In all the excitement about the iPhone, there were several other phones that came out this week. One is my new phone, the LG Chocolate 3, aka LG VX8650.
My venerable LG VX8100, one of the best phones ever, was started to fade. Text messages did not work. Imagine the frustration of your phone beeping to say "You have a text message" and not be able to read it. Grrr! The camera took pictures occasionally, but made it look like it was bright sun on a cloudy day. (Not a good look)
I went into Verizon thinking I would buy the LG Dare, the Verizon latest version of a touch phone. I hated the touch screen. You have to look at the screen to use, and screen, like the iPhone, was not nearly sensitve enough to meet my standards. (My standard - work the first time I touch the screen, not the 2nd or 3rd) So I thought I would consider the Voyager. It did not have the cool advanced camera of the Dare, but the keys worked well, and there were keys to move the cursor around the screen instead of fat-fingered pointing. And it was big and only came in ugly black.
So on decision day, coincidentally the same weekend the iPhone dropped, I went into my Verizon store and found LG Chocolate 3. It was a gorgeous aqua, it was slimmer than my current phone with a bigger screen. The salesperson assured me it was feature rich, and she was right.
a better camera (3 levels of resoltution, 2 MP instead of 1.3)
ability to do video capture for as long as I had storage for (instead of 15 sec)
click wheel to control the music player on the front
support for external micro-SD with storage up to 8 gig
3.5 mm jack instead of that 2.5 that only works on phone headsets. This means I can use any set of earphones to listen to my music. This is HUGE!
a faster camera (instead of waiting 5 sec for a picture)
an FM transmitter so you can hear radio
Bluetooth stereo
USB charging (one LESS adapter to pack)
Crop images in the phone
flip phone instead of an annoying slider - which kept me away from Chocolate before
So when it came down to it, I opted for the sleek design of the
Chocolate cubed over a bloated Voyager or expensive iPhone. My phone has to be small enough to go everywhere, and serve as my backup camera and Internet connection. And I love a pretty phone. Funny, the male geeks on Gizmodo were not rocking the color.
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