LG Chocolate VX8550 Cell Phone Review - Conclusion
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Mark Brezinski Published on July 27, 2007 Comment on this |
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Who's It For
Business User
Business users will find the Chocolate doesn't contain the range of options they need for organizing their days. Also, the Web-based e-mail client will sometimes cause them to be unable to access their inboxes. The N75 is a smart phone that costs the same and offers much more functionality.
Budget Callers
Budget callers will undoubtedly balk at the new Chocolate's price. Basic phones are free with a contract and there are slightly lower-end phones available for under $100 that offer much of the same functionality.
Chatty Teenager
This is probably who the Chocolate was made for. Teenagers are more likely to care about their music software and phone's physical appearance. It also has good audio, an adequate camera, and a fair amount of storage space. All in all, it's a good phone to show off in the high school halls.
Media Maven
Media mavens should like the Chocolate. It is a fairly good music handset, with an above average media player and interface. Its memory is on the lower side of average, but it does include a memory card slot. It doesn't, however, come with a USB cable and headphones, so synchronizing with a PC or even using the phone as a personal music player bring additional costs. The battery's music playback capabilities should greatly impress Media mavens.
Conclusion
If the Chocolate's marketing has gotten you interested in the phone, then rest assured, you'll be getting a great-looking phone with good music functionality. The Chocolate is just what it claims to be. It has a very sleek design, and its OS interface certainly looks good. It also has a slightly different form factor, standing out in a field of flips. It doesn't deliver the aesthetic punch that, say, the iPhone does, but for a normal phone it holds its own. As for its music functionality, we saw a good array of features. The audio quality was great and the battery life for music playback was extraordinary. We were, however, a little disappointed in the sparse dedicated music controls, the lack of an in-box USB cable and headphones, and the sneaky sales tactic of including two headphone ports: one obscure, inferior jack, and a proprietary jack capable of better quality. This trend tended to affect many areas we examined: they would have been great, but there was some little annoyance holding the phone back. The media manager was OK for a normal phone, but the glitching we ran into when viewing videos pointed to a design flaw. Call management showed all the information we could have wanted, but disappeared when using call waiting. We wondered why searching used one of two set protocols, one of which was worse than the other; why include a crippled version of an existing search? Even its aesthetic appeal has an Achilles heel, as its external screen is incredibly succeptible to scratching.
Everything else the Chocolate does is between adequate and sub par. The camera is a typical 1.3 megapixel with problems representing colors. Software is essentially nonexistant, requiring you to shop from the small list of Verizon's BREW applications. Buying songs costs twice the industry's standard pricing. It also lacks any real organizational tools.
The Chocolate's one saving grace is probably its cost. A two-year contract price of $99.99 really isn't bad for a mid-range phone.
Overall, the Chocolate is in the middle of the mid-range, normal phone pack. It fills its "music handset" niche well, but drops the ball in most other areas. This is one case where the marketing is really what you get -- just not much else.
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