LG Dare, the full-touch handset proudly announced by Verizon Wireless a few weeks ago, is now available for purchase from Verizon's official website. The new Dare is priced at $199 with a contract agreement for two years and at $249 with an agreement for only one year. For a limited period of time, those who buy the Dare with a two-year contract agreement and a data plan of $79 per month will receive from Verizon a free 8GB memory card kit. Or, in case you want the handset without any contract and any data plan, it can be acquired for $406.

The new LG handset comes from Verizon in a period when other two major American carriers (Sprint and AT&T) are in a "touchscreen competition" started by Sprint. It's widely known that AT&T will be releasing Apple's new iPhone 3G on July 11, so Sprint decided to launch a similar handset, the Samsung Instinct, with a campaign aimed directly at iPhone 3G's success. Now, Verizon has also come up with a full-touch phone that can easily stand besides the Sprint and AT&T ones, making the touchscreen segment of the US mobile market more interesting than ever.

One of the best aspects of LG Dare is its 3.2 Megapixel photo camera which comes with Schneider-Kreuznach lens, manual ISO adjustment, SmartPic technology, auto focus, flash, face detection panorama shots and video recording in VGA mode. This is a camera obviously better than the one packed in Sprint's Instinct and the one that Apple included in its new iPhone 3G, so at least from this point of view, Verizon has the best handset.

Camera aside, LG Dare also brings the following features: a 3 inch TFT touchscreen display with 260K colors, 240 x 400 pixels and handwriting recognition, dual-band CDMA connectivity with EV-DO for high-speed data transfers, full HTML browser (touch navigation and favorites included), GPS, VZ Navigator, email and Instant Messaging, Bluetooth 2.1 with EDR, Music an Video players with lots of formats supported, V CAST Music and V CAST Video, Image Editor,

The new Dare measures 4.1 x 2.2 x 0.5 inches (104 x 56 x 12.7 millimeters), weighs 3.76 ounces (107 grams) and packs a 1,100 mAh battery capable of offering a talk-time of up to 4280 minutes and a stand-by time of up to 360 hours.

For the moment, LG Dare is available only online but starting July 3, users will also be able to find the handset in Verizon's Wireless Communications Stores across the US.