LG VX9400 : new thin phone for Verizon Wireless

For now, the LG VX9400 is the best mobile TV phone available in my view. It shows eight video channels in lovely widescreen glory. But its most noticeable feature, a swiveling screen, will make it a divisive, love-it-or-hate-it device.


If you're buying a phone primarily to enjoy Verizon's Mobile TV service, stop now and just go get the VX9400. It gets better reception than Verizon's other Mobile TV phone, the Samsung U620, thanks to its huge 5-inch-long antenna, and it shows programs more clearly on its larger 2.2-inch screen. At 4 by 1.9 by 0.7 inches (HWD) and 4.1 ounces, it's solid but not huge. When you swivel the screen open, the phone takes on a T shape that's perfect for holding and watching TV.



t's that very T shape that will make the VX9400 a controversial choice. The handset starts out looking like a candy-bar phone, with its long, rectangular screen hiding its keypad. You swivel the screen into horizontal mode with an easy flip to show the keypad, so you have to dial it in horizontal mode. Now this isn't completely horrible, as the keys are right-side up. The real annoyance comes into play when you're done dialing. If you hold the phone right up to your head with the screen in horizontal mode, the earpiece will be in the wrong place, behind your ear. Because of this you have to flip the phone's screen back into vertical mode to talk, or hold the phone oddly angled in front of your ear. If you're, say, calling a bank that requires you to press number buttons periodically during your conversation, this can get really awkward.



This odd design choice won't affect people who use wired or Bluetooth headsets (mono or stereo, all of mine worked fine with this phone). It won't matter to folks using the speakerphone, either. And maybe you'll actually get used to the flip-dial-flip-back routine. Even so, it adds an extra step to every phone call, which I bet will turn some people off. I took a half-star off the VX9400's rating, and it lost the Editors' Choice to the Samsung U620, largely because of the extra work necessary to make calls.



That's a pity, because all around, this is otherwise a good Verizon phone. Reception was very strong. The earpiece was sufficiently loud, though voices were somewhat distorted at maximum volume. The speakerphone tended to be a bit quiet and muzzy but acceptable. Bluetooth compatibility is excellent, and it includes the ability to send and receive files freely to and from PCs and Macs. (Verizon doesn't have a dial-up networking plan for this phone yet, though, and I heard the file-transfer ability might be removed from the phone when it goes to retail stores.) Battery life, at around four hours of talk time, was average for a Verizon phone.

Like most current Verizon phones, the VX9400 uses a graphics-heavy Flash interface over Verizon's generic menu system. The Flash main menu feels a little gummy, but you can turn it off if things aren't snappy enough.

The mobile-TV experience here, on the other hand, is excellent. Uncork the giant antenna and shows look clear. Even the crawl text in news channels is readable, thanks to the 2.2-inch screen. Just like on the Samsung U620, you generally need to use a wired headset to listen, because Verizon doesn't let the speaker volume get very high. Sorry, kids: No phone boom-boxing allowed.

The 1.3-megapixel camera is decent outdoors, with just a few wavy compression artifacts, but it had some blur issues in our low-light tests. The video mode isn't nearly as good as the Samsung U620's. Although the VX9400 shoots movies in 320-by-240 resolution, like the Samsung, it captures video at only 7 frames per second. You can store pictures or MP3 or WMA music files on a microSD card tucked into a slot on the side of the phone; my 2GB SanDisk card worked fine. Though you need a $29 USB cable and special software to sync music with Windows Media Player, you can also upload songs directly via Bluetooth or using a PC-based card reader.



Ultimately, you'll decide between the VX9400 and Verizon's other mobile TV phone, the Samsung U620, based on your primary use. The VX9400 makes a better mobile TV, but the petite, non-swiveling U620 is a better voice phone. Basically, it comes down to how addicted you are to mobile TV.