LG Ally™ (Verizon Wireless)

Calls and speakerphone: We found calls for the most part to be loud on the LG Ally. We did occasionally use the side volume keys to adjust the sound both up and down. Using the speakerphone didn’t degrade call quality, and we had no problem hearing callers over the speaker. We did have a difficult time hearing callers over the speakerphone when two people were speaking simultaneously. We should note that if you hold the phone to close to your face during a call you may accidentally terminates call in progress. On the plus side, we had no problem connecting the LG Ally via Bluetooth to the Motorola Rokr T505.

Menu/phone book: The LG Ally runs Google Android OS 2.0.1. As such it has a few enhancements such as Layers in Google Maps, which offers the ability to see more details such a public transit information and Satellite view. The Google user interface is fairly straightforward and icon friendly. To access the cell phone’s applications simply select the square with dots on it and they’ll appear. Here are a few things to note about navigation. If you’re in a screen and want to go back to the previous screen simply press the back arrow. If you want to exit a program simply press the button with a picture of a house, since you can’t manually quit applications running on the LG Ally smartphone. For the most part, this is not an issue. Whenever you’re in an application and want to do more press the Menu key and a set of options will appear. You also have five screens that you can customize. You can also add widgets and folders to a particular screen by pressing the menu key.

The Google Android OS is really all about having all your contact information in one spot and constantly synched. When we say all your contact information we mean all – including social networking sites, multiple e-mail accounts, messaging (messaging is threaded – so you can see a complete text message conversation in one view), and even photo services where you may have accounts created. You can add all pertinent account information easily when you set up the device. You can also add multiple e-mail accounts. Setting up an e-mail account couldn’t be easier, simply select the e-mail app from the Menu. It’s just a matter of knowing user name and password. The smartphone does the rest. If you want to sync with your computer simply connect it via the included USB synching cable and it will appear as an additional drive on your desktop, making it easy to drag and drop files from a computer to the cell phone’s MicroSD card (a 4GB microSD card is included with the LG Ally).

Camera/video: The LG Ally sports a 3.2-megapixel camera, with auto focus, that can take photos and record short videos. The camera phone also has a flash, but lacks a small mirror for framing self-portraits. The camera’s shutter isn’t particularly fast, so you won’t capture a lot of action shots, however, it’s fast enough that people won’t be posing for a picture too long. On the plus side, the entire screen turns into a viewfinder (similar to digital cameras), so there’s more room to frame your photo. As for image quality, we found colors to be vivid when well lit externally and the images clear on the cell phone’s screen. Details are sharp. You can also record short videos on the cell phone. Playing videos on the LG Ally are pretty clear. There’s also a plethora of camera settings including exposure, auto flash, image size, scene mode, iso setting, white balance, timer, and color effects (Mono, Negative, Solarize, Sepia, Posterize, Whiteboard, Blackboard, and Aqua).

Music: As noted, the LG Ally has a music player. You can listen to songs stored in MP3, AAC (Apple’s audio format), and WMA (Microsoft’s audio format) formats. There aren’t many music-centric features included in the player, but it has the ones we’ve come to expect: Repeat, Shuffle, and Playlists (you can even create them on the fly – nice!). We highly recommend creating playlists otherwise in the middle of shuffling all songs you might hear a voicemail since the audio clips for voicemail are saved in the same place as all the music. Plus, you can save tunes stored in your cell phone as a ringtone Audio quality on the LG Ally could be better: songs were tinny and produced a bit of an echo. The LG Ally comes with a 4GB MicroSD card, so you will have plenty of room to store music on this cell phone. Besides adding your own music to the cell phone, you can also purchase songs from the pre-installed Amazon MP3 store application. Additionally, there are quite a few free music applications that you can download from the Marketplace such as Pandora.

Look and feel: At first glance, the LG Ally looks a lot like the LG enV Touch. Instead of the flip-open screen it has a slider screen instead. Slide the cell phone to the left to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard. Turn it horizontal and the cell phone’s automatically re-orients itself to landscape mode. The LG Ally wouldn’t fall in the petite category, but it’s not all that bulky either. It definitely doesn’t feel heavy in the hand, though it looks as if it might. The LG Ally has a black slightly rubberized backing, which helps from say sliding across a dashboard in a car. While most of the cell phone is black it does have two chrome borders along the phone’s display, which give it a sharper look. Another plus is that the cell phone’s spine isn’t littered with extra buttons. The only buttons you’ll find are camera (which is placed perfectly for snapping shots when in picture mode), the volume keys, a slot for an optional MicroSD card, 3.5mm headset jack, and microUSB charging port.

The cell phone feels comfortable when you hold it up to your ear or cradle it between ear and shoulder for longer calls. However, since the screen comes so close to your face, it attracts a fair amount of face grease, and we found ourselves wiping it off often. About that 3.5-inch screen, it’s bright and sharp. However, we did find the screen response a bit sluggish. Read: We had to press or scroll on the screen a couple of times before it turned the way we wanted. Additionally, out-of-the-box the screen comes with Haptic Feedback enabled (this is when you touch the screen and you get a little vibrating feedback), but you can turn off this feature. We also wished the display was easier to view in direct sunlight.

Keypad: We’re just going to come right out and say it – we really like the cell phone’s touch screen. We like the huge numeric keypad and the additional phone calling features that appears when you press the phone icon at the base of the main screen. In particular, we like that the letters on the numeric keys mirrors a standard keypad – meaning we never had trouble trying to figure out if we were selecting the right keys when we dialed a number or short code that included letters. We also found the internal QWERTY keyboard extremely usable and spacious.

In the battery life department, the LG Ally Touch could fare better, but for the most part is acceptable. We found that the cell phone could last about a day or two before recharging when using the LG Ally regularly to make calls, occasionally surf the wireless Web, and send/receive text messages. Users who barely use the cell phone to make/receive calls and send/receive messages can probably last about three days before needing to recharge, while heavier cell phone users will likely need to charge the LG Ally nightly. That said, this is about on par for many Google Android cell phones. The good news is that the cell phone charges pretty quickly.

• LG Ally (Verizon Wireless) Socialite Walkthrough

LG Ally Screen Protector Our Price: $10.99 Add with Phone

Clingo Universal Hands-Free Mount Our Price: $34.99 Add with Phone

BlackBerry HS-500 Bluetooth Headset OEM Our Price: $34.95 Add with Phone

Kingston 8GB MicroSDHC w/USB reader + miniSD & SD Adapters Our Price: $24.95 Add with Phone

View All Accessories »