Post iPhone Society – LG Venus and Voyager
LG Electronics with wireless carrier Verizon have announced their new Venus and Voyager mobile phones. These phones are good examples of the market response to the Apple iPhone. More interestingly, these new phones point out how optoelectronics and new user interface devices will continue to enable new consumer electronics devices with strong customer appeal.
The LG Venus (below left) and Voyager (right) are two mobile phones that each incorporate multiple displays as well as touch and haptic feedback user interfaces to provide phones that the carrier, Verizon, hopes will rival the Apple iPhone.
Both the Venus and the Voyager go the iPhone one better by providing keyboards. The Venus sports a slide down 12 key pad à la the LG Chocolate, while the Voyager flips open along the long axis of the phone to reveal a second display and a complete QWERTY keyboard not unlike the earlier LG enV.
While each of these phones are an evolution of earlier LG designs, the addition of a secondary display with touch and vibration feedback features, or a second display with full QVGA resolution identical to the outside main display, enable LG to offer a wide range of user input-output capabilities by making near maximal use of the surface real estate of the phone. Although a bit more “kitchen sink” than the elegant iPhone, it remains to be seen if these new designs can gain the attention of consumers. Nevertheless, the use of advancing optoelectronics including multiple, larger, higher resolution displays and better cameras (2 Mpixel), combined with new interface modes including touch and vibration feedback, may provide consumers with a desire to upgrade their phone in the coming months.
The LG Venus and Voyager are described and illustrated here:
Verizon Adds iPhone Lookalike In Challenge To Apple
Engadget – Verizon’s Juke, Pearl, Venus and Voyager get outed
Date: October 9, 2007
Categories: Mobile Phones
