Fri, 04 Nov 2016
A Brief Review: LG Enact VS890
I think as of November 2016, with the disappointing release of the Blackberry Priv (you call that a Blackberry keyboard?), the LG Enact VS890 is still the best Android phone with a physical keyboard, at least on Verizon (CDMA / EVDO / LTE).
This phone was released to little fanfare in August of 2013. It appears to have been marketed as an extry level phone. I find its features to be quite professional.
There isn't much RAM, only 1 GB, and that's where you're gonna get into trouble if you use this phone as a full-fledged Android device. It also has a very poor camera. What this device is great at is as a phone with email and text messaging capabilities with that wonderful physical keyboard featuring a full number row and arrow keys!
A lot of people don't want to carry a phone filled with all kinds of wizbang apps. They basically want a regular phone to answer calls and to write texts (in lieu of annoying voicemail), and maybe compose emails for more thought out conversations. What many people don't know is that they really want a physical keyboard to do all these things. And they also are going to want cloud-based contact integration, which Android thankfully offers. After that, maybe they'll use Instagram and Hangouts, hopefully not Facebook. If you can draw the line there, this phone is for you!
At Android version 4.4.2 and firmware VS89023A, I found the VS890 to be unrootable with either Stump, towelroot or KingRoot. However, the latest version of KingRoot comes with software called Purify that took my phone from a laggy, nearly unusable state into a really efficient phone again.
Make sure not to run the brightness at full tilt if you want to keep the battery intact for more than 2 hours. :)
Now if I could only figure out how to disable the "Write and Share" button. Ugh.
