LG Ally – First LG Android phone in the US

Sum and Substance:

Thumbs Up:

Features latest Android 2.1, great slide out QWERTY keyboard, 3.2 MP camera, Wi-Fi, stereo Bluetooth and EV-DO REV. A.

Thumbs Down:

Photo quality is below expectations, the handset doesn’t have Verizon’s V Cast apps.

The Whiz Kid Speaks:

LG Ally has a 3.2 inch capacitive touch screen with 480×800 pixels resolution. It supports 262,144 colors. The phone has a 3.2 megapixel camera which records 640×480 VGA videos. Features for the camera include Auto focus, white balance, macro mode, effects, panorama, self timer, and scenes. Supported video formats are 3G2, MPEG4, 3GP and WMV. Supported audio formats are WMA, AAC+, AAC and MP3.
The phone is based on Android 2.1 OS. The processor is MSM7627 at 600 MHz frequency. The handset has built in 512 MB ROM and 256 MB RAM. The 1,500 mAh lithium ion battery has rated talk time of 7.5 hours and the stand by time is 500 hours or 21 days. PIM features on the phone include Calculator, Calendar and Alarm. Voice features include speaker phone, recording, commands and dialing. Email features include Push e-mail, Microsoft Exchange, SMTP, POP3 and IMAP. A-GPS and S-GPS is also included.

Razzle Dazzle:

This phone reminded us of other LG handsets like LG EnV Touch. Both the phones have same rectangular and blocky design and is wrapped in silver and black casing. The device is 4.56 inches long, 0.62 inch thick, 2.22 inches wide and is a bit bulky at 5.57 ounces. We won’t call this phone light but it is still lighter as compared to heavyweights like Motorola’s Droid or Devour. The bulk also gives the phone a sturdy feel.

Inside Dope:

LG has given a lot of Android phones in the past but all of them have either been for the European or Asian markets. In fact, this is the first Android phone from LG to make it here in the US. This phone doesn’t have anything out of the box but we still like the way the LG has delivered the goods here. The device has a nice display, the QWERTY keyboard is easy to type on and the performance too is commendable. The phone also ships with Android 2.1 which is the latest version of the OS. LG Ally is available for $99.99 and you have to sign a two year service agreement with Verizon Wireless.
LG Ally has a 3.2 inch touch screen display with resolution of 800×480 pixels. The display is made up of tempered glass and it supports 262k colors. You get vibrant and crisp images on the display. The screen can stand bright sunlight too. The display is capacitive and is quite responsive to our touches. You can turn on haptic feedback where in the phone will vibrate when it registers a touch.
Music player of this phone is quite similar to what you’d find on other Android phones. You can edit and create playlists and there are the usual shuffle and repeat modes. You can buy and download music tracks through Amazon MP3 store. Ally comes with 512 MB internal memory and the external card slot can take up to 16 GB of storage cards. This phone is a Verizon product but unlike other Verizon phones, Ally doesn’t come with anny apps for V Cast Music with Rhapsody or V Cast streaming video. But you probably won’t miss them as there is the browser for Flash Lite video and you can get music through Amazon store. However, this is a noteworthy omission

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LG Ally has a 3.2 megapixel camera and there are three options for quality settings along with five options for resolutions. There are other goodies like five presets for white balance, five scene modes, eight effects for color, self timer, four sounds for shutter along with a silent option and also five special shot modes which include Smile Shot (this detects smiles automatically) and Panorama Shot. You also get macro mode, zoom and flash. If you think that all guarantees good photo quality, you will be disappointed. Image quality is decent but not that great. Colors were good but the images weren’t as crisp as we’d have liked. After clicking, you can geotag the stills and then upload them to various photo sharing sites like Flickr, Picasa, Facebook, etc.
The camera can also record videos and there are three options for resolutions 176×144 pixels, 320×240 pixels, and 640×480 pixels. The settings are quite similar to the camera. MMS clips are capped at a minute but in the standard mode, you can shoot for longer time. Call quality of the LG Ally was good but there were some issues. We heard our friends quite well and there was no static or any distortion. The signal strength was good too but the voice quality was a bit hollow and our friends sounded as if they were calling from a tunnel.
On the other side, our friends had a similar story to tell. They said that our voice was fine along with plenty of volume but the voice was hollow. Speaker phone calls were a bit hollow and the quality was still tinny. Music quality was pretty much average. External speaker audio quality was also tinny. We would recommend a separate headset especially since this phone comes with 3.5 mm headphones jack.
LG Ally is powered by 600 MHz processor which lived up to our speed expectations. However, there was a bit of lag while running multiple apps. The phone has a rated battery life of seven and half hours and the standby time is 20.8 days.

Nitty Gritty:

LG Ally has a good feature set and the design is aesthetically appealing too. We have no problems in recommending this phone to your if you are looking for a messaging device.

Source:-http://www.etechreviews.net/lg-ally/