LG Chocolate 3 Cell Phone Review - Audio Quality
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The Chocolate 3's side tone is almost right on and the sound it receives is fairly accurate though with some issues. Comparatively, the sound sent by the Chocolate 3 is not very good and it performs worse overall than its predecessor in this category.
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General Audio
While many cell phones do so much more beyond handling calls these days, how well they work as a phone is still an important factor, in which audio quality is a key component. We look at audio performance in three areas - the audio you hear while on a call, the audio sent from the phone, and how much of your own voice is piped back to you, called sidetone, which is how you gauge how loudly you're speaking. We do all of this using guidelines defined by international audio experts and testing equipment and software that cell phone manufacturers use themselves. We use a head and torso simulator (HATS) made by Bruel & Kjaer and the SoundCheck software by Listen, Inc. For more information on how we do our audio testing see this article
Sound Receive Frequency Response (8.34)
This test focuses on the quality of the sound received by the phone, and our testing equipment evaluates how well the phone transmits the voice of the person you're speaking to - it does this by transmitting a set batch of known sounds at specific frequencies in a test call and analyzing what is heard through the phone's speaker. On the chart, the red lines show the outside limits that a phone should not surpass, with ideal performance manifesting as a smooth curve through the middle of the area defined by the outside limits. You'll see that the Chocolate 3's performance curve comes close to the limits at the middle and high frequencies - this means that voices and sounds at these frequencies may sound flat or dampened to you. All in all, this is not bad performance in the company of our comparison phones, though it did not perform as well as the previous Chocolate.
Sound Send Frequency Response (7.95)
This test focuses on the quality of the sound sent by the phone, and our testing equipment and software evaluates how well the phone transmits your voice on calls. As with the previous test, ideal performance manifests as a smooth curve through the middle of the area defined by the limits shown in red. You'll see that the Chocolate 3's performance hits the limits at the lower frequencies and again at the higher frequencies. This means your voice may sound clipped or dampened at these frequencies. In this test, the Chocolate 3 performed worse then every other one of our comparison phones, including the previous Chocolate.
Handset Side Tone (8.80)
Side tone is the amount of your own voice piped back to you through the phone's speaker that helps you determine how loud you are speaking. If a phone's side tone is too low - meaning that it transmits less of your voice back to you than it should ideally - you'll think you're speaking too quietly and will compensate by speaking more loudly. If the phone's side tone is too high, you'll think that you're speaking too loudly and adjust accordingly. Ideal side tone is defined to be at 18dB and the Chocolate 3's side tone is 16.8, which is not bad at all. This performance earns the Chocolate a decent score here, though it's still not as close to ideal as its predecessor or the iPhone 3G though it does out-perform the Sony Ericsson z750a, LG enV2, and Samsung 520.
Side Tone
