Verizon Wireless has had a pretty spotty track record with touchscreen phones. The LG Voyager is a solid messaging and multimedia device, but it’s pretty bulky. And the Samsung Glyde is just a mess, with a touchscreen that often requires multiple presses to get anything done. Enter LG’s Dare ($199), which is basically the LG Vu for Verizon customers. But instead of focusing on mobile TV like the Vu, the Dare goes its own way with a sharper 3-MP camera, funky menus with drag-and-drop customizability, and GPS via VZ Navigator (a feature the Vu lacks). You also get fast EV-DO Rev. A data, a first for Verizon’s touch lineup.

I had the pleasure of going hands-on with this slim (0.5 inches thick) and relatively light (3.8 ounces vs. the Vu’s 3.2 ounces) touchscreen phone, and was pleasantly surprised by the fluid and speedy interface. While a few touches didn’t respond on the large 3-inch 400 x 240-pixel haptic display, I really liked using the Dare’s UI. In other words, it’s not Verizon’s.

Read on for the rest of my first impressions and our full video if you… dare.  Sorry. I had to.

On the home screen you can open a menu of applications, and then drag any of the ones you’d like to use out to the home display itself, and when you’re done using the app, simply drag it away again. The lower menu has the same four buttons we’ve seen on the LG Voyager and LG Vu: one each for messaging, placing calls, launching your menu, or accessing your phone book.

Web browsing felt snappy on the Dare, and you can view pages in landscape or portrait mode (which happens automatically thanks to the built-in accelerometer). Pages don’t look nearly as good as they do on the iPhone, however. On the multimedia front, the Dare supports Verizon’s V Cast Video and Music services, and unlike the Glyde you can listen to music in the background while doing other tasks.

The shots we took with the 3.2MP camera looked good on the Dare itself, but the jury is still out on whether they’ll remain good looking once they reach your notebook’s screen or a 4 x 6 print. This touchscreen phone stands up pretty well to standaline digicams in the features department; you get Schneider-KREUZNACH optics, an LED flash, auto focus, face detection, and ISO control. Want to spruce up your pics? The Dare lets you draw on the screen with your finger, as well as add fun stamps and frames. You can even crop or rotate pictures directly on the phone, perfect for uploading directly to a blog—which you can also do right from the menu.

The Dare also takes a page from the Casio EX-F1 by enabling high-speed video recording (120 frames per second) and slow-motion (15 fps) playback. You can send these videos via MMS but they’ll be truncated to fit Verizon’s size limit. We look forward to playing more with this feature.

The phone’s QWERTY keypad looked quite similar to the LG Vu, but the Dare also lets you scribble letters using handwriting recognition, which was accurate during my initial hands on. I don’t see anyone using this feature though.

I’m excited to get the Dare in house to really put it through its paces, especially the camera. The phone looks to be a nice streamlined alternative to the Glyde and Voyager for those who don’t need a physical keyboard. The Dare will be available on June 26th on Verizon Wireless’ website, and in stores starting on July 3rd.

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