LG Ally review

By Chris Ziegler

posted May 17th 2010 3:25PM

Review

You know, not every smartphone has to be putting down maxed-out hardware. That's a lesson that Nokia is certainly taking to heart, concentrating many of its latest efforts on lower-end Symbian devices that it hopes will capture entire new swaths of users that'd otherwise be buying dumbphones with half the functionality (and far less than half of the revenue potential). In the world of Android, though, recent devices like the EVO 4G, Droid, Droid Incredible, and Nexus One have admittedly caused us to grow accustomed to the idea that we should all be using blazingly fast processors and huge WVGA displays.

In reality, of course, Android is an extraordinarily scalable platform; there's a whole world of hardware (and around $200 of on-contract pricing) below today's latest round of "superphones." At $100 on a two-year deal, the LG Ally sort of typifies what we'd expect out of a midrange Android device right now -- a gap-filler that can capture users seeking a Droid experience on a Kin Two budget. So does it hold up in the day-to-day grind, or are you going to be begging for a Droid by day two? Let's find out.

LG Ally review

Hardware

With defining designs like the original Chocolate, the Shine series, and the BL40 under its belt, LG isn't a company that we generally associate with producing utterly uninspiring handsets, but there's really no other way to describe the Ally -- it doesn't really look like anything at all. Apart from a pair of muted chrome strips aside the display, there isn't a single feature of the phone that isn't geared at function over form. For a certain percentage of the target demo, of course, this is just what the doctor ordered: some of us just want a smartphone that gets the job done day in and day out without attracting attention. For others, though, the downright nondescript design is going to be enough to scratch it off the short list.

What little design is there, though, is a decidedly mixed bag. We've always had a soft spot in our hearts for soft-touch plastic, and the back of the Ally (well, really just the battery cover, which takes up about 80 percent of the back) is fully coated in it, so that's a plus. Along the sides, the volume rocker and camera button are chromed for no reason in particular -- they really look out of place amongst the sea of black -- and the microSD slot (which comes equipped with a 4GB preinstalled) and micro-USB port are both covered with plastic flaps that swing open on one side. That's totally fine for the microSD slot, but we hate it when phones cover up the charging port with anything -- the micro-USB standard is specifically designed to be robust enough to handle frequent use, and when you've got to charge the phone on a daily basis, it's a pain in the ass. Let's hope you don't chew your fingernails.

Turning our attention to the front, the phone's got a pretty unremarkable mug -- and like we said, that's just fine for some users. Thing is, LG still somehow managed to fumble the mantra of simplicity here: in addition to four physical buttons along the bottom, they've tacked on two capacitive buttons just above as if they were afterthoughts. In Android, we don't even know why you need Send and End buttons -- much less prominently-placed ones that together take up fifty percent of your physical button row, which ends up relegating Back and Search to the capacitive mezzanine. Ultimately, LG should've canned Send / End and either moved the capacitive buttons down to the physical row or nix the physical buttons altogether and just stick with capacitive. Instead, you've got a hodgepodge that will unnecessarily confound your muscle memory if you're coming from any other Android device.

The Ally is well-balanced in the hand and weighs about what you'd expect a phone of this size, complexity, and thickness to weigh. At nearly 15mm thick, you won't mistake it for the svelte Nexus One or CLIQ XT in your pocket -- but then again, the Ally's got a slide-out QWERTY keyboard that the others lack, and it's basically the same thickness as its similarly-equipped Verizon stablemate, the Motorola Devour.

Speaking of the QWERTY slide, the Ally's keyboard is a mixed bag (noticing a trend here?). We actually really liked the feel of the keys -- and the spring-loaded slide mechanism itself feels about as solid as you could reasonably expect -- but the layout isn't among the better ones we've seen. For example, the numeric row along the top has alternate symbols that exactly mirror the symbols you'd find along the numeric row on a full-size keyboard -- which doesn't really make a whole lot of sense for a phone. We found ourselves cursing every time we wanted an "@" character, for example. In fact, the only symbol you can reach without activating Alt is the lowly period, and there's only one Alt button located left of the A key, so your thumb is executing some serious gymnastic maneuvers every time you need an exclamation point or dollar sign. If you think there's no room for dedicated symbol keys or extra Alts, we'd disagree -- Home, Menu, Back, and Search are all unnecessarily duplicated, and they're placed haphazardly to the left and right of the main keys. We don't get it. On the flip side, the directional pad was actually quite good, though you might not use it very often.

We've no serious complaints about the Ally's audio. In fact, the monaural loudspeaker located toward the bottom of the back is crazy loud -- there aren't many phones in existence where you feel compelled to back off a notch or two from max volume when using the speakerphone function, but the Ally proudly makes that short list. The earpiece was also plenty loud but possibly just a tad muddied; ultimately, we couldn't tell whether that was the connection, the phone, or just the general characteristic of the carrier's vocoding to blame. It certainly wasn't even close to being a deal-breaker.

As for the camera... well, if you're looking for a point-and-shoot camera replacement, you'll need to look elsewhere. Though the LED flash performed admirably in really poor lighting (both as an autofocus assist and as an actual flash), shots from the 3 megapixel sensor came out smudgy, splotchy, and without definition, which we'd probably have to chalk up to an overly eager noise reduction algorithm. Shutter lag held steady at just under a second in our testing -- after you've established focus using the two-stage dedicated camera key, that is, which was a reasonably quick process. You have access to 8 effects (compared with stock Android's 6), configurable white balance, ISO, and a dedicated macro mode, but none of it really makes much difference if you can't take a decent shot.

You won't commonly find us complaining that a phone's screen resolution is too high... and actually, you won't find us complaining about it with the Ally, either, but we did find it somewhat odd that LG chose to go with WVGA resolution on a crisp, bright LCD measuring just 3.2 inches. That puts the phone into stratospherically high pixel density territory, and frankly, we felt like it was a bit unnecessary -- HVGA is totally fine below 3.5 or 3.7 inches, especially since most of Android's UI fails to take advantage of the higher resolution displays by, say, offering more space for icons on each home screen. The capacitive touchscreen has a distinctly plastic feel to it -- though it's no different (or worse) than virtually any of its pricier contemporaries like the Droid or Nexus One -- and it seemed responsive enough. There was some jerkiness that we'll get to in the next section, but we attribute that more to software than we do to any issues with the touchscreen. Anyhow, we can't help but wonder if Verizon could've sold the Ally for, say, $80 on contract if they'd stepped down to HVGA.

Software

At a quick glance, you might think that the Ally was running stock Android 2.1 -- but you'd be wrong. Instead, LG (or is that Verizon?) has chosen to imbue the phone with a mildly reworked build that's sort of the worst of both worlds: there's no perceptible benefit to LG's skin, and because it is skinned, Android updates stand a greater risk of being delayed significantly (if they come at all). It's a bizarre and unfortunate move that the average Ally buyer isn't going to appreciate -- or even think about, for that matter -- walking into the store.