Verizon Wireless LG Chocolate Touch Review

This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

In European and Asian markets LG has released the BL40, here in the United States we have the LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 from Verizon Wireless.  Verizon’s Chocolate Touch is a small lightweight music-centric phone featuring Dolby Mobile technology which delivers excellent audio hardware and software capabilities.  Key features include a 3.2-megapixel camera, EVDO and a full HTML browser and at a price tag of $79.99 on 2-year service agreements the device is aligned to compete with all other music-oriented phones.

Design

At first glance the LG Chocolate Touch has a very strong resemblance to the LG Dare or LG Vu. It features a 3.0-inch 400 x 240 pixel resistive touchscreen display with haptic feedback and measures 4.3 x 2.2 x 0.47 inches and 4.23 ounces.  Simply put it fits easily in even the smallest hands and the build quality is excellent.  The device is customizable thanks to colored backplates, two of which are included in the box – purple and black.  Not only do the backplates provide customization, but they also provide an easy to grip surface that otherwise might be problematic.  I constantly have issues holding onto my phones when they have a slick plastic or metal backing, but this is not an issue for the Chocolate Touch.

The device features 3 hardware keys on the front along with dedicated music, social networking and volume keys on the side and a 3.5mm headphone jack up top.    The buttons are solid and easy to access, but for the most part you will be using the touchscreen interface.  Since this is a resistive touchscreen it does require a considerable amount of pressure to register and often times I found it difficult to slide to unlock the screen. The device features an accelerometer which worked extremely well and quickly allowed me to switch between landscape and portrait input methods.  The accelerometer was also very effective when using the music player, allowing me to switch between my playlist and the album cover art.

On the back of the device is a 3.2-megapixel camera which features five white balance presets and five color effects.  It also offers three focusing modes, a self-timer and special shot modes like Panorama and Intelligent shot.  In terms of image quality, the camera is average compared to the 3.2-megapixel camera on the HTC Touch Pro2.  The real problem area for the camera is low-light shots due to the lack of flash, but if you have proper lighting the images should do just fine for mobile email and mms attachments.

Speed is of utmost importance when dealing with touchscreen device and the Chocolate Does does not disappoint.  For a device that most in the industry would label a “dumb phone”, I found the speed of the device very good even when playing back music while text messaging or navigating the phone menus.  Since the device is geared towards the music audience I decided to take the phone with me during my gym workouts just to see if the battery life could manage when using the device as both my phone and music player.   With a 1000 mAh battery rated at 5.1 hours talk time and 20 days of standby I was a bit skeptical to see if real-world performance matched the claims.  However, results were great and I had no problem playing back music for 90 minutes, carrying out a few hundred text messages and making few dozen phone calls while still having half my battery remaining.

Applications / Software

Coming from a strong background in smartphones I had my doubts as to whether the LG Chocolate Touch could last a week as my daily driver.  It has been quite some time since I used a device that featured such a simple and basic interface.  For this reason I focused my review of the device around the star feature of the phone, the music layer. Before I get into the music portion I would like the make it clear that despite being a “dumb phone”, the LG Chocolate Touch does support full HTML web browsing and it features a variety of email options- mobile email, corporate email and calendar sync via Remosync, and mobile web email (hotmail / yahoo). The phone also has GPS with VZ Navigator support, and the EV-DO support brings V Cast video streaming.

Now back to the music player.  My biggest concern with the music player was that Verizon had overstepped their boundaries between carrier and software developer by possibly crippling the playback and music interface. Thankfully, the LG Chocolate Touch has its own music interface which it organizes by artist, album and genre.  You can create your own playlists and the music player makes use of album art and playback controls similar to what you seen on Apple products, just not quite as polished. To load songs on the Chocolate Touch, you can either purchase directly from the V Cast Music store or sync with the PC using the V Cast Music with Rhapsody software. If you have a Rhapsody account, you can sync subscribed tracks as well. You don’t need the software to load the songs though- simply drag and drop them to the microSD card.

Dolby Mobile

The presence of Dolby Mobile exists in both software and hardware on the LG Chocolate Touch.  Whether you are using the built-in speakers, headphones connected to the 3.5mm headphone jack or using the built-in equalizer you are experiencing the power of Dolby Mobile.  Having an iPod Touch as a baseline, I found the power of Dolby Mobile to be quite impressive.  Personally I was very skeptical about a normal music phone matching or even beating the audio quality on my standalone music device, but the Chocolate Touch did just that.  Thanks to a set of five equalizer presents (Flat, Bass Boost, Treble Boost, Vocal Boost, and Classical) plus a manual equalizer I was able to tweak the sound in my Beats by Dre headphones exactly to my liking.  From a music lover point of view adding Dolby Mobile to the Chocolate Touch is a hit.

On top of the equalizers are a few other unique features which I found entertaining.  The player has a visualizer effect plus a “rhythmical beat” option that makes the phone vibrate to the beat of the song.  The best option, however, is “Join the Band” which brings up a full drum kit or 88-key keyboard for you to play along with the music.  Clearly these unique features are not necessary to enjoying your music, but they were plenty entertaining on my train rides to downtown Los Angeles in the morning.

Connectivity

When it boils down to it, the ability to make a clear phone call really determines the worth of a phone in my opinion.  Smartphone have lost their way as of late, and the ease at which one can make a simple call has been lost in the battle for faster processors and more memory.  I’m happy to report the LG Chocolate Touch delivers excellent call quality thanks in part to the Verizon Wireless network.  EVDO 3G data made web browsing quick and easy and with such great coverage I really didn’t miss having WiFi on the device.  To put this speed into perspective, on average, I was able to download full songs in about a minute and there was very little buffering at all on V Cast.  However, the video quality was rather poor so in that regard it is a bit of a catch 22.  You can download quickly and stream easily, but the quality of V Cast video is less than impressive.

Final Thoughts

In the end the Verizon Wireless LG Chocolate Touch was a joy to use.  I highly recommend picking up a quality set of headphones to fully enjoy the power of Dolby Mobile because the on-board speakers will not do it justice.  In terms of audio quality it easily competes with the best dedicated music player on the market, the iPod Touch.  I found the call quality and battery life to be excellent and for a music phone, it excels on all levels.  I couldn’t imagine leaving the world of smartphones for the Chocolate Touch, but if my needs were primarily focused on making phone calls and having a solid music player that could easily fit in my pocket I highly recommend the Chocolate Touch.

CF Rating: 7/10

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Tagged as: LG Chocolate Touch, LG VX8575, review, verizon wireless