Excellent Phone, mediocre MP3 player
Written: Dec 24 '06
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Pros: Battery life, camera, clarity, memory slot
Cons: Verizon and Lg intentionally weakened features of the phone
The Bottom Line: A phone that will be a staple of the Verizon stable of phones. If only they didn't make certain restrictions.
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| dandino's Full Review: LG VX8300 V Cast Music Phone |
LG VX 8300
My wife and I have been Verizon Wireless customers for years now, and the LG VX8300 was rated the best in the reviews at the time that we got our new phones. We both chose to get the LG VX8300 because there was simply nothing better. Even though it is the best Verizon had at the time, it was disappointing to find out that they intentionally toned it down. For example, MP3’s won’t play over Bluetooth headsets; you need to buy their proprietary earpiece. Also, they have limited the software with Bluetooth so you need to buy additional software to link your calendar with Microsoft Outlook. This disappointed me greatly.
Screen
The 8300 has two color screens, the main and the outer. The outer will display the time and whatever wallpaper you choose, including some pre-loaded animated ones. If you assign a photo to a phone number, that person’s picture will come up along with their name for Caller ID, I really like this feature. It personalizes your phone. The screens are quite nicely detailed and bright. To conserve battery power, the screens shut off/dim fairly quickly.
Sound Quality
It is a high quality phone; the conversations are extremely clear on both ends. In addition, the speaker phone is the best I’ve ever heard. Because it was built to be a V-Cast phone, it has two speakers for “stereo” sound for the ring-tones and for any music you may play. I’ve owned several speakerphone capable phones, this is hugely improved over anything else I’ve used.
Bluetooth
The phone is Bluetooth capable, which for the most part means that you can use a Bluetooth headset. The range is quite impressive at 25 feet. I’ve put my phone down and walked around with the headset forgetting that my actual phone is upstairs or in another room. You have to move quite a bit to get away from a solid signal, very impressive.
Battery
The battery is 1100 mAh. Previous LG clams have been 1000. This is a nice little improvement. I’ve been only needing to charge my phone every third night, assuming I’m not making large amounts of phone calls.
Camera
The camera is 1.3 mega pixels and it also does 15 second videos with sound. 1.3 mega pixels is fairly impressive for a little phone. It also comes with a flash for those dark times when you absolutely need a picture (think bars with drunk friends). I have upgraded to a microSD card. This allows me to take a picture, remove the card, and upload it to my computer. For a camera phone, it’s quite impressive. For the purposes of capturing the moment, it’s quite good. When viewing the photos on the phone itself, a zoom feature allows you to experience the full resolution of the camera.
MP3 player
You may be able to fit 5 songs on the internal memory, don’t even try to get your phone to do this without upgrading the memory. And I wouldn’t skimp on going out and getting a Zune either. When you get a microSD card, you can transfer songs from your computer onto your phone without paying Verizon again for them, assuming you have a SD port on your computer. It sounds quite good coming out of the speakers, assuming you don’t want any bass with your music. I leave it on my hip and I can walk around and enjoy some music. There are also play/pause, forward, and reverse buttons on the face of the phone so you can flip around without opening the phone. There are two severe downsides of this. Say goodbye to your battery. Using your phone as an MP3 player will drain your battery almost as fast as using it as a phone. The other downside is that it won’t work with Bluetooth headsets. If you want to use headphones, you need to buy Verizon’s headsets for music.
Appearance
It is a pretty straight forward gun metal-grey clam shell phone. The only distinguishing feature of it is the two large speakers on the side. It’s more for function than form.
Removable Memory
This is a fun little accessory, however do not buy it from Verizon. They will overcharge you at least twice what the card is worth. Get it from some online vendor. You can save all your MP3’s, images, and videos to the card. This makes it very easy to transfer files to your computer. The only negative about this is that you need the fingers of a 7 year old girl to get the card in and out. This is also the only way you can feasibly use the phone as an MP3 player.
Reception
You will notice two different reception bars. One is for the advanced features, such as internet and song downloads. The other is for normal phone conversations. It has pretty nice phone reception, which is helped by the fact that Verizion has quite an extensive network. Since it has the 1100 mAh battery, it can pump a little extra juice when needed and you will get reception where ever possible.
V-Cast
I downloaded only one song, just to test it out. You can browse on your phone through Verizion’s limited selection of songs. This can be a bit of a laborious task. However it does download in about 20 seconds, which was quite impressive. But it is simply not worth $2 per song. You need the memory upgrade anyway, so you might as well transfer them from your computer.
Overall, it is quite a good phone. It was intentionally weakened by Verizon, which is frustrating. They also changed a slight ridge of plastic of the charger so you couldn’t use previous chargers of LG phones. I personally find this a disgusting tactic to force you to buy more accessories.
Recommended:
Yes
Amount Paid (US$): 100
Recommended for: Adventurous Technophiles - Tough and Durable
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Epinions.com ID:
dandino
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Location: Long Island, NY
Reviews written: 49
Trusted by: 7 members
About Me:
I like tools and electronic gizmos.
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