LG Chocolate KG800 (Unlocked)

I love this phone, it's very sleek, I think it will be one of the more popular phones for the next several months from its many functions and great styling.

Strengths: Easy to use, great sound and visual quality
Weaknesses: Not compatible with ipod formats. No speaker phone. Buttons not intuitive.
Summary: I needed a new cell phone and was very excited about the LG Chocolate. However, after reading numerous reviews and peeking in on some chat rooms, I was a bit apprehensive. Nothing to worry about!

First of all, the phone is gorgeous looking and has a good heft, much more than you would expect. The touch pads on the main body are easy to learn, but are different than your standard cell phone buttons because there is no tactile "give." The buttons aren't necessarily intuitive, so I had to delve into the instruction manual to figure out what each button did.


Downloading music was a snap from VCast. Loading up your own tunes requires a bit more work. You either need to buy 2.5mm ear buds (standard is 3.5mm) or you have to buy the Verizon adapter ($14.99). In addition, you'll need the Music Essentials kit ($29.99), which is great if you have an IBM clone, but requires quite a bit of work if you use a Mac. If you use an ipod on your IBM clone, you actually have to reburn your songs into either WMA or mPEG format and then upload them into your phone. Memory is a little limited on the phone (68MB) but you can buy a microSD card and load songs onto the VX8500 that way. And contrary to an earlier review, the max size for a microSD is only 1GB at this time -- so don't buy anything bigger because it won't work with this phone.


No speaker phone, but not a big deal for me. Bluetooth synced very readily.


Overall, cool phone, no regrets. Not a lot of accessories available currently (cases, etc) but more are in the works. Oh, and it smudges a lot.