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.
Hopes up? Prepare to have then dashed.
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 […]
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