LG enV2: Below the iPhone Benchmark

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Because the letters are spaced further apart on the inner keyboard, typing was easier than on a BlackBerry (RIMM). But that's where the comparison hits a dead end, because where BlackBerry's e-mail software is so very simple to use, the enV2's applications and services demonstrate some of the same bugginess I've seen with other Verizon phones.

Individually, many of these applications are quite robust. Accessing a Web e-mail or instant-messaging account was simple. The VZ Navigator service, powered by Networks In Motion, was also quite easy to use. I plugged in addresses, a breeze with the full keyboard, and Navigator pulled down my coordinates with the phone's GPS satellite receiver. In no time an automated voice was giving me turn-by-turn driving directions while the screen displayed a clear map of the route with the distance to the next turn.

Apple Leads by Example

Yet problems arise as these applications began to collide. If an e-mail alert, instant message, or text message arrives while you're using another application, it'll commandeer the screen and interrupt what you're doing. Then, if you accidentally hit "end" rather than "clear" to get back to what you were doing, you'll close out the first application. Very frustrating, and inexcusable. By now, there are plenty of smartphones out there that can jump between active applications.

And then there's the alleged browser itself. If Apple has taught us anything, it's that you can use the Web on a mobile device the way you do on a computer—if you have an iPhone, that is. With the enV2, you get Verizon's sculpted version of the Internet. This service, "Mobile Web," is purportedly intended to optimize Web content and pages for the constraints of a tiny phone screen. In reality, Mobile Web is all about steering your surf to Verizon's content partners. You can, with effort, visit Web sites not listed in Verizon's lineups. But many will look truncated or won't load properly on the screen. And why should it? This is not, after all, a regular Web browser like iPhone's Safari.

This may sound like a dippy analogy, yet only because the company happens to be named after a fruit: The iPhone was that first bite of the apple from the tree of knowledge. The enV2 is truly better than most phones. But now we all know how much more is possible. And the dominant names in phones—purported innovators such as LG—ought to wear fig leaves to shield themselves from embarrassment over what they failed to produce themselves.

Meyerson is Deputy Technology Editor for BusinessWeek.com.