You’re not alone if you read the headline and wondered “Who the heck is Alcatel?” The handset maker is a bigger name in non-US markets. Here, however, the Venture seems to be their only handset on the market, which I hate to say, is a good thing.
The Venture should be right up my alley. It runs plain, unsullied Android 2.3 (Gingerbread), with the slight addition of the SprintID Package (Virgin is a division of Sprint). While there’s a mere 2.8″ touchscreen, this is offset by a roomy QWERTY keyboard. As someone who loves hardware keyboards, this got me all excited. Until that is, I tried to use it.
The Venture’s keys are molded with little ridges and are insanely difficult to type on. I thought it was just me, but handing it to my associates gets the same reaction. My 11 year old put it best with a simple and loud “This keyboard SUCKS!” The kid is right too. Venture’s keyboard is uncomfortable, unresponsive, and just unusable.
Other features of the phone are decidedly on the low-end. A 2.0 MP camera with an LED flash gets the job done, and there are all the other basics you’d expect from a smartphone these days — WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, MicroSD slot, MicroUSB charger, etc. They all function just fine, but the battery life is weaker than I’d like though.
At $99.99 on a month-to-month cell network, the Venture seems tempting on paper. However, on a day-to-day basis, the phone disappoints. You’d be much better served getting the Wildfire S. The Wildfire doesn’t have a hardware keyboard, but at least the one it does have is usable.
[…] can be implemented brilliantly or poorly. The last two Virgin Mobile phones that we reviewed, the Venture and the Optimus Slider absolutely bombed. Would the Rise manage to get a handle on that? We […]
[…] such a dated phone, but we would be remiss to not note that a $75 Rise is probably better than the horrific Venture, the ancient Optimus V, or the needlessly hobbled Optimus Elite (Android 2.3? Really?). If those […]