The LG EnV was a nice phone; so when Verizon gave me the opportunity to review the EnV 2, I thought I would jump on it. Like the original EnV, the EnV 2 seems to be optimized for teenagers -- even the name evokes an emotion strong in high schools. It is built for texting and has an integrated music player. So I handed it to my son, and said give me your opinion.

It didn't take long to form a first opinion -- the hardware either isn't manufactured to high standards, or the hardware design is lacking. Before I even gave it to him, one of the buttons fell off the faceplate. Okay; we'll give LG the benefit of the doubt, because I probably was not the first one to have this phone in my hands; and that could mean it was mistreated by the person (or multiple people) who reviewed it before me.

But when the display on the face of the phone went bad, I started to wonder. My son made some inquiries at his school to see who owned the phone and whether this has happened to anybody else. Two of his friends responded that they had a similar display failure on the face of their EnV 2 phones. Not good news. At least the EnV 2 has two displays, the one on the face and one that is revealed when you open up the clamshell design. So even though the display on the outside doesn't work, the phone can still be used pretty well by opening the clamshell.

Once you get past that question about manufacturing quality, the EnV 2 is as nice a phone for texting as the original EnV. It does allow texting using the numeric keypad on the face (even if the display is not working; you just have to guess what you just texted). And it is even better from the inside. Open the clamshell to see that nice color display on the inside, plus a full QWERTY keyboard. The buttons are small; but they are separated far enough for both standard teen and adult fingers.

The rocker-style cursor control on the inside keypad is stationed near the right edge of the keyboard, making it easy to navigate through menus -- especially for right-handed users. The send and end buttons also are on the right side, above the cursor control, making it easy to instigate a phone call from the inside.

As a music phone, the EnV 2 actually sounds pretty good without headphones. When opened, there are fairly nice, although still somewhat tinny, speakers on either side of that internal display. Don't expect to have the same experience as an audiophile, though. No cell phone I've seen will give you that. But even at its highest volume, I couldn't get the speaker to distort.

The sound wasn't good enough to get my son to use it instead of his iPod. Even when the clamshell is closed, you can quickly start up your music using a music button on the face of the phone -- assuming your display hasn't conked out so you can see what you're playing. In addition, the hinge on the phone is designed to allow full access to the volume buttons whether open or closed (even though the volume buttons are on the hinged edge).

For those who want to keep their memories on their phones, the EnV 2 also has a 2 megapixel camera and uses MicroSD flash memory to store photos and music. VerizonWireless sells it in maroon or black for $130 with a two-year agreement .