Verizon playing catch-up with Voyager

Is it the iPhone? Clearly not.

Is it a good phone? You bet.

Verizon’s iPhone clone, the Voyager, was released last month to a lot less fanfare than Apple’s iPhone debut earlier this year. You may recall the hoopla.

Verizon, on the other hand, has quietly introduced the Voyager as one of several new phones available for holiday shoppers. Made by LG Electronics, the Voyager uses touch-screen controls for navigation, but they are not integral to the operation of the phone, as on the iPhone.

Nor are the touch controls the only way to use the phone. Unlike the iPhone, the Voyager opens to reveal a full QWERTY keyboard, a great touch for road warriors worried that typing on the iPhone may prove difficult.

Hence, if you were considering a phone such as the BlackBerry, Q, BlackJack or the T-Mobile Wing because it has a full keyboard, add the Voyager to your list. It offers the best — well, almost — of both worlds, a touch screen and tactile keys, to make phone calls, use e-mail, search the Web, organize tasks and play music.

In terms of dimensions, the Voyager is twice as thick as the iPhone and not as wide, so the Voyager’s exterior screen, decent at nearly 3 inches measured diagonally, lacks the impact of the iPhone’s 3 1/2-inch screen.

There are other distinctions between the iPhone and the Voyager, of course.

The user interface on Apple’s mobile phone was revolutionary in its approach. With the swipe of a finger, an application opens. You type a message, dial the phone or scroll through album covers to find the song you want. It works simply and is quite intuitive.

On the Voyager, the interface uses touch controls on the front cover only and really just to open an application. Use photos as an example: On the iPhone, when you look at family photos, you flick to the next one with a finger. Then, by using two fingers as if they were tweezers, you can enlarge or shrink a photo. Lots of fun.

On the Voyager, you tap on a photo to open it. That’s it. You can’t manipulate the image at all. You can tap an arrow key to move forward or backward, which is nice and better than on most phones, but it doesn’t compare with the fun one has with the iPhone.

The Voyager is actually a touch version of another LG phone, the enV, which was introduced last year to pretty solid reviews. All LG did with the Voyager is add a new cover to the phone, one with touch-screen tools and bigger internal and external screens.

Currently, the enV is offered for $99, while the Voyager is $299.

Is the Voyager $200 better? I don’t think so, but the touch-screen top is a solid improvement to an already good phone, even if it does appear to be a classic example of one manufacturer rushing to catch up to another’s innovations.

Not on iPhone

Yet, this is a nice, smart phone — one that is fun to use, as well as offering some features the iPhone lacks. Here are two: You can shoot your own little videos and listen to music via Bluetooth stereo headphones.

The Voyager has two screens, one on the outside and then another when the phone is flipped open. They are about the same size, and both are large enough for viewing mobile video.

As a music player, the Voyager does not compare to the iPhone, or many other music phones for that matter. It uses Verizon’s Vcast music service, a clunky program in every way compared with iTunes.

A plus for music fans, on the other hand, is the Bluetooth stereo profile. Wireless headphones are a nice way to listen if you have them. Incredibly, the iPhone does not have this Bluetooth feature.

Of course, like most Verizon media-enabled phones, the Voyager doesn’t actually ship with any headphones. Plus, standard headphones, like those for any mp3 player, won’t fit.

You need to buy a Verizon package for music phones to get the appropriate headphones.

There are other pluses on the Voyager that Verizon added, including mobile TV, the ESPN MVP service and Verizon’s VZ Navigator program.

But even those have some drawbacks.

Take the ESPN service. It is better than the standard ESPN mobile offering provided by other wireless carriers, yet it cannot be used on the external screen of the Voyager. You need to flip the phone open to use it.

The Voyager would appear to be a phone that will benefit when Verizon’s plan to open its network to outside developers comes to fruition.

The iPhone, too, will open its platform to outsiders next year, so there should be many interesting applications that take advantage of touch-screen technology.

Unfortunately for Verizon, those applications are likely to be second-rate, as the Voyager is to the iPhone, until its touch-control phones are developed from the ground up.

XEric Benderoff writes about technology for the Chicago Tribune. Contact him at ebenderofftribune.com.

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