- Average user rating: 2.5 stars out of 38 reviews Back to product review
- My rating: 0 stars
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3 out of 3 people found this review helpful
3.0 stars
"Great Harware -- Mediocre Software"
Pros: Vibration-feedback for touch-sensitive buttons. Scroll wheel.
Cons: Buggy software seems designed to be locked-down.
Summary: This phone gives a great first impression. In fact, it's only now that I've had the phone for a month that I'm starting to notice its faults. For the most part, LG has made a stunning phone -- both in looks and function. However, software was CLEARLY an afterthought, and seems to be designed more to force people to use Microsoft's proprietary software than to allow the owner maximum use of his/her phone.
For one, the official way to sunc music with the phone is through Windows Media Player. I've been M$-free for 3 years now, but even my Windows-loving friends think this is dumb. Nobody I know uses WMP for music. An interface with iTunes, Winamp, or even allowing the phone to appear as attached storage would have been nice (or even a Verizon-specific piece of software for syncing with the phone).
Once your music is on the phone, chances are it won't have preserved the ID3 tags (and song info cannot be edited on the phone). The easiest solution I've come across is to save all music on my phone in .m4a (AAC) format -- Kind of a pain.
Additional bugs have appeared. For example, after listening to music with bluetooth headphones, the (non-touch-sensitive) keys will no longer lock, requiring a reboot of the phone. That's bad.
Fortunately, these problems can be solved with later software updates. Hopefully Verizon/LG are listening. The Chocolate VX8550 is a beautiful piece of hardware. I'd love to see an equal amount of care put into its software.
