It looks like Rogers is starting to pickup more Android devices, and why not add the new LG Eve to that list. This is a touchscreen smartphone with all the smartphone capabilities, however it looks a lot like the LG Xenon that was released a while back, but the size and style of it in general doesn’t stand out to many smartphone consumers.

Features & Pricing

The new LG Eve will run you for about $49.99 on a 3 year voice & data contract or $399.99 for just the phone on Rogers.Features include a fairly decent 3 inch screen, a 5 megapixel camera with LED flash, Face Recognition app, GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, and 3.5G 7.2mbps data speeds. The Eve has 150mb of built in memory but also includes a 2gb MicroSD card, expandable up to16gb. You’ll find a large slide out qwerty keyboard as well a touchscreen which isn’t the best but gets the job done.

Design

The design of the LG Eve looks very nice with the glossy front touchscreen and grey color combination. There are three dedicated Home, Menu and Back buttons on the front of the phone. The Home and Back buttons are actually touch sensitive which are quite annoying because sometimes you accidentally tap it. The build quality is quite sturdy and the slide out keyboard is very well built with no looseness.

The Eve weighs about 139g which is quite comfortable and isn’t to heavy in the pocket. The top of the phone you’ll find the 3.5mm headphone jack as well as the Power/Lock, Unlock button. The left of the phone has the MicroUSB port and the volume rocker and the right has a dedicated camera and music key along with the MicroSD card slot.

Interface

The LG Eve runs Android firmware 1.5 specifically designed for social networking. The main menu has changed quite a bit from the two original Android phones (HTC Magic and Dream) that had the basic slide up menu. To access the menu, you press the menu button on the main screen which has been setup as a permanent icon. From there you’ll find the main menu which shows categories sorted by Rogers, Communication, Multimedia, Utilities, Google, and Downloads. It’s fairly simple to slide up and down and most of the applications are still the same as the other Android devices. The notification bar on the top is still there and is easily accessed by sliding it down to reveal your notifications as well as the ability to turn on and off Bluetooth and WiFi.

Social Network

Rogers has made this phone specifically for those who love to keep in touch in anyway possible. They have included a Windows Live Messenger application as well as Yahoo Messenger. Both these apps can run in the background and any messages you receive will show up on the notification bar.

The LG Eve features a special application called SNS Manager which brings together Facebook, Twitter and Bebo networks into one place, letting users check status updates in real time. You can now setup other email accounts including Rogers, Yahoo, Telus, and many other email providers listed.

Dialing & Call Quality

The dialing keypad is a bit different from the other Android devices. It’s quite simple and nothing to fancy. I would rather have a physical send and end key instead.

Call quality is loud and very clear but unfortunately, there isn’t always signal. I seem to have a hard time making calls while in my basement because of low to no bars at all. Speaker-phone isn’t that great either because it echo’s quite often on the other line.

Camera Quality & Battery Life

The LG Eve has a decent 5 megapixel camera. I found some pictures to show up quite bad in low lights, even with the LED flash. But when outside in daylight, you’ll find pictures to show up quite well but not as vibrant as expected for a 5 megapixel camera. Colors seemed to be washed out and photos sometimes come out grainy which is quite annoying. The Eve has a decent video camera and is quite fast, but sometimes choppy at points when viewing and the quality isn’t the greatest either.

Battery Life I must say is quite bad. I’m not sure why but for some reason, the three Android phones that we have reviewed from Rogers have all had about the same battery life. I could barely go 8 hours of  normal use (WiFi & Bluetooth Off). This phone is definitely something that has to be charged daily, and if you find that a problem. You’ll definitely have to lug around some sort of charger or extra battery.

Photo Examples:

Conclusion

While LG tries to make this a smartphone. I just don’t see how it can be. With the small touchscreen which is quite hard to press, to the slowness of navigating around menus, to even the battery life just doesn’t make me say that this is the phone that business users want or should have. That being said, I would definitely recommend this phone to teens of younger age as a first smartphone because of the all the social networking applications crammed into this phone but if your expecting your daughter/son to keep this phone for 3 years. I wouldn’t recommend it.

[View with PicLens]

Rogers has just released the new LG Eve and White BlackBerry Bold 9000. Both devices go on sale today and can be ordered online at the Rogers Wireless website. The White BlackBerry Bold 9000 will cost $99.99 on a 3 year voice+data plan or $649.99 for no term price (quite steep I must say) which has the same features as the BlackBerry Bold 9000, just in a different color. The LG Eve will cost $49.99 on a 3 year voice+data plan or $399.99 for the no term price.

The LG Eve runs on a new Android OS designed for social networking and features a new special application called Social Network Services (SNS) Manager which brings together a user’s Facebook, Twitter and Bebo networks into one place, letting them check status updates in real time. The SNS Manager takes social networking to a new level by connecting the contact list to provide an easy to read log for each contact, so the user can see the contact for each friend, whether that be via SMS, email, Facebook, Twitter or on a call.

 Some features of the phone include:

• Threaded SMS, which groups SMS texts by sender and displays them like a message board for easy-to-follow reading
• A 3D gallery for viewing and sorting photos, with the ability to quickly and easily find photos by tagging favourites or using the filtering tool to sort photos by tags, face recognition or date
• 5 line QWERTY keypad
• Advanced Video Recording and Playback, which allows a user to play videos or make their own videos using built-in editing tools, which can then be uploaded onto social networking sites or sent to friends via email.
• 5 Mega Pixels Autofocus (with LED Flash)
• Micro USB 2.0
• Bluetooth 2.0 EDR

Thanks again Miranda!

To Order visit Rogers BlackBerry Bold 9000 White or Rogers LG Eve

[Press Release]

Q4 is soon, and so are sales and a bunch of phone releases for Rogers. Non the less, PhoneModo from HowardForums has released a some pictures of upcoming devices as well as plans and marketing ideas for Rogers. It seems that they aren’t aiming for smartphone users, but instead, the so called “Webphones” Read on for more information about the devices and plans for Q4.

 ITS THAT TIME AGAIN! Q4 is upon us, and PhoneModo is here to bring you the details. Of course, you can always find these soon on either themobileninjas.com and eventually it’ll probably hit BGR.

So heres the skinny:
DEVICES
Rogers wants to go away from the smartphone monicker that Blackberry’s and other data devices carry, so they’re focussing on ‘Webphones’ this year. A website will be up in the next couple days (something like www.rogers.com/webphones) to further this idea. Essentially though, they want to focus on web browsing over ’smart’ things like email etc. So which devices are they doing this? Whats their push?

5 WEBPHONES FOR LESS THAN $100
(thats what’ll be plastered all over their advertising)
These phones are…

LG Eve- $49.99 3yr V+D
-5.0MP Camera, 3″ Touchscreen, Android, WiFi, GPS
Theres going to be lots of focus on this phone apparently. It will be the social networking device for the Webphone campaign. So expect it in the commercials.

White Blackberry Bold 9000- $99.99 w. 3yr V+D
- 2.0MP Camera, HSPA, GPS, WiFi *launch imminent*

Sony Ericsson Xperia X1- $99.99 w. 3yr V+D
- 3.2MP Camera, Wifi, Win Mo 6.1

Nokia N86- $99.99 w. 3yr V+D
- 8MP Camera, Ovi Store, Dual slide capabilites, 8GB on board memory (Coming in 3-4 weeks time)

HTC Magic- $79.99 w. 3yr V+D
- 3.2MP Camera, 3″ Touchscreen, Android, WiFi, GPS

BLACKBERRY 9700 INFO>>
It was a no show in the slideshow, however the blackberry rep said $299.99 pricing and launch is in mid-November GUARANTEED (shoot for Nov. 21st on this date was his word)

Other Phones Coming..
There wasn’t much information about other phones coming to Rogers, other than the 5 above, but I do know that the Nokia Mural is coming. No pricing released. And as we all know (since its now shipping out to channels) the Nokia Surge is going to be part of the Quick Messaging Device offering from Rogers. They gave a couple of those out at our launch. Nice device for some.

PLANS
- Added into Mega Value Combos is the ability to get Unlimited network calling
- Additional minutes to be added in
- Same pricing as currently
- MY5 Local is going to MY5 Canada Wide
- Limited texting option is now Unlimited (when choosing your value add-on with MVC)

PREPAID
- Adding Samsung S366 and Nokia 5130 to prepaid lineup (should be $115 and $120 respectively)
- $29 Call, Text, Click and $29 MY5 plans are now priced at $25

[Source via HowardForums]

Microsoft recently announced the availability of “Windows phones” (AKA Windows Mobile 6.5 phones). Starting on October 6th, these phones will be available on carriers all over the world including AT&T, Bell, Sprint, TELUS, and Verizon. These phones are from various manufacturers including HP, HTC Corp., LG Electronics, Samsung and Toshiba. Windows Mobile 6.5 introduced a new OS that has a lot of new features. The user interface has been redesigned to be more touch friendly and make everything easier to use. It will also have a new version of Internet Explorer that will be much improved.

Read

It was only a few days ago that LG posted a blog post (then pulled it down) confirming the LG Viewty II as the Viewty Smart for the first time. Today LG posted a press release officially confirming the device’s existence and eventual launch. The Viewty Smart has a 8 megapixel camera, a higher resolution screen than the original Viewty, and a better processor. We are really excited for this phone to finally hit the market after hearing great things about it. You can expect it to be released to Europe in May, then other markets soon after.

Read

Earlier today LG put up a post on its official German blog confirming the LG Viewty II. The post was only up for a few hours before LG took it back down. The post had a bunch of press shots that makes the phone look very sleek and sexy. It also confirmed that the LG Viewty II would be renamed to the Viewty Smart which we think makes the device sound better. The LG Viewty Smart has a 8.0 megapixel camera, GPS, 3G, and weighs only 3.17 ounces.

[Via Phone Arena]

Read

We were the first site to bring you live pictures of the LG Xenon a few weeks back. However, today AT&T launched the phone to the rest of the world. Starting today, you can get the LG Xenon for $99.99 after rebate once you sign away your life for two-years. The Xenon has a two megapixel camera, 3G, bluetooth, and a QWERTY keyboard.

Read

AT&T announced six new handsets coming to their network in the coming weeks. This includes two smartphones, the Nokia E71x and the Samsung Propel Pro. With the addition of these phones, AT&T will increase its total QWERTY device count to seven. The Nokia E71x will cost $99 after a mail-in rebate and the Propel Pro will cost $149.99 after mail-in rebate. And for the complete rundown… Read the full story

We got our hands on LG Xenon today and boy is this thing clean. Hit the jump for more!

To start off, the phone has a resistive touchscreen with slide out QWERTY keyboard for typing. It’s packing a 2 Megapixel camera with dedicated camera button.

The software running on the phone seemed very similar to Samsung’s Touch Wiz OS. It has a widgets box where you can drag and drop different items on to the desktop. We found this to be kind of hard to use due to the fact that the widgets were so large and the desktop was so small. The “note” widget took up a huge chunk of the screen. The phone was running on early firmware so this may change later when production models hit. The widgets had your basic items such as a calendar, photos, analog clock/alarm, notepad etc.

Huge shout out to LG for creating an amazing keyboard. The feel of the keyboard was very similar to the Sidekick 2 (rubbery) and the travel between the buttons was excellent. You can feel the click with every press without the buttons being too stubborn.

Camera quality was decent. We did take a photo and the phone locked up while saving the picture requiring a battery pull. Again, early software so this is obviously a small bug they will fix.

Speaker was loud and easy to hear.

The build quality was great. The phone was very light and very pocket-able while maintaining a high quality feel to it.

The address book of the phone has been improved compared to the software on the LG Vu. The scrolling direction while going through the names is now similar to that of the G1 and iPhone. There is a dedicated button in the address menu for browsing via first letter.

All in all we were very pleased with the phone. We were told it will hit AT&T very soon at a $100 price point after $50 mail in rebate. It will drop in 3 colors including black and red.

Glad to see LG step it up with this model. Looking forward to it!

LG’s Viewty 2 has some potential to become a popular phone in the near future. This phone will be sporting 3G, an 8 megapixel camera, DivX video playback, and Wi-Fi. With great multimedia features, this is sure to appeal to the consumer who is interested in video playback and photography.

[Via PhoneArena]