LG CHOCOLATE VX8500 Cell Phone

Recently, my iPhone fell out of commission. While I was waiting for it to be replaced, I had an old beater GSM phone. For fun, a friend of mine offered to give me his lightly used LG Chocolate VX8500, as my iPhone was also my music player (and heaven forbid I go without any sort of iPod for a week!)

I activated the phone on a Verizon INpulse plan for the hell of it. I thought it might be neat to experience on-the-fly music and movie downloads as I used to do with the now-departed AMP'D mobile , and experience a quick browsing experience.

When all was said and done, this is the most miserable phone I've used in a long time. It is poorly thought out, poorly designed, and poorly executed. And what LG didn't butcher, Verizon finished the job.

My previous phone before the iPhone was a Sony Ericsson K550i- a mid-range phone similar to the LG Chocolate in terms of specifications and price.


The looks of the phone itself Looks fairly attractive. I'd give it an 7/10. It loses points for its chunkiness and crude pieces (see the back), but I like the piano-black finish and smooth front.

The phone design 2/10 - The one-piece keypad isn't all that great for text messaging, but it could be a LOT worse. Why so low? First off, as 'cool' as the touch controls are, they offer no tactile feedback (fine) , and they're either overly responsive or not responsive enough. I'd happily take a more traditional d-pad (which is an absolute pain to use if you're scrolling through a long list) , as it would eliminate the issue of accidentally pressing one of the soft keys instead of the directional pad- something that happened far too often while I was using the phone.

The worst part of the design has to do with the placement of the side-keys. On each side are 3 keys (on the left it's volume and voice command, on the right it's music, camera, and end. They're placed at identical heights on each side, and because of their prominence, you're likely to hit the "end" key when trying to adjust the volume, or vice versa.

The interface 2/10 is awful. It's the standard ugly Verizon menu that requires too many sub-menus to navigate (for example, getting to the music player requires wading through levels of sub-menus.) The Chocolate is capable of changing to various "themes," however, to break up the monotony of the menus. It doesn't help- these menus, although better looking, are simply too slow, and the touch controls make it that much more unbearable.

The Music Player 4/10 - The 4 points it earns here are due to the fact it's capable of background playback. In every other regard, it's a complete pain to use. Accessing the music player requires wading through the awful menu. Fortunately, there's a "music" shortcut key on the side. Unfortunately, you're likely to hit the voice-command key while trying to press it.

Once in you can navigate through playlists, artists, genres, and albums. For some reason, it always starts with "playlists." It worked reasonably well, but there's no "shuffle" mode. Boo.

The biggest flaw in the music player is controlling the actual player. While in background mode, you can control the volume... and nothing else. Opening the music player up can be done pressing the "music" key while in some menus, but not all- and it exits whatever you're doing. Unlike the iPhone or Sony Ericsson, there's no way to simply move to the next or previous track.

But wait, it gets worse! Let's say you want to go to a specific artist while the player is in the background. Hitting the "back" key exits the player instead of taking you back through the music player menus. You have to go to "Go to playlists." Then scroll over to "artists." THEN select your track! Uggghhh!!!!


Video playback Works well enough..

The Camera Works well enough.

Making Calls 7/10 - reception isn't all that hot, but voice quality was fairly good, and the phone was nice to hold. Speakerphone was great.

VCast -10/10 - VCast is divided into two parts- VCast Music (think iTunes music store for your phone) and VCast Video. VCast Video is a nasty gruel of crappy content not worth watching. While the iPhone gives us YouTube (and most GSM and Sprint phones can view Youtube as well) , Verizon apparently thinks paying $15.00/month for content you don't even want to watch for free is a pretty sweet deal.

VCast Music is so awful I want to impale the CEO of Verizon Wireless with this chunky plastic brick. VCast Music's pricing scheme works like this... 99cent downloads from your computer, , $2.49 from your phone. Am I reading that right? A 150% markup? These guys are aware that Sprint, AT&T, and the iTunes WiFi store charge 99 cents, right?

But it gets better.... There's a $1.00/day "Access fee." I. kid. you. not. So downloading that "hot new Shakira track" is going to cost you $3.49.

That pricing is absolutely criminal. And unlike the iPhone or Sony Ericsson K550i (or just about any real phone) , the Chocolate is not capable of streaming Mp3's from Seeqpod or any web site. My only explanation is that Verizon Wireless thinks its customers are idiots.

The Internet or lack thereof Ok, it has a "web browser," and it works acceptably well, but not great. Sony Ericsson and Nokia put a much better browser on their phones, and compared to the iPhone, well, it's in a different league altogether. I'm not expecting iPhone-grade web browsing, but someone needs to send the memo to Verizon Wireless that the internet exists out of their lousy "portal."

Should you eventually find it (it's not actually in the browser menu) , it's possible to navigate away by entering in text to the address bar on a VZW-owned web page. Your bookmarks are managed this way as well, for reasons that baffle me. The whole process is clunky and slow. Oh, it's not free, either.

Conclusion : This is a rotten phone. I guess if you're 13 you won't know the difference. Some of these complaints have been addressed with the new version of the LG Chocolate, but that doesn't change how awful VZW is as a provider.