Review: LG Vu Plus
Calling
Calling on the LG Vu Plus works fine, but still suffers from some bad interface decisions. To place a call, tap the phone button onscreen. I'd like to jump to the dialer by pressing the "Send" key, but this takes you to the call log, with no way to access the dialer from that screen. From the dialer, you can access the speaker-independent voice dialing. I'd rather give up one of the many shortcuts on the keyboard and give this option its own key.
When a call comes in, the screen locks itself first, then makes you hold down on a button to unlock it before you can press "Accept" to answer a call. You can simply press the physical Send key to answer, but why make things so difficult on screen?
Once you're in a call, you can mute the microphone, activate the speaker or place the caller on hold. If you want to add a third party, you can open up the dialer and call the other number. Once connected, it seems like you can only swap between the two parties. There is an onscreen swap button, and pressing the Send key swaps lines, but there is no obvious button to join. Actually, its hidden under an obscure menu in the upper right corner, an unusual place for a menu to hide.
Contacts
The contact list on the LG Vu Plus looks nice. It's too bad, then, that it's impossible to browse thanks to the lousy touch screen. It's difficult to scroll to the number you need, and it's even more difficult to create a new contact. The screen never wanted to stop at the field I was trying to edit; it keeps flying past, even when my finger had come to a stop.
From the contact list, you can tap on a message icon to send a text message to a contact. But the same trick occasionally didn't work for phone numbers. I encountered a strange problem there. Some times the message icon would show up, but I couldn't start a phone call from the phone icon. Other times, the message icon would disappear, and then the phone would let me place calls by tapping the phone icon.
There is no sync option with the LG Vu Plus phone book. You have to enter numbers manually. The phone can't even use AT&T's own online Address Book, let alone more popular options like Google's contacts or a Microsoft Exchange service.
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LG Vu Plus
