Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 Review

Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 Design

The first thing that grabs the eyes is the design of the LG VX 8500 chocolate. Many words have been used to describe its intuitive design, but I think I can just sum it up right now for the review and say the phone is sexy. Its glossy black finish, along with candy bar shape not only makes the LG VX 8500 look like the chocolate it is, but also a conversation art piece much like the ipod nano (similar in looks, different in use). There is the slider form factor that adds a wow factor the first time people see it. The phones dimensions measure 3.8 X 1.58 X 0.69 “and weigh 3.53 ounces. At those numbers the phone is very small and light,

perfect for those who want a phone that will not weigh down their back pocket or build muscles from constantly lifting it. The display measures two inches diagonally (320x240 pixels) and supports 11 lines of text. With support for 262,000 colors, the VX8500 is one of the prettiest displays out there on the market. Everything is crisp and colorful.

Looking at the phone one can see integrated into its black finish the jog wheel. This silver rimmed wheel blends seamlessly into the design of the phone. Once the slider is opened the touch sensitive keypad region is exposed.
 
When the phone is slid open, the touch sensitive keypad is revealed.
The Chocolate phone introduces "touch-sensitive" buttons (i.e., like a touch-dimmer light switch). I found it difficult to press the touch-sensitive keys only once. Leave your finger on the key a fraction of a second too long and it thinks you've pressed it twice (or more). I found the navigaton buttons (up, down, left right) to be very jumpy (regardless of the sensitivity setting). They are arranged in a circle, seemingly like an iPod, but work nothing like it. They are just four discrete buttons, you can't roll your finger around the circle to "scroll" through a list.

Applications

The Chocolate comes with the regular applications as any modern cell phone would. There is a calendar, clock, alarm and notes to name a few. The Chocolate does not ship with any games; however you have the option of downloading from the many different games that are available. To get the games just use the get it now application and download away. The size of the screen and the keypad makes it fairly decent for playing Pacman.

Alarm

The alarm does what it’s supposed to do, wake you up or reminds you of specific events. It comes with multiples alarms and the variety of alarm ring tones depends on what’s in your music library.

Contacts

The VX8500 allows you save up to 500 contact entries in the phone. For each person you can save 5 numbers, 2 email addresses and picture of the person. You can also assign up to 98 speed dial entries on the phone (will you remember all 98 that’s the question?)

Calendar

The calendar is very important for today’s cell phone user. It helps you to organize your life and also gives you important reminders such as birthdays and credit card payments. The VX8500 calendar gives you the option to see it in a monthly, weekly and event view. It also has a decent search function. There is also the option to have each appointment set to the sound of your liking (playing happy birthday as a reminder when it’s someone’s birthday

Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 Design

Multimedia

The one thing the LG VX8500 Chocolate is known for is its multimedia capabilities. This offers a tasty treat for all those looking for the ever elusive total multimedia mobile phone. The gamut of Verizon’s multimedia goodies are available for the phone. The VX 8500 owner will have access to various V Cast performances, downloadable music, downloadable ring tones, streaming video, applications and games.
Verizon's V CAST Music

This is needed if you are going multimedia with your VX 8500. Verizon has gotten rid of their $15 a month subscription fee for their V CAST Music service. You now have the option of  buying songs over the air for $1.99 each. Even without V Cast you are still able to listen to music on your chocolate. You can transfer mp3s from your computer to the phone. The Music essentials kit is an extra $30, but that money gives you a USB cable and drivers which allow you to sync the phone with Windows Media Player and transfer songs to the phone.

Mp3 Player

 

The main selling point of the Chocolate is its ability to be used as an mp3 player. The mp3 player is full of features like any regular mp3 player out there. It has the regular features such as play lists, shuffle and repeat. There are also advanced settings such as sound effects which like most mp3 players, changes the sound

settings accordingly. Some of the settings included are Jazz, Pop, Rock, Concert Hall, 3D Surround etc. The music player can plays both mp3 and wma files. One issue with these formats comes about if you want to transfer music files from your computer. The software would convert the mp3’s to wma for it to be played on the phone. Another issue was the inability for the mp3 player to play songs encoded in variable bit-rate, or encoded above 192Kbps.
 A nice feature of the mp3 player is that you can set your mp3’s as your alarm clock. So if you want to wake up to the sound of Brittney Spears singing her little heart out, the option is all yours. Another nice feature of the mp3 player is if you are playing your music and a call comes in the phone will pause the current song and you will be able to answer the call, with no problems. Once the call is finished, the music will automatically resume playing from where it stopped when the call came in.

Camera

 

The flash less, 1.3-megapixel camera is about as good as it gets with a so-so cell phone camera. The options that come with the camera are brightness controls, night mode, a self timer, white balance, five color effects and an option to change the sound of the shutter (3 cool effects plus silent). It takes pretty sharp photos for a 1.3-megapixel and the color saturation is rich. The white balance tends to pink and there are halos around white objects with bright backgrounds. Outdoor shots have good brightness and color balance though the color tone is slightly warm. In low light, the Chocolate takes pretty bright pictures, but washes out naturally bright areas. There is also artifacts and noise.
 
The camera offers 5 resolutions for photos (1280 x 960, 640 x 480, 320 x 240, 176 x 144 and 160 x 120) and 176 x 144 resolution for video. This 176x144 resolution for the video is more of a novelty if more than anything.

From the camera button on the side, you are able to have total control of the camera settings. You are able to choose which mode you would like to be in, either camera or video. You also have the option to set the white balance, color effects and all the other options mentioned above. For videos you can set the length to take either 15 second video which will be used when sending MMS messages. You also can set longer video lengths, depending on the size of the memory you have.

Bluetooth

Bluetooth is a must with the modern cell phone. Whether it is for the wireless headset connection or for data transfer Bluetooth is a guarantee. The LG Chocolate has integrated Bluetooth v1.1 which can be used with a standard wireless headset to make and receive calls. It also allows it to interact with car kits that have both headset and hands-free profiles. This is very helpful especially if you have your phone tucked away in your pocket or somewhere.
As standard with Bluetooth the phone can be used to synch contacts and calendar data with a PC, and as a wireless data modem with a notebook PC. The synching of contacts is done through the serial port profile. This allows for ease of connection to the pc. There is also Dial UP Networking (DUN) which gives you the option of using the phone as a modem which is very helpful if you need internet access for your laptop. Another option with Bluetooth on the Chocolate is the A2DP support in its Bluetooth profiles. A2DP means you can have stereo sound in Bluetooth stereo headsets wirelessly, this is pretty nice if you get the right headsets. One bad thing with the Bluetooth is that it does not have OBEX Bluetooth profiles so you cannot transfer files to/from other Bluetooth enabled devices.
Bluetooth doesn’t use much power on the Chocolate and does not have a severe drain on the battery. You will clearly have more battery power if you turn your Bluetooth off when not in use.
VZ Navigator: Built-in GPS
The VZ Navigator is an optional service that can be purchased from Verizon for $3 per day, or $10 for unlimited monthly access.  This cool application can be used as your own personal GPS. All you need to do is input your desired destination and you will then receive a map that works in real time. Along with that you get a voice telling you where and when to make upcoming turns and when you have reached your destination. Added to the map are things such as points of interest such as gas stations, hotels and other landmarks that you would be interested in.

Memory

The Chocolate performs most all tasks at a decent speed. Applications launch fairly quickly and V Cast videos play at a good speed. The Chocolate has 50MB free internal memory after loading up 17MB of applications and data. For more storage space, take advantage of the MicroSD slot on the Chocolate which supports the newest SanDisk 2GB MicroSD card

Messaging, Internet, and Tools

What is a cell phone with out text messaging or the internet? The Chocolate performs very well in this category. It comes with the standard SMS and MMS messaging options. There isn’t a built in email like say a Blackberry or Treo. Chocolate users would have to use web mail applications to satisfy their email fix. The VX8500 also comes with the standard instant messaging programs such as MSN Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and AOL Messenger.
T9 predictive text entry works well for the messaging in the VX8500. It proves very fast and was able to allow me to keep up with the hectic conversations held on the messenger programs.

Voice Command

This is a neat little feature on the Chocolate. You can tell it to call a specific person from your phone book, or call a specific number. You can also give it other commands such as go to calendar, go to Bluetooth and check battery to name a few.

 

Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 Design

Battery Life

Battery life is an important aspect of any cell phone. If the battery life or drain flat out sucks that would be a major deterrent for those looking for a phone. Luckily the VX8500 does not suffer from the disease of the bad battery.  The Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 comes with a standard 3.7v Lithium-Ion battery that has an 800mAh capacity. The battery for this phone has a relatively good battery life, especially for all the features that can become an energy drain. There are many things that can lead to battery drain with this phone.

 will lead to drain on the phone such as using Bluetooth, making calls, mp3 player, videos, etc.  Using any of those features in excess will obviously run it down quicker, so don’t play the mp3 player all day, leave some juice for a potential emergency.

One thing I did find that saved on battery power was turning off EVDO.
One issue I found with the phone that when it was in I turned off EVDO (Mode Preference, 1X only) the battery lasted all day at full charge. The constant switching as it searches for the EVDO puts a heavy drain on the battery. Putting the phone in 1X mode you will not be able to use V-Cast. If you do not plan on using V-Cast or if you know when you are going to use it, the best bet is to turn the EVDO service off. This can be done by
Hitting OK
Hit # then 0, phone should ask for a service code
Enter six 0's for the code
Select option 3 (Network Select)
Select option 1 (Mode Preference)
Choose "1X Only" from the list and hit the OK button
Hit the end button to return to the main screen
If you use V-Cast you can always disable it and then just turn it back on when you are using it.
For those who want more power Verizon offers you an extended battery with the purchase of the phone (obviously at an extra cost). This battery gives you 1200mAH giving you 50% more battery power to do all your fanciness. Using the extended batter I was able to get considerable use of the mp3 player and I would go 3 days before recharging the phone.

Sound Quality

The Chocolate's sound quality will satisfy most consumers. The highs and lows don't extend particularly far, but the headphones make up for this by being just bass-heavy enough to balance out the overall sound

hough the phone does have equalizer presets and a custom EQ, so you can always boost the low end a bit. The phone doesn't drive the included headphones to very loud volumes, and it didn't crank with

Reception

The reception of the Chocolate is fairly decent. In weak signal areas you may have issues with clarity but other than that there is no real problem. The ear piece is extremely crisp, loud and clear.
ons. (Ignore the bar indicator, which fluctuates a bit too much.) The earpiece is unusually loud and clear, and sound, while extremely trebly, isn't as harsh as on some other LG phones. VoiceSignal's voice recognition software is excellent as usual. Unfortunately, there's no speakerphone. Talk time, at 3 1/2 hours, is just barely acceptable for a modern phone; I plan to double-check that and test music player battery life later this week.
es on Verizon’s 800 and 1900 MHz networks. If you are a data junky you’ll be happy to know that the Chocolate supports Verizon’s EV-DO high-speed data network. The Chocolate phone gets great reception on EV-DO here in North Dallas area, beating out the Samsung SCH-a990 by quite a bit and the LG VX8300 slightly. The phone has a maximum of four bars to indicate reception strength on the EVDO and 1xRTTvoice networks respectively. We are in a small pocket where Verizon coverage is below-par and the Chocolate gets 2 bars on EVDO consistently (sometimes jumping to 4 bars) and 1-2 bars on 1x for voice. That’s the best reception on Verizon among the recent phones we have tested. If you are in an area where Verizon has good and great coverage, then you will see full bars on the Chocolate. Call quality is very good and volume is loud. Incoming voice is full and rich, and it sounds great through the loudspeaker thanks to the 3D sound support which will be very useful for conference calls.  

Network

Technology: CDMA

g- the vx8500 version includes vcast downloadable MUSIC & multimedia capabilities. Ready to go (for activation on verizon). This is the actual phone you will get (not a similar one).

 

First off, this is a beautiful phone, i've only had it for a few days. Razrs are a bit too ubiquitous these days, this is a very nice alternative. The sound quality is great. It has a little speaker on the back for mp3 playback, no bass but what do you expect? A lot of people have complained about the sensitivity of the touch pad, you could adjust the sensitivity to your liking, and it's not so terrible once you get used to it. The keypad thankfully is not one of those thermal sensitive touchpads. It is however a bit smaller and harder to use, at least for me since i have big clumsy fingers.
The camera is quite nice, you can actually adjust the brightness and there is a zoom feature that you'll probably never use.

There are however a few issues regarding how verizon crippled the phone.
-Bluetooth, i haven't been able to pair the phone with my PC, i'm not sure if it is verizon or my bluetooth.
-Memory, i bought mine from verizon and it has 128 rather than the 512 listed on Amazon, if amazon's chocolate comes with 512 then it's better than buying off verizon. There's 51mb allocated to the phone's internal memory, i'm guessing phonebook, voice cmds etc. and there is about 61mb left allocated to Music.
-You can add music to your phone easily by downloading music to your microSD from your pc and then loading it to your phone. However the phone does not allow you to make a ringtone out of your mp3s unless 1. it comes from VCAST 2. use the bitpim hack. Also the initial ringtones the phone comes with are few and quite lame. You can get a pretty good deal on the microSD if you wait long enough on fatwallet, if you can't wait, you can buy a microSD 1gb for about 50 dollars.
-also be warned of the bluetooth headset, i don't have one but i did read somewhere that a user had to enable the headset on the phone every time he or she got into the car.
-Lastly, you can't disable EVDO. It's an internet feature that puts quite a drain on your battery life. If you don't have VCast then you really don't need it.

Overall this phone is quite good if you can get past the crippling of MP3 and ringtones. And if you don't mind the greasy fingerprints. It'll get some OOohs and Ahhs, at least until everyone has one. I suggest you go to a verizon dealer and play with the phone. Cheers!

 

Verizon LG Chocolate VX8500 Conclusion

In the end the LG VX 8500 does what it does. It gives the user a sense of being on the cutting edge in terms of style and sophistication. The innovative sleek design makes it stand out from the crowd and it is guaranteed to give the user a couple of looks here and there. The slider also provides a cool feature that is flashy adding to the wow factor of the phone. The features such as mp3 players, camera, touch sensitive screen
The LG Chocolate is a serious fashion phone with great music capabilities. It’s not a smartphone but it does a great deal more than some other fashion and feature phones such as the Motorola RAZR. Its smooth look and the innovative touch-sensitive controls should earn LG some credit on design and the ability to take a chance at doing something new and different. If you are in the market for a cool looking feature phone, give the Chocolate a shot.
Pro: Attractive design that will turn heads. Great EV-DO reception in all levels of coverage areas and voice calls have nice quality and great volume. Nice screen and good 3D sound for multimedia that’s enhanced by the V CAST services. Reliable Bluetooth connectivity and A2DP support is a big plus for a music phone. The MicroSD card allows for an ample 2GB of memory expansion which isn’t something you can say about every feature phone.
Con: The touch-sensitive controls will take some getting used to and the Call End button separated from Call Send button will throw off some long-time cell phone users. Battery life could be better, especially for a music phone.

With its groovy Flash interface and revamped music player, LG's new VX8500 Chocolate phone makes for one of the most satisfying V Cast music handsets we've seen to date; unfortunately, it's hobbled by its lack of dedicated music controls, earbuds and USB cables, while its touch-sensitive inputs are way too sensitive for our taste.