Verizon hopes Voyager is iPhone killer

October 4, 2007

By MIKE WENDLAND

Convergence Editor and Technology Columnist

Verizon Wireless announced four new phones this week, but the one making the biggest splash is the Voyager. Made by LG, the touch screen/full keyboard phone will start selling next month and the company hopes that it just may be an iPhone killer. I have a video demo:

Pricing hasn't been announced but it's expected to be competitive with or less than Apple's $399 iPhone. The Voyager has a lot of surface similarities to the iPhone. It's slightly narrower and about twice as thick but its large, black touch screen looks a little like the iPhone layout.

But flip it open and there is a full-sized QWERTY keyboard. The Voyager runs on Verizon's lighting-fast 3g EV-DO network, in contrast to the pokey AT&T EDGE 2g network used by AT&T, the iPhone's exclusive carrier.

Other things it does that the iPhone can't: It has a removable and swappable battery, expansion card memory and a 2-megapixel still or video camera. It downloads music and video over the air, instead of just by Wi-Fi, and it can provide turn-by-turn GPS navigation and directions.