LG Booth tour from CTIA Las Vegas 2008 – LG enV2 VX9100 makes an appearance

LG has one of the largest and most elaborate booths here at CTIA Las Vegas 2008. The booth is as tall as it is sprawling and there’s a live DJ spinning house music in front of a statue of a naked angel. LG didn’t have much to show in terms of new hardware (a woefully recurring theme here at CTIA LV 2008), but they did make their presence in the US market known – they were pushing their new slogan, “Living LG.”

But, not to be one to come to the ballgame empty handed, LG brought out the successor to the LG enV, the LG enV2 VX9100. The new LG enV2 is slimmer, shorter, and sleeker than the out-going model. It’s most definitely a lower-end handset than the LG Voyager, but still manages to do the whole lateral-flip, full-QWERTY keyboard thing in style.

The external LCD is tiny, but the keypad is huge and easy to use. Open up the LG enV2 and you find a comfortable QWERTY keyboard. The keyboard is decent – the lack of decent character support (how long should it take to find the “.” key?) is a big detractor. But, for text messaging fiends, the keyboard should be more than sufficient.

I found that that the 2.4-inch internal LCD display is large enough to make extended text messaging sessions easy on the eyes, and the stereo speakers look like they’d do a good job with media playback. The 2 megapixel camera is decent and par for this range.

Don’t expect the LG enV2 to compete with the LG Voyager, but if you want a lower-end, smaller, and sleeker alternative to the Voyager touchscreen-monster, the LG enV2 should do you just fine.

Verizon Wirleess will be the new home of the LG enV2. Big Red will load up your LG enV2 with CAST Music and Video, VZ Navigator so you should have no problems getting your media-fix over the air. Expect to shell out $130 after two-year contract and $50 rebate.