http://tech.yahoo.com/blogs/null/2330
Quote:

Christopher Null

Hands On Review: LG Chocolate

If people love anything more than gadgets, it's candy, so naming a cell phone "Chocolate" seems like a wise thing to do. And while this cell phone from LG is certainly compelling and unique, it's got a long way to go before it succeeds at what it's trying to do: Replace both your existing phone and your MP3 player.

The Good: Cell Phone Meets iPod

Let's start with the good: The LG Chocolate concept is flat-out cool. The phone is a slider model. Just flip the front of the handset up and the screen slides toward the top of the device, revealing the standard 12-key keypad down below. But the top of the phone is where the magic happens: Instead of the usual bunch of cell phone buttons there's a wheel that's uncannily similar to the one on the Apple iPod. Additional buttons surround the wheel at each corner. Although none of these are actual buttons: Rather, they're actually touch-sensitive parts of the phone itself. Just glide your hand over the appropriate corner to activate that function. The wheel is also not like the iPod's, despite its iPod look: You don't drag your finger around it but rather just hit one of the four labelled segments of the wheel as if they were regular buttons to push.

Touch Sensitive Gets Tricky

Unfortunately, the numeric keypad design and standard soft buttons of the cell phone world have long been well understood by millions of users of these devices. Muck with the interface and it starts to get confusing. How confusing? The Chocolate borders on baffling any time you try to do anything more complicated than making a simple phone call. (And even that can be tricky, since there's no "hang up" button: You have to physically slide the phone shut to end a call.)

Having all these touch-sensitive buttons is also problematic if you, say, ever want to touch your phone without it going haywire. Yes, the phone automatically locks itself after a short period of idling, but even while you're actively using the phone to browse for new music, take a photo, or perform other tasks, it's far too easy to brush against one of the touch-sensitive areas, causing a random button press. It doesn't help that the software interface needs a lot of work. Half the time there's no way to go "back" to a previous menu, and you often find you just have to quit and start over.

The Music's Not Bad

Now let's not forget that the Chocolate is intended as a music phone, so how well does it play music? About as well as any other phone, unfortunately. I actually greatly prefer the music abilities of LG's own FUSIC handset, and it's far less confusing to actually use. The Motorola SLVR, while imperfect, also works better in this regard thanks to the iTunes interface. On the plus side, audio sounds crisp and clear, and once you get the hang of the interface, browsing the Verizon site for new songs is fairly simple, though at $2 a pop, I don't know how much people will be buying.

Other features are hit and miss. The camera (a 1.3-megapixel model) is average, and the Chocolate has no speakerphone, which is baffling because it has a very large speaker. Bluetooth is included, but the three hours of talk time (based on my tests) is very weak.

Good Thing It's Cheap

There is one kicker, however: After rebates you can get this phone for a mere $75, much cheaper than the SLVR. At this price, it might be worth checking out to see if you can live with its interface flaws. Though, to be honest, I doubt I would ever be able to.


whomod said: I generally don't like it when people decide to play by the rules against people who don't play by the rules.
It tends to put you immediately at a disadvantage and IMO is a sign of true weakness.
This is true both in politics and on the internet."

Our Friendly Neighborhood Ray-man said: "no, the doctor's right. besides, he has seniority."