One of Verizon Wireless's new phones, the Voyager from LG, seems to be a combination of their existing enV phone and Apple's iPhone. Does it live up to that description?


So Verizon Wireless is determined to offer up an iPhone-killer: a phone that competes favorably with Apple's iPhone in the features department but has one added advantage—it uses Verizon's network, rather than AT&T Wireless's spotty (and tediously slow) network about which iPhone users have had nothing good to say.

So determined, that they've released four new phones in recent days: the Blackberry Pearl (which has been out there for a while but is new for Verizon), Samsung's Juke, and two phones from LG—the Venus and the Voyager.

The Voyager is the one of primary interest to me. It's the successor to their "enV" phone (the VX9900, which is itself a successor to the phone I own, the VX9800 or "V" phone) that combines the side-opening clamshell with the QWERTY keyboard inside with a front panel that sort of resembles the iPhone a little... who are we kidding? It resembles the iPhone a lot, as in looking almost exactly like an iPhone at first glance.

Like the iPhone, it has a touch screen on the front panel, with a menu of icons remarkably similar in style and content to the iPhone menu. Unlike the iPhone, it opens up to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard—pretty much the same keyboard found in the V and enV phones. Also unlike the iPhone, it comes with a camera.

Unlike the V and enV, there is no actual keypad on the front panel—another nod to the iPhone, to be sure. And also unlike the V and enV, the browser is supposed to be a full-fledged HTML browser.

At least that's what all the articles are saying, but not one photograph of the phone available online shows an image of the phone with the browser in action. The V and enV have WAP-based browsers that are rather limited, and those phones have no way to upgrade to a real browser like Opera Mini, owing to Verizon's irascible tendency to prevent installation on your phone of apps they haven't blessed (and charged you for). Is Verizon actually going to try to release this supposed iPhone-killer with that same crappy WAP-py browser, or is it going to have a real HTML browser? (Opera Mini for Verizon?)

This might come close to being the best phone I've seen so far. If it has a real tactile keyboard like the phone I have now, that's a win. If it has a real Web browser on par with Opera Mini built-in, that's another win. But let's see what shakes out when the phone is actually released. Will this be an iPhone-killer, or just another iPhone-wannabe?