2 of 2 - Review

LG Dare *Part 2 of 2 - Review The web browser can be used in either portrait or in landscape mode. When launched, it shows icons for News, E-Mail, Entertainment, Sports, Weather Connect, Services More and Favorites. Along the bottom are icons for Back and Forward, Refresh, Home, Zoom, Favorites, World Wide Web and Menu. When selecting the World Wide Web icon, you can type in a specific — using the on-screen QWERTY keypad or by selecting previously viewed sites. Thanks to the updating EVDO rejuvenated technology, graphically intends web sites such as phonearena.com can load between 20 and 30 seconds which is almost twice as fast as the Voyager and Glide. Once the site is loaded, it compresses and drags the page around with your finger. But due to the small screen, there is a lot of horizontal scrolling and vertical scrolling that must be done. You can eliminate some of this by zooming out all by selecting the page over view mode. This shows a red rectangle on the screen where you can use to zoom in to a certain area of a page. We also found that selecting your weight could be difficult at times as they are shown small on the screen but zooming in makes them easier to click on. Most web sites are shown in properly formatted. But since the dater only has basic HTML browser, you cannot view plug-ins such as flash and active X. Thankfully, the browser is compatible will the popular YouTube site and is able to string videos from it without problem. The music player allows you to view All Songs Playlist, Artist, Genres, and Albums. Unfortunately, the songs are listed alphabetically instead of by using their ID 3 track number. Once the song begins to playback, the album mark would be shown in the center with the track info listed above it. An icons totally line, play, pause, and fast forward on the bottom. You can rotate the phone 360 degrees with the album art and player changing their orientation. Clicking on the home screen at the top will keep the music playing and return you back to the home screen. This multi-tasking allows you to sene and receive text messages, browse the web and perform other functions while the music continuos playback. You can press on the drop down arrow to select the different tracks to play. All press on the bar that trade turn back on main music player. The only downside we experience was that the speaker is located on the back of the phone next to the camera. When the phone is lying on a desk the music sounds muffled but turning it over solves its design flaw. You can also use standard wired earbuds with the 3.5-millimeter headset jack or wireless headset using stereo bluetooth. The 3.2 mega pixel camera is one of the best that we’ve seen from a Verizon device. Images taking outside during the day have excellent detail and realistic color representation. However, once you move inside the quality starts to go down due lower light levels but this is a problem with most camera phones. The built in flash does help but the ranges limited totally about six feet. The camcorder is capable of recording videos at 640x480 VGA resolutions but it's limited to only 15 frames per second. However, these are good enough of viewing one of PC and for posting to YouTube. It can also record two VGA resolution videos at 120 frames per second for slow motion playback at 15 frames per second. The Dare also features photo-editing tools allowing you to draw, zoom, rotate crop, adjust contrast, sharpness board, or brightness, and add boarders to photos. We experience excellent — noise reception with the Dare but it usually showing four bars of EVDO and three bars of one X at most locations. We are also able to place and receive calls in French areas even though the bars would drop down to one or zero. Call quality through the earpiece speaker was good and lack any interference. However, we could hear a small ticking sound on the background almost like a second hand moving in an analogue watch except that it was ticking every half second. We tried different volume settings but it did not affect it. Test calls that we made to people on land lines said that are voice sounded away from the microphone almost like we were using a speakerphone. The Dare is a device that has a lot going forward including a three-inch touch screen, HTML browser. 3.2 mega pixel camera, music player, bluetooth, 3.5-millimeter headset jack, and Micro STHC support up to 8-giga bytes. All of this is pack into a slick and stylish phone but it’s sure to be one of Verizon’s hottest sellers this year. Please visit phonearena.com for a full review of the LG Dare including pictures and 360 degree rotational views.