Digital Trends

LG VX9400 April 1st, 2007 | by Stewart Wolpin

Performance

Hold down the dedicated TV button and pull up the telescoping TV-only antenna from the rear and a standard program grid appears on screen; vertically if you haven't swung the screen out, horizontally if you have. You scroll through the grid up/down/left/right with the nav keys. Just hit select when you've highlighted what you want to watch, and a picture appears almost instantaneously. The left soft key gives you a "full screen," and options menu that includes links to the program guide, program description, subscription info, upgrade check and even parental controls. Broadcasting is stalled when you scroll through these options. While watching, you can channel surf using the up/down keys and pause play via the OK key.

So how good is the picture? Darn good, especially compared to other clip and streaming video heretofore available on cell phones. The picture is surprisingly crisp and detailed with plenty of color and contrast, slightly superior to the Samsung in the latter two categories. Even sports events are watchable, depending on the side of the ball, of course. Basketball looked fine, but baseball and especially hockey may be difficult to follow. But then again not being able to watch at all is even worse.

And how good is the reception? Darn good, especially compared to other clip and streaming video heretofore available on cell phones. Unlike streaming video, there are no buffering issues and there are few burps in the signal. Every so often, a white identifying banner will appear along the bottom of the picture, but it soon quickly disappears. Even on a fast-moving train reception was fairly solid, with only the longest underpasses causing occasional bleeps.

When a call comes in, the TV or music cuts out and you are prompted to answer or ignore the call. Once the call is completed, you are returned to your previous programming. There is no DVR functionality -- you will miss whatever is broadcast while you're on the phone. If you were listening to music, which (obviously) is recorded, the player picks up from where it left off.

As a phone, other than the swing screen positioning, the VX9400 is excellent. Call quality is as crisp and clean as the TV picture with plenty of volume, but we suffered some minor ambient noise interference from the other end (i.e. a TV on in the background created some voice clipping). Ditto for ringtone. TV speaker sound sans headset also is full and thick, especially compared with the thin and scratchy sound from the Samsung, with enough volume to hear dialog distinctly in a quiet room.

The camera shutter is actually a bit too fast -- the picture snaps almost as soon as you press the button. This means the camera is still moving slightly while the image is being captured, which results in blurry pictures, especially indoors. Indoor images also are a bit grainy, but with contrast and color on par with pictures from other 1.3 MP cameras. Outdoor pictures are spectacular, with true bright colors and deep contrast. It's focal length is actually longer than the optics of the Samsung u620, meaning you'll get more in the picture standing closer.

Getting pictures out of the camera is a challenge. Neither this phone nor the Samsung u620 let you transmit images from the camera to a PC via Bluetooth. Either you'll have to settle for lower resolution MMS or emailed images, or you'll have to pry the microSD card out and use a card reader.

Possibly the best thing about the VX9400 is the battery life, rated at 228 minutes (a little less than four hours) of talk time and 458 hours (a bit more than a week) in standby, both about average. But we got six hours of TV watching from a single charge, almost twice as much TV viewing time as we got on the Samsung SCH-u620.


Conclusion

The LG VX9400's combination of unique design and surprisingly crisp TV quality and reception bodes well for this new category of phone. Even without the TV however, this is another superior phone from LG and Verizon.


Pros:

• V CAST Mobile TV capable
• T-bar widescreen design
• Speedy EV-DO connections
• Stereo Bluetooth
• External microSD slot
• Long TV battery life

Cons:

• No stereo Bluetooth for TV viewing
• Awkward screen geometry for phone calling
• Poor key backlighting