Verizon recently released the Voyager (aka U.S.S. Voyager NCC 74656), so I thought I would give it a spin and put its 2 megapixel auto-focus camera through the qipit test.

Many have compared this phone to the iPhone, because of its touch screen. The Voyager is an awesome phone, if you think of it as an evolution of a mobile phone, rather than a mobile extension to the Internet. The touch screen works well, but without the ability to zoom with your fingers, it is just too hard to browse the regular Internet. It does not allow for changing the orientation nor does it re-factor non-mobile web pages very efficiently. LG is in serious need of motionized technology on this phone to enable convenient full screen browsing of the web and for zooming in on pictures.

The advantages of this phone over the iPhone are the faster EVDO network, live TV, the GPS and the full QWERTY keyboard (as seen below).

The Verizon Navigator software is slow compared to Google Maps, not to mention missing the satellite view/hybrid option. It is hard to use it to look around an area, like you would using a regular map or Google maps on an iPhone. It is really set up to tell you where to go and when to turn, which it does well. As for speed, I could barely see a difference. Of course, this has more to do with the latency in wireless networks with the initial handshake. The other cool option is the live Mobile TV, but it is not available in Austin until 2008, so I couldn’t test it. You would think Verizon would put it on their access points in stores to show it off.

Where the Voyager really shines, is for texting, emailing, twittering and using qipit. The keyboard has great tactile feedback, and you can really do some fast typing. The camera quality is good, very similar to the LG EnV. Click the thumbnail below to check out the qipit test page results.

This is an awesome phone with different strengths than the iPhone. It is clearly one the best phones in the US market offered by the top rated U.S. wireless carrier. I just hope for Voyager’s sake the Borg haven’t assimilated the iPhone technology yet.

I am patiently waiting for the Deep Space Nine Docking station.

~ Conrad