LG CHOCOLATE VX8500 Cell Phone

My fiance and I have been Verizon customers for years. We're both happy with the service and enjoy taking advantage of the "new every two" program. How could two tech geeks resist the prospect of a new handheld gadget every two years? Often we put a lot of research into our phones, but we were lazy with our last phone purchase. We had heard a few good things about the Verizon LG VX8500 Chocolate and were both intoxicated with the sleek design. I think the iPod trend got the better of us on this one. A phone that slides open and that has wheel controls? We were sold. Unfortunately for us, these phones have been a nightmare.

Design
The LG VX8500 Chocolate's design is a classic example of aesthetics taking priority over function. This is a very sleek phone. It comes in several colors, including black and red which were the ones we purchased. The phone is very small, with the approximate height and thickness of a deck of cards, but a smaller width. The actual dimensions are 3.85" H X 1.87"W X 0.67"D. The phone is light enough, being about average weight for a cellular phone at 3.5 ounces with the standard battery.

The phone is based around a sliding design. The front of the phone contains only a screen, circular button wheel, and a few other miscellaneous buttons positioned around it. To access the keypad, the user must slide the top of the phone up. Picture the motion you make when you're separating two pieces of paper by squeezing them together in your fingers and sliding your thumb one way and your index finger another. This reveals a small number pad for dialing and text messaging. When we first purchased our phones, I felt like this was going to be a weak point. It felt cheaply made. While talking on the phone, I always worried it would accidentally slide closed. From the beginning, the front of the phone was kind of loose and wiggled a bit when you slid it up or down. On two separate phones (we had a third thrown in at some point, which I'll explain later), this mechanism was damaged in some way. Neither my fiance nor I are particularly rough with our phones, but somehow the mechanism loosened. At present time, pulling gently on the front portion of my phone causes it to lift up a quarter of an inch from the back part, making the sliding mechanism visible. My fiance's is also loose, though not as bad. When slid open, the buttons on the front panel light up red and the screen lights up for a time.

The buttons on this phone were not well designed. I got the impression that the fact that users would actually have to use the buttons was completely lost on the phone's developers. In addition to the aforementioned buttons, buttons are located are located on the side of the front panel of the phone. These control the power, volume, and other features on the phone and are very small to fit on the side of the panel. I have tiny fingers, yet I still had a difficult time using these buttons. My fiance had an even tougher time with them. They were difficult to use unless I was holding the phone a certain way and even then, I still had trouble with them.

The touch wheel and the adjacent buttons were even more of a problem. At times they were too sensitive while at other times they didn't seem to pick up on my movements. Sometimes the two problems combined to increase my frustrations. I would continuously press a button only to have the phone not recognize my touch, followed by it finally picking up my movement but registering it twice if I didn't move my finger away fast enough. It resulted in very frustrating menu navigation. Cell phones are supposed to be quick and easy to use. I always found myself struggling to check a text message and being successful only after scrolling through the wrong options because the buttons weren't following what I was doing.

The number pad was just as well thought out. Each button is equal in size, jammed very close together in a small rectangular area. Even my small fingers couldn't help but press multiple buttons at times. The area for each button was so small that dialing could be an arduous task involving me having to go back and correct mistakes. Text messaging was even worse. I was once a text message fiend but I found myself relying heavily on phone calls with this phone.

The color screen, located on the front panel of the LG VX8500 Chocolate, is quite large and vibrant compared to most cellular phones I have owned. The screen is easy to see. The colors are bright and the images are sharp. It was difficult to keep clear of finger prints due to the screen being flush with the front of the phone and having nothing to protect it. I often found myself wiping the screen with my sleeve to remove various smudges.

The phone's battery is located on the back of the bottom panel. A small button releases it. It is easy to take out and install. A lens for the phone's camera is located on the back of the phone's front panel, only visible (and able to be used) when the phone is slid open.

Features
The LG VX8500 has all of the features you'd expect a current model phone to have. This cell phone boasts a 1.3 megapixel camera, which is lower than the quality of any digital camera you'd buy today, but average for a cellular phone. I found the pictures to be fine for my uses; good enough for taking a picture of prospective family Christmas presents to my fiance for approval. For the fun of it, a few features are included in the camera that allow you to alter the color to negative, black and white, etc. You can also take videos, which I found to be of good quality for goofing around. I didn't attempt to use this feature for any more serious tasks.

This phone has a speakerphone, which was originally omitted in the first model of the Chocolate. The speakerphone is very soft, even at the highest volume. Due to laws that prohibit handheld cellular phone usage while driving, I sometimes used this feature while on the road. It was impractical due to the volume. Traffic and even the noise of driving on a highway could overpower this phone's speakerphone. On the other end, when I would talk to my fiance from a landline, the speakerphone would have a major echo. It often picked up more background noise from the road than his voice.

The phone's display and sound options are plentiful. There are several display themes to choose from and you also have the option of downloading photos using Verizon's "Get it Now," sending your own pictures to your phone in a text message, or using photos from your phone's camera as a background. The same options are available with the phone's sounds, including ring tones. The ring tone options were pleasant enough, but I preferred downloading ring tones of real songs from the "Get it Now" program. My fiance enjoyed sending himself content from the computer, including a Superman picture for his background and Mario music for his ring tone. The phone allows you to choose one ring tone for each person, each situation (blocked number, etc.), or a default ringer for everything. The ring tone volume was sufficiently loud for a cellular phone. I didn't have a problem hearing it in most reasonable settings. I don't consider a loud dance club to be a reasonable type of place to expect to hear a cellular phone.

The LG VX8500 Chocolate has a microSD slot located on the side of the front panel, supporting up to 2 gigabytes of additional storage. I used mine mainly for photos and MP3s. This phone can serve as an MP3 player, which I used to a small degree.

Other features of this phone that are common to most phones include text messaging, an address book, a calendar, a calculator, an alarm, a notepad, the ability to record voice memos, and blue tooth.

Usage
The features on this phone are hit or miss. Basic operation isn't too difficult, as the phone has easy to navigate menus that seem standard on most LG models. Either they're self explanatory, and similar to other phones, or they're nearly impossible to locate. I think for non-tech geeks, there will be quite a learning curve to grasp all of this phone's features. It took my fiance and I about two weeks and a peek at the phone's booklet to figure out how to use the speakerphone. Speakerphone can only be activated when the phone is open. An icon appears on the screen next to a small button on the side of the front panel when you are on a call and the phone is open. This is the only time speakerphone can be activated. There are no other markings on this button to indicate that it controls the speakerphone. Only if all conditions are met will the screen show you how to turn speakerphone on.

A problem with this feature, and others that can be used during a call, is a locking feature of the phone. To stop you from hitting the buttons during a call, the phone automatically locks. This prohibits you from using speakerphone if you forget to activate it in the beginning of the call. The number pad is also locked, making dawdling on checking your voicemail a frustrating habit. If you don't start entering your password fast enough, the phone locks you out. The only thing that can be done is sliding the phone closed to end the call, calling your voicemail again, and enter your password right away.

My fiance and I came to own a third Chocolate when an unfortunate accident in a dark closet in Las Vegas resulted in my fiance's phone meeting its maker under my fiance's foot. The screen cracked, through no fault of the phone. No, it wasn't what you're thinking. My fiance decided to change in the closet, which had no light in it, rather than wait for one of the people we were vacationing with to vacate the bathroom. Verizon was nice enough to replace the phone with a new one for us and we were back in business. Or so we thought.

Both of the original phones always had a problem getting service. We live and work in New York City, which is pretty heavily covered by most cellular phone service providers. I have not had problems in the past with my Verizon cellular phones getting service. These phones would search for a signal incessantly, even after moving back into an are with a strong signal. For some reason, the phones wouldn't catch on to being in a service area for quite some time unless they were turned off and back on. We had tried updating our roaming capabilities and nothing. My fiance's replacement phone was even worse with this problem. It almost never found service, even in areas that I had service. At times when both phones found no signal, mine would resume service faster while his would continue searching until it drained the battery or was shut off. My fiance could charge his phone before heading to my parents' house for Sunday dinner. Their house is a bad cellular phone area. By the time we arrived home a few hours later, his phone was dead if it hadn't been turned off. My fiance travels for his job, which made this problem even more intolerable. He couldn't have his cellular phone dying while on a job. Both of us received text messages on a severe delay. Phone calls were often completely ignored by the phone, not even being recorded as a missed call. We'd get voicemail notifications without ever seeing the call come in. If it had only happened with one, I'd say I'd purchased a lemon. This problem occurred with three separate Chocolates, one of which was 9 months newer than the others.

The additional problems with my fiance's second Chocolate also extended to the memory card slot. For some reason, inserting a memory card in the slot resulted in an error that locked up the entire phone. The slot worked with both of our other phones so it was likely this one was a lemon, but it was another problem to add to this phone being a disaster for us.

In addition to the above grievances, this phone was annoying! It was always making noise. Unfortunately, notifications of voicemails, missed calls, and text messages are all or nothing with this phone. Either you turn them off completely or the phone will hound you. The phone would ring and I'd miss a call. 2 minutes later, it would remind me I had a missed call. Then again, two minutes after that and so on. This would be the procedure with any notification. When the battery life was dying, the phone would try to use every bit of energy left in that battery to tell me the battery was dying. It was overkill. I don't need reminders, reminding me of reminders, reminding me of notifications. I almost exclusively left the phone on silent or vibrate after the novelty of my ring tones wore off.

Battery life
The battery life on this phone was below average for the previous cellular phones I've had and the new one I just purchased. I believe this was in part to the problems I mentioned before, including the abundance of audio "reminders" and the constant search for service. The phone comes with a charger that plugs into a jack on the side. We didn't have problems charging any of the phones using this charger, but a friend who also owns the LG VX8500 Chocolate had problems charging his phone after a few months. I believe it was just a defect and not a problem affecting most of the phones.

Price and Recommendation
At the time of purchase, we were able to buy these phones at a special promotional rate of $149.99. I believe that included a rebate. It wouldn't have even been worth it if the phone was free. Both of us decided to extend our contracts 11 months early and purchased new phones. While this phone ranks highly in style, it doesn't serve its purpose as a phone. I recommend that those researching a new cell phone purchase keep looking. This phone isn't worth the headache.