LG Chocolate VX8500 Cell Phone Review - Organizer
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Alfredo Padilla Published on March 16, 2007 Comment on this |
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Synchronization Ease of Use (0.0)
The LG Chocolate does not allow you to synchronize your contacts, calendar and other personal information with your PC.
Alerts (5.0)
Alerts on the LG Chocolate are only available for items you enter in the calendar program. Reminders can be set to go off at one of 8 preset times, ranging from on time to 2 days before the appointment. You can choose any of the standard ring tones to go off as the reminder, and you can also choose to add a vibration alert.
When a reminder goes off you are shown an alert on the screen with the title of your appointment along with the audio and/or vibrate alert that you chose. You have the option to view the item now or view it later. If you choose to view it later it will go off again in 5 minutes. There are no options to delay for a specified period of time.
If you miss your alert, it will stop ringing/vibrating after one minute and then sound again five minutes later, just as if you had hit the snooze. Overall we were satisfied with the alert options available on the LG Choclate. Although not as advanced as a smart phone, they do compare favorably with a phone like the Motorola Razr V3m. The ability to set your own ring tone for each appointment is a particularly nice feature.
Over the Air PIM Sync (0.0)
The LG Chocolate does not provide you with any over the air synchronization options.
PIM Cross Connections (0.0)
There is no integration across PIM applications on the LG Chocolate. For example, you cannot add a contact to an appointment.
Address Book
Adding Contacts (4.61)
To test how difficult it is to add contacts on a phone we time how long it takes to enter each of 5 different contacts with diverse names. We enter a full name and number for each contact. The LG Chocolate took an average of 21.7 seconds to enter each contact. This compares well to other regular phones, for example the Motorola Razr V3m took significantly longer at 27.9 seconds to add a contact. However phones with a keyboard take significantly less time to add a contact. For example the Treo 700p took only 17.7 seconds on average to add a contact. Overall we were pleased with the LG Chocolate’s performance given that it has a standard keypad.
Sorting & Search (1.5)
The LG Chocolate’s contacts program only allows you to sort your contacts by first name. You can search through your contacts by typing out the first name only using multi-tap. You cannot search by last name and there is no predictive text search available. Overall the sorting and search options on the LG Chocolate are not impressive at all. Many phones allow provide you with more sorting options, for example the Motorola Razr V3m allows you to sort your contacts by category and speed dial, amongst others. Similarly, many phones allow you to search through your contacts using predictive text, and searching looks at more than just the first name.
Fields (2.4)
The LG Chocolate provides you with 12 different fields for your contacts. Most of these fields are generic (phone numbers, emails), but the custom text message alert stood out as something innovative. Overall we were not impressed by the Chocolate’s range of fields. We would have liked to see a birthday field and were disappointed that there is no way to enter non standard information, either in a notes field or by creating custom fields.
Speed Dial/Voice tags/Voice command (5.7)
The LG Chocolate allows you to assign phone numbers to one of 99 different speed dials. Assigning speed dial can be done from a contact’s edit screen, by choosing the option from the right soft key menu. There is also a dialogue to view and manage all of you speed dials in the menu under contacts.
The LG Chocolate does not offer voice tags, but does have a very well implemented voice command program. In addition to recognizing each of our 5 test contacts without problem, the voice command software can do much more, including launching programs, reading back information, checking various status items like battery, signal or checking in on your account. The software can be trained to recognize your voice better and was remarkably accurate compared to other voice recognition systems we have encountered in the past, including those found on high end smart phones.
Overall we felt that the Chocolate’s speed dial application was run of the mill, and we were disappointed to find no option to add voice tags. Although the voice command program is very full featured and responded well in our testing, it’s always nice to have voice tags to fall back on.
Calendar
Adding Calendar Items (3.4)
To test how difficult it is to add a calendar item we time how long it takes to go from phone closed to setting a lunch appointment for the following day. We repeat this test 5 times and take an average. The LG Chocolate took an average of 29.4 seconds to add our test appointment. This is a particularly poor score, in comparison the Motorola Razr V3m took 22.6 seconds, while the Treo 700p took only 12.2 seconds to add our test appointment. The LG Chocolate’s score is the result of two things; first the calendar is buried in the menu system and second the Chocolate’s touch sensitive controls are anything but sensitive. It often took several taps on the key we were pressing before we got a response.
Calendar Views (3.0)
The LG Chocolate’s calendar program provides you with 3 views. When you open the program you are placed in the monthly view by default. You can switch to an agenda view, a listing of all the appointments in a day, by navigating to the day you want and hitting the select button on the directional pad. There is also a weekly view available in the menu you find under the left soft key.
The monthly view is a simple monthly calendar. The current date is highlighted in blue, and dates that have appointments on them are purple. There is also an indicator at the bottom of the screen that tells you how many events there are on a given day. The agenda view shows a list of the day’s appointments in order. Each appointment shows the start and end times, as well as icons for reminders and recurrence. The weekly view shows a seven day week in a grid with days along the top and time along the left side. Appointments are blocked off in black. No information about the appointment is available. You cannot filter your appointments in any of the views.
Overall the LG Chocolate’s calendar views are very basic, which is what we were expecting from it. Although no one expects to use a phone like the Chocolate as their PDA, it would have been nice to see more usable views available, especially the weekly view.
Fields (6.0)
When creating an appointment on the LG Chocolate there are 7 fields available, including fields for recurrence and the ability to set a custom ring tone for that appointment. Compared to other phones the Chocolate does not provide you with a large number of fields. We would have liked the ability to set an all day appointment for example, or to add a category or note.
To Do/Tasks
Adding ToDo/Task (0.0)
The LG Chocolate does not allow you to create To-do’s and Tasks. This is not uncommon as most regular phones lack this feature.
ToDo/Task Sorting and Prioritizing (0.0)
See Above
Fields (0.0)
See Above
Notes
Adding Notes (1.48)
We were pleased to see that the LG Chocolate allowed you to create notes. This is not a standard feature on phones, for example the Motorolar Razr V3m lacks it. To find out how difficult it was to create a note, we timed how long it took to go from phone closed to saving a simple note reminding us about lunch the next day.
The LG Chocolate took an average of 33.8 seconds to create our test note. Most phones that allow you to create notes are smart phones like the Treo 700p, which took only 8.3 seconds on average. The LG’s poor time reflects the fact that the notes application is buried in the menus and that the keypad on the Chocolate doesn’t compare to the 700p’s full QWERTY keyboard for text entry. We also found ourselves once again stymied by the touch controls on the Chocolate, as it sometimes took up to 4 presses before the controls recognized a keypress.
Note Interface (5.0)
Although we were happy with to find a notes application on the LG Chocolate, the interface is fairly basic. Once in the application you have a list of notes, with the time and date created as well as the first few characters. The left soft key is assigned to creating a new note, while the right soft key opens a menu. This menu allows you to delete existing notes, and also allows you to search through existing notes. This is a nice feature and we were pleasantly surprised to see it. Even high end smart phones often don’t include a search function in their notes application. Overall we were pleased with the notes interface on the LG Chocolate, although not up to the same standard as some smart phone interfaces, for example there is no categorization or filtering of views, we were pleased to see a search function available.
Note Formatting (0.0)
There are no options on the LG Chocolate to add formatting to the text in your notes. This is not surprising as even high end smart phones often don’t offer this functionality.
Voice Memo (6.0)
The LG Chocolate has a simple voice memo program built in. This has become a standard feature on most phones, and we were happy to see it on the Chocolate as well. Creating a voice memo is fairly simple as a long press on the voice command button launches the recorder. If you don’t k now about this shortcut, or if you want to go and find your voice memos later though, the procedure is less straightforward. You will need to go three menus deep to the “my sounds” menu to find your recordings. Our test recording played back smoothly. Once you have created a recording you can send it via MMS directly from the program. Compared to other phones the LG Chocolate provides the most basic set of options for voice recordings, and in this respect it is similar to a phone like the Motorola Razr V3m, with the exception that the V3m does not allow you to send a recording via MMS.
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