LG Chocolate 3 Cell Phone Review - Multimedia
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Marianne Schultz Published on September 02, 2008 Comment on this |
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| The Chocolate 3 does well as a music player, with easy access to most functions, thanks to dedicated buttons and the external screen. As a video player, the Chocolate 3 leaves us wanting, with no sorting or organizing capability and incompatibility with many popular file formats, although playback has improved a great deal from the previous generation Chocolate. |
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Accessing Music Software (11.65)
For this test, we time how quickly we can access the music software and start a song playing starting with the phone in the closed, unlocked state. The Chocolate 3, like its predecessor, does this very quickly at an average of 1.72 seconds, beating out other multi-media focused phones like the iPhone 3G, and coming very close to the 1.56 seconds time attained with the music-focused SonyEricsson W580i. This task is facilitated by a dedicated music button on the phone which brings you right to the music application where your first selection is "Play All Songs." For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Time to Play Music (sec)
Dedicated Music Controls (10.0)
The Chocolate 3 has virtual plethora of dedicated music controls in the closed and unlocked state to allow you to control music playback according to your every whim. There is a dedicated Music button which gets you right to the music application, a D-pad with a center select button on the front that allows you to scroll through your music as well as pause, rewind, and fast-forward through it and navigate the music application menu system, and there are volume up/down buttons on the left side of the phone. While you're listening to music through headphones, you can use the lock button to ensure that accidental button presses don't change the song you're listening to, though you can still turn the volume up or down while the lock is set. The controls and their functionality really lend themselves to music listening while on the go. The volume up/down buttons can be easily accessed by feel alone if you keep the phone in a pocket or bag, though the scroll wheel/D-pad requires you to get the phone out to look at the screen to see what you're doing.
Music Software Functionality and Organization (7.4)
The Chocolate 3 has a number of music functions you'd expect from a multi-media focused phone. To start with, it is playlist capable, though there are some interesting restrictions on how you can manipulate them. You can create playlists on the phone itself, though these playlists cannot be synced to your computer and edited there. You can create playlists on your computer and sync them to your Chocolate 3, but these playlists cannot be edited on the phone directly. Playlists that can be edited on the phone can be done so easily - when you choose to edit or create a playlist, you select songs by checking a box next to them and then saving your changes. Verizon makes it easy for you to purchase music directly on the phone with one of the soft menu keys dedicated to "Shop" in almost every view while you're in the music application.
The Chocolate 3's music application recognized the tags on the WMA, MP3, and AAC files we transferred to it. Unfortunately, you cannot rate songs to use as a playlist parameter. The default view on the main screen when playing a song shows you the album artwork, song title, artist, and song length. With the phone closed, you see the same information on the front screen, though the text will scroll continuously since not everything can be shown on the smaller screen at once.
There are equalizer presets, though LG oddly calls them Sound Effects, so you can customize the sound output based on the type of music you're listening to. The available presets are Flat, Concert Hall, Classical, Bass Booster, Vocal Booster, and Treble Booster. There is no way to manually adjust equalizer settings or create your own equalizer presets. Once you've started playing music, it will continue playing in the background when you access the main menu and open other applications. As with the previous generation Chocolate, music can also be played in Airplane mode so you can listen to music while on a plane or other location where wireless radios must not be operated.
Online Song Downloading (5.0)
Verizon has a very robust online media store and the Chocolate 3 is set up out of the box to take advantage of it. Purchased songs take a short time to download, depending on the strength of your network connection, and then are immediately available in the music application for playing. As experienced on the previous generation Chocolate, the store is still a little slow and songs are still relatively expensive at $1.99 a pop.
Streaming (0.0)
Similar to its predecessors, the Chocolate 3 will not stream online audio.
Podcast Support (0.0)
The Chocolate 3 does not have any built-in software to download podcasts, nor does the PC sync capability include podcasts. In order to listen to podcasts on the Chocolate 3, you'd need to load them on to a Micro SD card to use in the phone's card slot. So, zero points for the Chocolate 3 in this area.
Music Sync with PC (7.0)
Songs downloaded directly through the Chocolate 3 from the VCAST store cannot be synced to your PC - you must download the purchased song again through your PC but there is no additional charge for this. You can download music syncing software from Verizon's site, since it does not come in the box with the Chocolate 3, which will allow you to sync music from your computer to your phone. Windows Media Player is also an option and will work for you if you don't use Verizon's VCAST store to obtain your music. Windows Media Player software is a free download and is available for just about every version of Microsoft Windows operating system there is.
Music Formats and DRM (3.5)
The Chocolate 3 had no problems recognizing the WMA, MP3, and AAC test files we loaded. The VCAST Music with Rhapsody store uses its own DRM, which the Chocolate handles just fine, of course. Verizon *really* wants you to buy all of your music and ringtones from their store and the media experience on the Chocolate is geared toward that. There are other sources for digital music that are DRM-free and less expensive - Amazon and eMusic are two to be considered and music you purchase from them should work on just about any other digital music player or phone you have, even if you change providers or devices in the future.
Music Interruption (8.0)
When you make or receive a phone call, the music stops playing abruptly and begins playing again when the call is over. While this is definitely useful, the Chocolate still does not fade the music in or out before and after a call, so it can be a bit of a rough transition, especially if you listen to your music at a high volume.
Video Software Access (6.61)
To test how easy it is to get to videos, we time how long it takes to take the phone from the closed unlocked state to the moment a video starts playing. There are no keyboard shortcuts set by default to get to the video player immediately, but it can still be done fairly quickly by using the keypad to open the desired menu items using their designated numbers. There's a slight delay getting from the home screen to the main menu, but it goes quickly after that. It took 3.03 seconds to go from a closed unlocked state to a video playing - this is just a tad longer than the previous Chocolate, and faster than the iPhone 3G and LG enV2. For more information on how we conduct this test see this article.
Time to Play Video (sec)
Video Controls (6.0)
While viewing a video, the D-pad provides the most navigation options, allowing you to play, pause, stop, fast forward, rewind, and go to full-screen view. The left soft key allows you to quickly mute the video, and the volume up/down buttons on the side of the phone allow you to adjust the volume. The right soft key offers an Options menu that allows you to set the current video frame to be set as the wallpaper of your main screen, or view the video's information, including its name, date, duration, size, and other details.
When you toggle the view to full-screen, it switches to landscape mode. All menu items on the screen disappear in landscape mode, though pressing on some controls, such as rewind or fast forward, will bring up on-screen indicators to show the video's status. In its new flip form factor, the Chocolate 3 is a bit awkward to hold to view videos in landscape mode, and the screen size does not lend itself to pleasant extended video viewing sessions.
Video Software & Organization (2.0)
The Chocolate 3's video software is very basic. There is only one view of your saved videos - they are shown by thumbnail image and listed by date. You have no other way of sorting or organizing your videos, nor can you make video playlists or search through them. Your video library does automatically update on its own once new content has been added, though anything you add manually must be placed in the correct folder on the Micro SD card in order for the video player to find it. Playing video in the background is not possible. The Chocolate 3's multimedia focus is really on music, not video, which is clear in how little functionality there is in the video software compared to the music software.
Video Sync with PC (0.0)
The Chocolate 3 does not come with software in the box to sync videos. You can use the USB Mass Storage feature, where the Micro SD card inserted into the phone appears as a removable drive when plugged in to your PC or Mac, to move videos manually to the my_flix folder. You could also use the Windows Media Player software to sync in the same way you would sync your music.
Video Formats (4.5)
We loaded a number of video test files, each in a different format, onto a Micro SD memory card inserted into the Chocolate 3 - as previously noted, the Chocolate 3 does not come with a Micro SD card in the box, so you'll have to provide your own. We then test each video by trying to play it in the the phone's video software. The Chocolate 3 did not even list the Quicktime, Flash, Real, or Windows Media files we saved to the Micro SD card. It does play MP4 files, and even played an MP4 file encoded in H264, though with some odd banding showing at the bottom of the video, and we deducted .5 from this score for this issue. It also played all of the 3GPP files loaded without issue, unlike the last Chocolate that crashed periodically when playing these files. In terms of video formats, the Chocolate 3's score improves over that of its predecessor.
Video DRM (0.0)
The Chocolate 3 does not support any video DRM, such as what you would find on files downloaded from iTunes or Amazon's Unbox service.
Video Playback Smoothness (10.0)
To test video playback smoothness, we load and play 3GP files with increasing bitrates and observe how well the phone plays them back. The previous Chocolate did not perform very well in this area, but the Chocolate 3 performed far better than its predecessor. It played all 5 of our 3GP test files, with the highest-bitrate file topping out at 768Kbps, with no skipping, lagging, or other issues, even when played in full-screen landscape mode.
Online Video Downloading (0.0)
The Chocolate 3 cannot download video into its own memory or an inserted Micro SD card from an online source.
Video Streaming unscored
The VCAST store offers many video clips and even full TV episodes that can be streamed to the phone at various price points, including free. Streamed videos are quite pixelated and the audio track does not always seem to match up. Full length TV episodes are broken up into smaller pieces, presumably to aid the streaming, requiring you to view them in multiple chunks that must be manually selected. Looking at other online video streaming sites, the Chocolate 3 will not stream video from the mobile versions of YouTube or Windows Media. We don't score phones on video streaming, however, since there is no single standard that would allow for consistent testing of all phones we review.
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