LG Chocolate VX8600 Review

Interface:

There are three FlashUI Menu Themes that are included: VZW, Arch, and Cross.  The Arch and Cross themes are very graphical, but have slower than average response time.  Because of this, we prefer using the VZW theme.  It is still colorful, but lacks the animated graphics that slow the menus down.  As with all Verizon phones, there are 5 Main Menu categories (Get it Now, Messaging, Contacts, Recent Calls, and Settings & Tools).  It is easy to access the menus and to go from one category to another.  We hope that the next software update for the phone will increase the response of the Arch and Cross menus.

Phonebook:

The VX8600 and Chocolate has the same phonebook features that allow you to store up to 500 contacts.  With each one you can enter the Name, Mobile 1 #, Home #, Work #, E-Mail 1, Group, Picture, Ringtone, Mobile 2 #, Fax #, and E-Mail 2.  An easy and fun way to tell who is calling is to enter in a Picture and Ringtone for your contact. When that person calls, the phone will play the ringtone and display their picture.  RingerID and PictureID features are standard on most cell phones.  After a contacted is saved, you can access the list in alphabetical order by pressing the Contacts button (right soft key).  You can scroll through the list or go to the Search field and type in their name.  There are 98 assignable Speed-Dial slots that you can choose from and assign to people in the contacts list.  Once a speed-dial is saved, you only need to press the one or two digit number that is assigned to them and press send (such as 2 Send).  That will dial the number that is saved under speed-dial location 2.

The VoiceCommand feature is now becoming commonplace on most new cell phone, and is also on the VX8600.  There are several voice command options to choose from:  Call (name or number), Send Message (name or number), Go to Menu, Check Item, Lookup Contact Name, and My Account.  The most useful of these is the Call feature.  You can say “Call Home” and the phone will call the number in your contacts list that is saved as “Home”, or you can just say “Call” and speak the digits for the phone to dial.  The VoiceCommand is most useful when in a car and you don't want to be looking at the keypad to dial a number, and can also be used in conjunction with a Bluetooth earpiece.

Organizer:

Pressing the bottom (down arrow) button on the 5-way navigational pad will open up the built in calendar.  From here you can view any day, week, or year that you wish to see.  By adding Events to the days, you can keep track of appointments.  You can enter in the subject, start time, end time, repeat, and alert tone.  The phone will then notify you of the event by playing the alert tone and showing the information on the screen. There are other Tools that are built into the phone.  They are Calculator, Alarm Clock with 3 independent alarms, World Clock, Notepad, and EZ Tip Calculator.

There is only 23MB of internal memory on the phone, of which half is already used by the phone's software.  Because of this, we highly recommend using the MicroSD card feature.  This will enable you to expand the memory up to 2GB and allow you to store pictures, videos, and music files that can easily be transferred between the phone and computer.