One of the handiest--but least sexy--features of the iPhone is Visual Voicemail, which displays your voice messages in an easy-to-read list. You can browse through the messages, and select which ones you'd like to hear. Now, Verizon Wireless has launched its own Visual Voice Mail service, which allows you to get this handy iPhone-like feature--without an iPhone.
Select Smartphones Only
Verizon's Visual Voice Mail service is available as an option for the LG Voyager and LG enV2 smartphones. If you want to use it, you have to download it from Verizon's V Cast store; the download itself is free, but the service costs $2.99 per month to use.
The additional service fee isn't the only downside to the application: Its implementation is a bit clunky. Visual Voice Mail is completely separate from your phone's existing voicemail service, and the two services don't seem to work together as well as they could. For example, when you access your phone's dialpad to make a call, you can dial a number to access the regular, old Verizon voice mail service. But you can't access Visual Voice Mail from this screen; instead, you have to exit out of the phone screen, go into your menu, and then select Visual Voice Mail.
Easy to Use
Once you access the service, it's simple to use. You see a list of messages, and you can scroll through and play them from within the app, and can delete them by tapping a button. The interface isn't as elegant as it could be; the graphics and dark blue coloring look a little dated, even though the service is new.
I wish that Visual Voice Mail was more closely integrated into the actual calling features of the phones, and I wish that it wasn't an extra-fee service. But if you get lots of voice messages on your smartphone, you'll appreciate Visual Voice Mail. Once you use this type of service, it's hard to go without it.
