What do you get when you mix together a phone and a tablet? The correct answer is a “phablet”. And that’s exactly what the LG Intuition is—and, thanks to Verizon Wireless, I’ve been fortunate to test one over the past few weeks.

I would be lying if I said the LG Intuition didn’t look completely ridiculous to me when I took it out of the box. All joking aside, the word phablet really is the right word to describe it. It’s (a lot) bigger than your average phone but smaller than a tablet, even the increasingly popular 7″ tablets.

The LG Intuition has a 5″ screen which may be difficult for some people to hold in one hand. Luckily, I wasn’t one of those and was able to grasp it in one hand. That left my other hand free to use to touch the screen or use the included stylus.

Freehand over typing

Many of the features of the LG Intuition are the same ones you would expect to find on any other Android-based smartphone (including 4G LTE data access) but there were a few features that set it apart. Like the Notebook app which allows you to write freehand on the screen, useful for say jotting yourself a quick note or adding an item to your grocery list. You could even use it to sketch a quick drawing.

There’s also a dedicated QuickMemo button on top of the LG Intuition that allows you to capture anything on the screen with your own hand written annotations. See the word “Picnic!!” and circled temperature on the image included with this blog post for an example. This by far was my favorite feature.

Old school 4:3 aspect ratio

The camera is pretty decent. It takes pictures at 8 megapixels and shoots video in full 1080p high definition. The only weird part is that the display on the LG Intuition has a 4:3 aspect ratio (like your old “square” television) which means you may have to adjust the video size before you shoot a video to get what you want. The old-school aspect ratio may also cause some of the videos you watch to be letterboxed which just feels wrong in this day and age.

I did, however, like the effort made with the on-screen keyboard. Knowing that typing with one hand might be too much to handle for some people, the LG Intuition allows you to swipe the keyboard to the left or right causing the keyboard to shrink down and move to one side for easier access with one hand.

Phone works great but looks funny

As far as the phone goes, it’s as easy to use as any other phone but I have to admit, I felt pretty funny putting a giant phone up to my ear. I’ve been told that others share these same feelings with me and that most people who use the LG Intuition pair it with a Bluetooth earpiece to avoid the “look at that guy with the giant phone by his ear” syndrome.

In the end, there’s really no place for me for the LG Intuition and I suspect other people will feel the same. And word on the street is that the newer Samsung Galaxy Note II is a much better alternative anyway.