PhoneArena's Retro-Rewind: LG VX8000

Last week we brought you PhoneArena's Retro-Rewind on the LG VX6000, which was released by Verizon Wireless in 2003 as it was a unique phone from an almost unknown company at that time, but showed customers that LG was going to be a major player. Now fast-forward some, past the LG VX6100 and the LG VX7100 to the all-silver LG VX8000, which was released in January 2005.

Building on the success that LG had with the previous models, the LG VX8000 was the top-end flip-phone that Verizon had at that time. It was the first Verizon phone to feature a 1.3MP camera with CCD image sensor, dual TFT displays with 262K color support, stereo speakers and external music controls. Not only that, but the VX8000 was the inaugural phone which launched Verizon's VCast service, which streams pre-recorded video clips to the phone over the EVDO network. All of this combined to make a handset that was hard to beat.

It was nice to have an external display with a resolution of 128x160 pixels, let alone supporting 262K colors, and with it you could view photo-realistic wallpapers, access the music player, read incoming text messages, and could even use it as a camera viewfinder for taking self portraits. The internal display was also excellent for that time, coming in with a resolution of 176x220 pixels and also supporting up to 262K colors.



Even though the Motorola Motorola V710 was the first megapixel camera phone for Verizon in 2004, the images it produced were of poor quality, looking dark and muddy. Then five months later when the LG VX8000 came out, the images from it blew-away everything else, as it was the first Verizon phone to use a 1.3MP CCD sensor instead of CMOS. As many of you may know, CCD sensors are what most standard digital cameras use. This allowed images from the VX8000 to have more accurate color representation and detail. Even today, pictures taken by the older VX8000 can still beat current entry-level camera phones, but thankfully CMOS has improved and now allows for photo-realistic high quality images, such as from the Motorola DROID and LG enV Touch .

LG VX8000 Pictures:


Motorola V710 Pictures:


Let us not forget about the call quality, which the LG VX8000 also excelled at, as voices sound clear and distortion-free on both the internal earpiece and the external speakerphone. Not only that, but ringtones and music playback was loud and clear using the front stereo speakers, though you did have to manually load music into the phone's limited memory by using USB, as there was mo memory card slot. For watching videos, the VX8000 was the first to use Verizon's VCast service, which is still in-use today, though most people now would rather load up a Motorola DROID with a few 720x306 resolution movies from their favorite DVDs.

Over the years the product line has evolved to include the LG VX8100 (which added Bluetooth and miniSD card slot), and the popular LG VX8300, LG VX8350 and LG VX8360...all of which still somewhat resemble the LG VX8000, being a flip-phone with dual color displays and front music controls. There was also the LG VX8600 and LG VX8700, both fashion-oriented flip-phones, though LG never expanded past those and instead began to focus on the LG VX8500 Chocolate series. But have no fear, as Verizon will introduce the new LG Clout VX8370 this year. Even though there aren't pictures of it yet, we can speculate that it will follow in the footsteps of the LG VX8300 series.



The writer of this article still has their original LG VX8000 phone, which is used on a family share line, and it's still in perfect working condition 5 years later. How many other phones from 5 years ago are still in-use today? Our bet is not many. If you happened to own the LG VX8000, please share your thoughts of the device with us in the comment section below!

Resources:

LG's Official VX8000 Product Page

LG VX8000 Specifications
LG VX8100 Specifications
LG VX8300 Specifications | Review
LG VX8350 Specifications | Review
LG VX8360 Specifications | Review
LG VX8600 Specifications | Review
LG VX8700 Specifications | Review