Customer Reviews

LG Chocolate Touch VX-8575 Phone (Verizon Wireless)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

I am very hard to please, and I have owned two other LG msuic phones but didn't liked either of them. This phone is different: it is the best phone I've ever owned.

It has every feature I want in a phone, in a beautiful package that is very user-friendly.

- Great battery life
- Excellent sound quality
- Good speakerphone
- A 3.5mm audio jack
- FM radio
- Music player with a well-designed user interface
- Great photo and video viewer
- USB data cable included (!)
- The ability to plug-and-sync automatically, even with non-Rhapsody music players(!) such as Windows Media Player or MediaMonkey (which supports podcasts :)
- The ability to mount the USB card as a generic device for drag-and-drop support for ringtones, photos, music, videos... you name it.

And Verizon doesn't force you to buy a data plan for this phone, which I don't neeed.

All in all, a perfect phone for me.

... thats how I feel right now.

I purchased LG Chocolate Touch from Amazon for 1 cent in Jan 2010 with 2 year new Verizon plan.

Pros:
- Neat Music player, sounds very good with the Dobly Mobile filters. I like how it pairs with my bluetooth Motorola headphones wirelessly and the music volume, track forward controls, answering phone call buttons all work. I love listening to the mp3 player wirelessly in the gym. I got my motorola bluetooh headphones from Fry's electronics for $34.
- FM radio, my old iphone was disappointing without FM radio. (Note, FM radio will not work unless 3.5mm jack is plugged in, then your bluetooth headphones will not work.)
-Reception is ok. My iphone with AT&T did not work in my room, ground level of a 2 story house. Now, Verizon works, not great, but works in my room. I'm not sure if the phone is great or the service.
- EZ Tip Calucator! What a cool feature, you type in the amount of the bill, preset what percentage you want to tip.. and it works. Perfect when you had a bit too much to drink at dinner.

Cons:
- Touch screen is terrible. I use to own an iphone, and the navigation through the menu is sooo much better. Dragging or scrolling on the Cholocate is near impossible. Here's a tip, use your finger nail to scroll and drag, it works for me at least 50% of the time. Not to mention texting is hard. At least it is better than the iphone where the autocorrect makes me seem like a 5 year sending incoherant texts.
- The art of the artist on the now playing screen is too small.
- Contact list is hard to navigate, I have about 200 contacts and finding a specific person through the phone book can be nerve racking because of the lack of a scroll wheel or the touch screen scrolling doesn't work.
- Slow 3g applications, the browser, the navigation, the app that you can use to check your balance almost always crashes on me when I run it. In addition, be prepare to click on the back button a lot when you are using any browers, the touchscreen is not accurate.
- I'm not able to synch items like my pictures/notes or install any apps through my data cable from my pc (I could be wrong, if someone could point me to a FAQ where I can install new apps, I'm not sure if there are any)

Verizon dislikes:
- I didn't know until my first bill, that I signed up for $9.99 data plan. When ordering through Amazon, Jan 2010, it is manatory. I thought I might have inadvertatly signed up for it and went into my verizon profile to edit. No luck in opting out of the data plan. Then I tried to see what was up and went through the Amazon sign up for a new plan.. and A-HA! The radio button when you are selecting your plan on Amazon is not very clear, so be careful when you are selecting your plan. I don't think I would have gotten this phone knowing that there was a $9.99 data plan attached. It is not something I would use, considering the browsing is so slow.
- Outrageous tax - Here is San Francisco, my surcharges/taxes totaled $16.90 a month. What's up with all the hidden fees ($1.84 for an Admin charge)? Summary of my fees =Fed Universal Service Charge $2.21 + Regulatory Charge .14 + Administrative Charge $1.84 + CA State PUC Fee .07 + CA State 911 Fee .22 + CA State High Cost Fund .19 + CA Teleconnect Fund Surchg .03 + CA State High Cost Fund (A) .05 + Lifeline Surcharge CA .47 + CA Relay Srvc/Comm Device Fund .08 + SF Cnty 911 Fee $5.50 + SF City/Cnty Uut $6.10

This is marketed "LG Chocolate Touch", but not the ultra wide screen LG Chocolate (BL40?)that's marketed in Europe and Asia. I guess Verizon determined us Americans are too cheap to shell out $300+ for a phone, even with carrier's subsidy. The phone has a resistive touchscreen, therefore, no multi-touch (e.g. no zoom in/out in photo mode). The advantage of resistive touchscreen is it works witha stylus, or glove, and is less prone to accidental touches, but people who are spoiled by the iphone's feather touch will find the touchscreen to be a bit sluggish.

The call quality is decent. The built-in speaker is also quite capable. The FM radio is particularly useful and well designed. of course, being Chocolate, music is a key selling point, but don't expect it to replace your ipod.

overall, I'm neither disappointed nor impressed. If you just want a feature phone with a decent large screen, but no data plan, then this is good for you. Otherwise, I'd recommend either iPhone or one of those HTC-made Google phones.

Great phone ---Easy to learn, easy to use. The touch screen is logical and is easy to navigate without ever referring to the manual. I just wish I bought it thru Amazon and not VZW website. I would have saved $$$. One drawback: It does not seem to be compatible with my Mac. I cannot download songs from my iTunes to the phone. But I have my iPod for music, and didn't really need the phone to play music.

For the price, this phone looks like a steal: great MP3 features and 1GB storage, full touch screen, no required data plan. And when I first got the phone, I was fairly happy with it.

However, after 7 months, I cannot recommend this phone. I first started to realize faults when the ease of the unlocking mechanisms triggered several pocket calls

Later, the earpiece stopped working due to an erroneous detection of headphones. I couldn't make or receive phone calls. After several attempts at rapidly putting in and unplugging headphones to hope that it triggered it off it finally worked again, but I haven't been able to use it as an MP3 player since.

But what really just put the nail in the coffin was that the touch screen wore out over time. At first the screen was somewhat resistive to touch, but I figured I'd get used to it. However this issue got worse over time and now, 7 months later, for several hours at a time it will not register a single touch. I cannot make phone calls, read or send text messages, or use any features other than receiving (but not making) a call and taking (but not viewing) pictures. It will sporadically work for awhile again, but as the problem gets worse and worse I need to find a new replacement phone quick.

Even if you like the phone when you first use it, I strongly recommend against buying it. It sure has quantity of features, but perhaps that should trigger an alarm in your head as to the quality of them.

I had the EnV Touch for the last month. I returned it because it was just too bulky for me. Exchanging it for the Chocolate touch was the best phone decision I have ever made. This phone is small and powerful. The QWERTY keypad has spaces between the buttons that help reduce miss types. It is very accurate. Though the screen is not as high a resolution, it is surprisingly sharp and very vibrant. The music player is excellent. I used to get frustrated with my album art not showing up, but with this phone, if you put the album art in the photos folder on your SD card, when playing a song that doesn't have album art show up, you can manually put it as the album art. Also, the FM radio is another amazing feature. It comes through crystal clear. Drawing pad, note pad, better touch screen, incredible battery, very compact, no required data package; the list of positives of this phone go on and on. I have extensively used the EnV Touch, Versa, and DARE and I believe the Chocolate Touch is simply the best non PDA phone available for Verizon.

I like this phone. The touch capability is OK and I find it frustrating to move quickly but as long as I have time to move slowly through screens it works. I love the FM radio. I HATE that after launch, Verizon decided to make this phone REQUIRE a data plan. I don't use the phone for data. I use the phone as a media phone for music, txt and calls. Verizon unncessarily changed the features of the phone when they did this, and I would NOT buy this phone today.

This is the best phone I've ever owned. I'm an entry level audiophile and I listen to the music player with Sennheiser headphones and I've uploaded my own CDs ripped by WMP 12 at 192kbps WMA. I added an album cover for each album so I can cycle through them by picture when I turn the phone sideways. My ripped anime looks great on the video player. I have to thank Verizon for including a data cable and also for the 3.5mm headphone jack. My LG Env had neither of these and it remained a normal phone to me but with some research on I've managed to do everything I wanted with this phone. The only downside I've experienced is some videos slow down during playback but to be able to play videos on a music phone is a plus and this phone earned its 5 stars from me.

Since someone asked:
Loading music onto your Chocolate Touch is easier than loading anything else. First make sure you have a MicroSD card and installed it by taking the phone back plate off and clicking the card into place, then put the back plate back on. You go to your Options->USB Auto Detection settings, set it to "Ask on Plug". Then use the data cable that came with the phone and plug it into your computer, then your phone's USB slot. Then choose Music, and you can drag full folders into the "Music" folder. You can also do it with Data but I never tried it. For videos, pictures, and much anything else I choose Data and I go to Tools->USB Mass Storage which opens the folder of your MicroSD card(I have a 4 gig card bought separately). Then it's self-explanatory where everything goes. I found out some of this by experimentation but most by searching on Google. Enjoy your phone as much as I am right now!

I got this phone to fill a short time between ATT buying Alltel. I had a Blackberry before this one and wanted to try a touchscreen. But this phone is garbage. Useless. It is the worst piece of junk ever found pretending to be a phone. The icons respond at times but not always. The web sometimes enlarges and other times not. The phone dialer numbers sometimes enter the number near it instead of the one you pressed. The scrolling touch opens the icon instead of scrolling sometimes ... but not other times. There is no redial. The speaker phone cannot be easily engaged during a call. The screen goes dark too fast so entering account numbers or "options" are difficult or impossible. The phone layout and ergonomics drives you buy before it drives you practical solutions. It is over-packed with monetized options.

But the battery life is good. That way you can suffer and suffer and suffer trying to operate this disaster before needing to pug it in again - with yet another oddball a/c adapter that fits nothing but this "phone". Too bad its not a suitable Frisbee.

I've had this phone for about 9 months, and I suppose it's okay. I'm a little biased towards my previous LG Scoop (which I loved, but then accidentally dropped in the toilet). I only bought the touch because my Scoop wouldn't work anymore. Bummer. The touch screen works well, although I'm just not personally a huge fan of them. My BIGGEST complaint however is that whoever designed this phone left it with one very big FLAW. And that is that the voice mechanism in which you speak into is so small and insignificant, I can NEVER prop this phone between my chin and shoulder. EVER. If I do, the person can't hear me, I have to repeat myself 5 times, and it's extremely frustrating. Seeing as how I'm a multi-tasker by nature, this is a huge issue for me. Had I known/realized this before purchasing the phone, I would have picked something else!