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Verizon LG Chocolate VX8600 Review

The Verizon LG Chocolate burst unto the scene in 2006 as one of the sexiest phones for the year. It was released in the popular candy bar shape, this however was a blow to people who loved their flip. LG could not forget this segment of the market and hence the birth of the LG Chocolate VX8600.

The name chocolate has become synonymous with the word sexy. Associate that name with an exquisite flip phone and you have the elegant VX8600. Its clam shaped exterior, smooth rounded corners and advanced features gives us a phone that people desire.

The Verizon LG Chocolate VX8600 review will analyze and breakdown the various aspects of this popular mobile phone.

The LG VX8600 turns heads with its distinctively glossy piano black finish, glowing red, touch-sensitive, external music keys for easy access to V CAST Music and mp3 files. The LG VX8600 also offers advanced music playback capability, allowing customers the ability to browse, preview, download and play high-quality digital music directly from their phone. The LG VX8600 offers a 1.3 megapixel camera to capture every moment and amazing video capabilities that allow customers to shoot up to one hour of video right from their handsets

 

For additional storage of music, videos and photos, the LG VX8600 features a microSD memory expansion slot that supports the newest SanDisk 2GB cards. Bluetooth functionality and stereo headset capabilities round out the list of features on this sleek new device.
The LG VX8600, exclusively available through Verizon Wireless, includes the following features:

• Device supports external music keys for easy access to music and playlists
• Music only mode
• MicroSD memory slot
• Bluetooth v1.1
• Advanced audio Distribution Profile (for Bluetooth stereo headset support for listening to music3)
• Save up to 20 Bluetooth pairings
• 1.3 megapixel camera and camcorder
• Video Player for MP4, 3GP, 3G2 and WMV formats
• Record up to one hour of video
• Set videos as wallpaper
• Up to 1,064 characters of text for TXT Messaging
• Web-based e-mail and instant messaging
• Red touch navigation keys (protected when inactive)
• My Account – access balance, minutes, usage and payment info
• Flash user interface themes for personalization and Flash wallpapers with fun animations
• 500 address book contacts with five numbers, two e-mail addresses and a picture ID for each entry
• Weight: 3.26 oz.
• Frequency: 1.9 GHz CDMA PCS, 800 MHz CDMA (digital dual-band)
• Data transmission: high-speed EV-DO
• Usage time of up to 220 minutes, or up to 398 of standby time

The LG VX8600 is available today for $129.99 after a $50 rebate and a new two-year customer agreement. V CAST Music songs cost 99 cents if purchased from the PC or $1.99 if purchased and downloaded over the air onto a V CAST Music phone.
The LG VX8500 Chocolate phone arrived in the public arena with much fanfare and plenty of advertisements touting its luscious design. Our expectations were understandably high, but we were soundly disappointed when we discovered it wasn't all it was hyped up to be. The biggest problem with the VX8500 Chocolate (as well as with its GSM cousin, the LG KG800) was that the touch-sensitive keypad required too much of a learning curve to master. Not to mention that its features simply did not live up to the hype. However, LG may have learned its lesson with the LG VX8600, the flip-phone version of the Chocolate. The external music controls are still touch-sensitive but the keypad is decidedly not; this makes menu navigation much easier even though it is still hampered by a flat keypad. And while the feature set is the same as the VX8500, at least it now comes with the speakerphone built in. The LG VX8600 is available for $179.99 at retail but you can get it for $129.99 with a 2-year service agreement from Verizon Wireless.

 

The wide and flat clamshell design of the LG VX8600 does not really lend itself to the "Chocolate" moniker, unlike that of the original slider versions (the VX8500 and the KG800) that resemble (albeit vaguely) the size and shape of dark chocolate candy bars. It measures 3.89 by 1.93 by 0.58 inches, making it wider and fatter than the VX8500 Chocolate. However, it still retains the Chocolate's trademark glossy black finish, and it remains quite slim as flip phones go. We think it's very elegant and sexy, rivaling that of the Motorola Krzr K1 in style and design. The one downside to such a glossy finish is that the phone is extremely prone to fingerprint smudges--it was unavoidable. The phone's lightweight 3.26 ounces felt really nice in the hand, and we thought it felt pretty comfortable when held next to our ear. Opening the phone was pretty easy; just one push of the thumb would do it, though closing it is more of a two-handed operation.

On the face of the phone is its 65,000-color, 1.3-inch diagonal, external screen. It displays signal and battery strength, the date and time, photo caller ID, and the current track if the music player is on. The external screen also acts as a self-portrait viewfinder when you activate the camera, which sits above the display. Below the screen are the red touch-sensitive music player controls (that are lit only when the phone is activated.) When the backlighting is off, it seems as if there are no controls at all, but you can activate them again by pressing any of the buttons on the sides. We were a little more forgiving with the touch-sensitive music player controls on the VX8600 as opposed to the touch-sensitive navigation pad on the previous Chocolate handsets; since these controls are only for the music player and are therefore not as much of a liability. That said, they still can be a pain. Once the touch-sensitive music player controls are activated, they take just three to four seconds to turn off. If you happen to brush the controls accidentally during those three to four seconds, you might accidentally skip a track or stop a song. There appears to be no way to change this lag time, and the phone doesn't have a hold switch.
The left spine of the top flap is home to the volume rocker, while its right spine is home to a dedicated camera button and a dedicated voice-command button. These buttons are a little too skinny for our taste; it would make more sense if they were on the sides of the bottom flap, which is slightly thicker. The charger jack is on the left spine of the bottom flap, and the microSD card slot is on the right.
Flip open the phone and you'll find a beautiful 2.2-inch, 262,000-color, TFT (thin film transistor) display that is as gorgeous as the screen on the previous Chocolate handsets. Graphics appeared rich and detailed, and images were saturated with color. You can alter the settings of the backlight timer and the clock format, as well as the size of the dialing font. We were a little disappointed that you couldn't alter its brightness or contrast, but seeing as how brilliantly sharp the display was, we'll let that one slide. Verizon offers a few different menu styles to choose from, so you're not stuck with the tedious Verizon Wireless interface. We especially liked the Arch theme that arranges all the menu shortcuts into a wheel-like design.
The navigation array lies underneath the screen, and thankfully the controls are not touch-sensitive like those on the previous Chocolate handsets. There's a square four-way toggle with a central OK button, two soft keys, the Talk and End/Power buttons, and a Clear control. Each direction of the toggle also doubles as a shortcut for the Web browser, Verizon's Get It Now Internet service, the calendar, and the picture/video menu. While the array is spacious and user-friendly, the numeric keypad doesn't follow suit unfortunately. The buttons are flush with the surface of the phone with very little delineation between them, so they're not very tactile, and it is pretty difficult to dial by feel.
While the VX8600 is certainly a very design-centric phone, its feature set is pretty impressive, too. It has a 500-entry phone book, and each entry can hold up to five numbers, 2 e-mail addresses, a picture ID, and 1 of 17 polyphonic ring tones, as well as be assigned to a group. Basic but essential features include text and multimedia messaging, instant messaging, speed dialing, a vibrate mode, a speakerphone, voice recording, voice commands including voice dialing, e-mail, a wireless Web browser, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm clock, a world clock, a notepad, and a tip calculator. The VX8600 also has stereo Bluetooth support so that you can use stereo Bluetooth headsets to listen to your music, and VZ Navigator support, which turns your phone into a GPS navigation device.

Personalization options are pretty good on the VX8600. If you aren't satisfied with the included graphics and ring tones, you can purchase and download more via Verizon's Get It Now service. You can also download games and applications, though no games were included in the phone.
We tested the dual-band dual-mode (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO) LG VX8600 Chocolate in San Francisco using Verizon's service. Call quality was excellent, and callers couldn't even tell we were on a cell phone. Speakerphone quality was pretty good as well. We were quite impressed with the download speed of the phone, thanks to the EV-DO coverage. Downloading a song took less than a minute and Web pages loaded in a few seconds. However, we had mixed performance issues when watching streaming video on V Cast. Some of the videos seemed pixilated, and we experienced a few buffering issues.
We managed to pair the VX8600 with the Cardo Scala 700 Bluetooth headset successfully. The audio quality of the music was pretty impressive. Though listening to the songs via the phone's internal speakers sounded a tiny bit tinny, it still sounded great.
As usual with Verizon Wireless' multimedia phones, all accessories that would make multimedia a better experience -- namely stereo headphones (or even earbuds), a USB connector, and a microSD card -- are sold separately, and Verizon doesn't even include a software disk with drivers for Windows Media Player. The included headset adapter would be useful if it adapted to 3.5mm standard headphone plugs, but instead only works with 2.5mm handsfree microphone headsets, which should have been included anyway.

 

With its shiny finish and touch-sensitive music buttons on the face, the LG VX8600 (the flip-phone version of the VX8500 Chocolate slider) most closely resembles the red-hot Motorola KRZR K1m. The VX8600's glossy piano black case is a fingerprint's dream, but even spotted with prints the phone retains its classy gloss, thanks to the gleaming chrome band that rings the top shell. The screens look sharp and detailed, especially the 65,000-color external screen, which doubles as a spare viewfinder for the camera and camcorder. Finally, the menu on the VX8600, while not quite as slick as the Chocolate's all-Flash interface, is still a breath of fresh air compared to the standard Verizon Wireless menu setup.

High-speed connectivity is taken care of with EV-DO on the LG VX8600, making downloading content from Verizon's V Cast Music and Video stores a snap. Music is a focus with the LG VX8600, emphasized with the external touch sensitive music controls and A2DP stereo Bluetooth headset compatibility. An internal 262k color TFT LCD display with a 176x220 pixel resolution (down from the VX8500's 240x320) is paired with a 65k color 160x128 pixel resolution outer screen. Imaging is taken care of with a 1.3 megapixel camera, and microSD memory cards can be used to store all your media on.

Now we have to buy the $15 verizon 2.5 to 3.5 adapter w/ mic, in order use our own set of headphones.

Multimedia

 

For a phone that wears its musical intentions on its outer shell, the music experience on the LG VX8600 is disappointing. The phone lacks a USB cable, memory card, and software drivers out of the box; all of these must be purchased separately. Once installed, Windows Media Player required numerous re-installs and restarts to recognize and synchronize the phone's music. With no USB 2.0 support, the transfer process was quite long, taking more than an hour to fill our 2GB card. The music player itself was basic, with no equalizer or visualizer options. The V Cast store boasts impressive searching and browsing functions, but the interface would only display a frustrating two songs at once, so plenty of scrolling was required. The touch-sensitive buttons on the phone's face worked well enough and rarely went off accidentally, but they time-out too quickly, requiring you to press another button for them to come back to life. In the end, we prefer hard buttons that allow one-touch access to music, like those on the Nokia 5300 XpressMusic. On the plus side, stereo Bluetooth setup couldn't have been easier

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 VX8600 Performance

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!