It’s been about two weeks since my family spontaneously had me pick out a new cell phone on Black Friday; apparently there was a sale just too good to pass up. My old phone, the Motorola RAZR V3, has been in my possession for upwards of three years now, and although it served its function to make phone calls, send text messages and take blurry pictures, it was time for me to upgrade anyway. Since that time, the iPhone has come out, Android has been released, 3G networks have become more commonplace, and there have been a slew of improvements to what a cell phone can actually do.

When I was first told about the sale, I hadn’t even heard of most of the phones the AT&T sales rep mentioned. After all, I only kept up with what I thought were the only high-end devices I would possibly want: iPhone, T-Mobile G1, the BlackBerry Bold and Storm, and a few others. The problem is that none of these devices except for the iPhone are carried by AT&T (which was needed in order to grab the good deal), and the iPhone itself has a monthly cost too high for me. But I was quickly proven wrong when I picked up my new phone, the LG Vu.

LG Vu - inside the main menu

I keep thinking that the phone should be spelled “Vue” because it’s most prominent feature is the 3″ haptic touch screen (it vibrates a bit when you touch it). At 240×400 pixels, the screen is very pretty and easy to read, and impressively bright. Although its design is clearly inspired by the iPhone, there are several things that set it apart. First of all, the entire device is smaller and lighter than the iPhone (weighing in at 3.16 ounces compared to the iPhone 3G’s 4.7 ounces). Instead of a single face button, there are seven: call, end, clear/back, volume up/down rocker, lock, and camera. Personally I appreciate the hardware buttons for core features like these instead of needing to navigate through menus to adjust the volume.

The device also has a host of other useful features: 3G network speeds, a 2-megapixel camera with auto-focus lens, an image editor, Bluetooth, IM client, a music and video player, a full HTML browser, multitasking capability, and perhaps most interestingly, a TV receiver.

Now, this doesn’t pick up analog TV signals out of the air like you think it would (because of power consumption issues on mobile devices), but instead, it uses a service called MediaFLO. FLO, which stands for Forward Link Only, is a completely separate band from the 3G network; in fact, it runs on the old UHF band, but its purpose today is to stream mobile-compatible video to devices in its area of coverage. In my tests, it worked flawlessly with almost zero buffer time, and delivered entirely watchable video, despite streaming at only 200-250 kbit/s. Switching channels happened instantly, and the service also downloads a live station guide so you can see what’s on now (or later). The phone even has a hidden but expandable antenna in case you’re in the outskirts of the reception area. There are a dozen or so channels to choose from, including NBC, CNN, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and more, but the programming itself felt a little lackluster to me, especially for the price, with a lot of repeated shows being streamed. Since FLO is a relatively new technology, I expect this to improve over time.

Picture taken with the LG Vu's camera

One of the features I was most surprised with was the phone’s built-in image editor. With it, you can apply effects such as sepia tones, adjusting the contrast or color balance, crop at various sizes, resize, rotate, and flip. It’s also easy to save your modified image as a new file, and then send it via Bluetooth or in a multimedia message, or set it as a picture ID or your phone’s background image.

The phone also includes a fully-functional web browser, the application I probably spend the most time in. Most of the web pages I tested rendered with very little trouble, but it did encounter noticeable slowdowns on larger pages, or those that incorporated a lot of JavaScript. Flash support is absent from the device, although sites like YouTube have support for streaming videos to the phone’s internal video player. I’ve noticed, however, that I opt for the “screen-optimized” rendering mode, because it almost always reformats the page in a way that is much easier to read. Instead of needing to scroll around in all four directions, not to mention zooming, I just find it much more comfortable to use the up/down rocker on the side of the device to read a page in a linear fashion. This, combined with mobile versions of websites (Digg River instead of Digg, for example), also makes page loading times much more pleasant, even on 3G networks.

Here's a night photo also taken with the LG Vu

Although I just spilled out a range of features I really like about the phone, it’s not without its problems. Staying with the web browser for a minute, I often find myself pressing the wrong link when several of them are close to each other. A feature to more precisely select links on denser pages would have been appreciated, such as an on-screen set of arrows, or a function to use the up/down rocker after pressing near a dense cluster of links to selectively choose the right target. This issue probably spawns from the touch screen not being as precise as it should be, but since the rest of the phone’s interface is large enough to press selections without difficulty, this problem only occurs on denser web sites.

The home screen and main menu are frustratingly locked down. The home screen contains four icons in a row along the bottom (menu, TV, contacts, and the dialer), but the can’t be rearranged or customized. I would much rather have an Internet shortcut in place of the TV button. Inside the main menu itself, the icons are confusingly categorized, and these cannot be moved around either. Programs are spread out in three different tabs with no apparent logical structure behind it (the music player, Internet program, camera, and games folder are in one tab, while the video player, picture viewer, and calendar are in another, while the IM and e-mail programs are found in a third tab next to the address book and recent calls list).

I’m also mystified why I cannot delete any of the pre-installed game demos, pictures, videos, ring tones, applications or bookmarks. I’m pretty sure I would never touch MySpace Mobile, so why subject me to the torture of keeping it in my applications list? I also have to scroll past a full page of default bookmarks that I never load just to get to my own. It’s truly a huge oversight in terms of the user experience. It also took me some time to learn the locations of the over-branded phone functions. Internet is accessed through a program called “MEdia Net”, while the music player is called “AT&T Music” (I thought that would bring me to their music download service, but that one is labeled “AT&T Mall” – go figure!) At least the calculator, calendar, and alarm clock weren’t subjected to the marketing machine.

Another thing to note is the mysterious competitive lack of support for Google products. While it’s possible to download Java-based versions of their Gmail and Google Maps applications, they weren’t built specifically for this phone and don’t offer the seamless interaction with the touch screen like they should (Google Maps doesn’t utilize the touch screen at all). There is no support for Gmail in the phone’s internal e-mail program, no support for GTalk in the IM client, and at the time of writing this, I have yet to find a way to sync my Google calendar with the phone’s calendar. Since I use Google’s offerings on a daily basis, this is particularly frustrating for me. Finally, only the proprietary earbud headphones can be used on this phone; no standard 1/8″ jack is anywhere to be found.

The keyboard in landscape mode

The LG Vu definitely is not for everyone. People like me who use nearly all of the phone’s available functions will get a lot of use out of the device, especially with its great multitasking capability, but for other people, it would probably just be too much. The phone is not difficult to physically operate, but it does have a learning curve involved.

An unlimited data plan is recommended for this device, while the TV service is not yet worth the monthly fee. The virtual keyboard lets you swap between T9 mode and a full landscape keyboard, and its accuracy is fairly high. I could probably type faster on a hardware keyboard but it gets the job done.

Overall, however, I still rate this as a very complete phone. Battery life and call quality are both very good, the feature set is one of the best available, and it looks great too. The LG Vu is available from AT&T and Rogers Wireless.