Bittersweet Experience with a Chocolate Phone: A Review of the Chocolate by LG Electronics

When I first started seeing the commercials for the Chocolate cell phone by LG Electronics I was intrigued. The duality of a cell phone with an integrated music player piqued my interest, and the touch screen technology offered by the Chocolate truly reeled me in. So, I went and bought one as soon as the opportunity presented itself, gladly relinquishing my trusty Razor phone to my best friend. It did not take me long to figure out the only thing comparable about the two phones was the starting price.

While the Chocolate supports both picture and video messaging, the screen is so small due to the overall diminutive size of the phone that you almost need a magnifying glass to make out most of what comes in. The built in camera and video functions both take good pictures with above average resolution to be fair. But, for me most of the joy in a picture and video phone is the messages that I receive rather than the ones I send out, and while I would give the screen clarity on the Chocolate high marks, the size of the screen truly leaves much to be desired.

The speed of the Chocolate phone was really pushed during the marketing phase, but I find it to be slower than the Razor phone that I had before. It also has this annoying way of deleting any message you may be working on when one comes in. I have yet to find the speed of the phone to be impressive on any level.

The diminutive size was one of the features that attracted many buyers to this phone in the initial phase of marketing. However, I have found that this diminutive size has it caveats as well. For instance, the number buttons are extremely small making it very difficult to dial and text with.

The touch screen feature is nice. It has an adjustable sensitivity level so that you can customize to your touch. However, this too has its downfalls. On more than one occasion I have closed my phone and put it in my pocket to discover later that something had touched the screen before the phone locked. On one such occasion I managed to call my brother without ever touching my phone. Needless to say he was not very appreciative of having been called to listen to the change in my pocket jingle around.

The versatility as a music player is also an enjoyable function. However, I have had several instances where I could not get the music to stop! Talk about an aggravation, on one of these occasions I had to turn the phone completely off in order to get the music to stop playing. This is definitely not a good thing, as ease of use should come into play at some point.

So, overall I would have to say that the Chocolate phone turned out to be a real dud. All of the media hype surrounding this phone leads a lot of people to believe they are really getting a bargain when they buy into this phone, and I will say if your looking for a phone that impresses people with gadgetry this is the phone for you. However, if you truly want a phone that is user friendly and highly functional I would suggest that you keep looking, because I still haven't gotten the bitter taste out of my mouth from my Chocolate experience.