LG Ally

The LG Ally, at first glance, doesn’t look like a stand-out device. In fact, it looks like a lot of other handsets out there: a touchscreen taking up the majority of space, with a few buttons at the bottom for good measure. Pretty standard stuff. Sure, there’s a landscape, physical slide-out keyboard underneath, and that does add a bit of differentiation to the mix (especially with this increase in touch-based only Android handsets), but is it enough to make the LG Ally stand-out amongst the increasing crowd? Or does the LG Ally fall flat in its hopes to shine?

Size and Weight :

This phone is on the chunkier side, though its rounded edges make it look a little smaller than it actually is. It measures 4.6 by 2.2 by 0.6 inches and weighs a hefty 5.6 ounces.

Network and connectivity:

The Ally is a dual-band EV-DO Rev A (850/1900 MHz) device, and it includes 802.11 b/g/n Wi-Fi—one of the first handsets with 802.11n in the U.S. This is one great sounding phone; voices sounded clear, full, and loud in both directions. Callers said I sounded clearer and punchier than on several other Verizon handsets. Calls also sounded good through an Aliph Jawbone Icon Bluetooth headset. The scratchy-sounding speakerphone was still easily loud enough for outdoor use. Voice dialing worked over Bluetooth, but the Ally's Voice Dialer app was horribly inaccurate. Reception was average. Battery life was quite good at 6 hours and 15 minutes of talk time.

Camera and Video:

We’ll just come right out and say it: this won’t replace your current digital camera, and if you’re looking for a method to combine your phone and camera, the LG Ally is not going to be your gadget of choice. Yes, we know there’s only a 3.2MP camera on the back, but we’ve taken better pictures with other 3MP camera-phones. And, honestly, it doesn’t get any simpler than that. It does feature auto-focus, video capture, and it has an LED flash, so that may be good enough for some people. And, in fact, the LED flash did well as an actual flash, and in the autofocus assistance department. But, images came out without definition, and more often than not, splotchy and blurry. Shutter speed, when worked in conjunction with the two-stage hardware camera button, is not too bad, but you should wait for the autofocus to kick in, if you want any kind of semblance of a decent picture. There are 8 effects to choose from, a dedicated macro mode, white balance which can be configured, and ISO. But, none of those mattered after awhile, as we just didn’t want to take anymore photos with it.

Memory and Display:

The 3.2-inch touchscreen itself feels like a large slab of plastic, more so than its Android competitors, but we didn’t find that it missed any touch inputs, and it was as responsive as we would have liked. However, with LG’s decision to go with WVGA resolution on a 3.2-inch screen, we can’t jump on board. We never thought we’d say that there’s too many pixels on our phone’s display, but LG have definitely made the argument possible. Truth be told, on a screen anywhere less than 3.5-inches, HVGA would have been a perfect fit. LG throws in a 4GB microSD card; my 16GB SanDisk card worked fine in the side-mounted slot. There's also 126MB of free internal storage.

Entertainment Features:

The top-mounted headphone jack accepts standard-size 3.5mm plugs. Music tracks sounded smooth and crisp over Motorola MotoROKR S9-HD Bluetooth headphones. The music player displays large album art thumbnails. WMV, 3GP, and MP4 videos played smoothly in full screen mode.