LG VX8700 (Verizon Wireless)

Pros: Ultra-stylish, ultra-compact, great buttons for a membrane-style

Cons: Not entirely stainless steel, battery life is awful

Summary: After having this phone about a week, this is what I feel is an exhaustive list of this phones pros and cons. I hope you find it useful, and while both lists are long – this is a FANTASTIC phone…and I’ve owned over 15 different models!

Please note that I recently upgraded from the LG VX 8600, so a lot of comparisons are made.

Pros:

Shockingly sleek design – the rarity of stainless steel casing kicks this up a notch.

Great ‘solid-feeling’ design that opens and closes with a feeling of quality and sturdiness.

Wonderful service in my area, in comparison to my other friends with Verizon phones. Phone’s internal antenna does not seem to be susceptible to reception issues based on how you hold the phone.

Membrane-style buttons are vastly superior to those on the 8600 and the Razr, due to excellent spacing, sizing and useful etching. True ‘button-like’ feel when pushed; far better than all the keypads that are this style I’ve seen. They also are as clearly-lit as can be.

Pouch that is included with the phone is surprisingly useful and functional as a cleaning device. Because it has two compartments - I could see myself using it on weekends as a mini-wallet to hold the phone, my ID and a few bills.

Memory card DOES fit behind the battery – eliminating an unnecessary port on the side of the phone that is bound to get damaged/clogged up. I don’t understand why people have such problems with this – I think it makes the MOST sense versus other locations.

The smudging and scratching problems of the 8600 have been mostly remedied via the brushed stainless steel.

Screen may be crisper than any I’ve seen on a cell phone; even improved over the 8600.

Elimination of 4 exterior buttons (3 for music, 1 for speakerphone) from the 8600. The music ones (on the 8600) never were particularly accurate and the speakerphone one was painfully small and inconveniently placed.

Improved speakerphone versus the 8600. It also now has a dedicated button on the main keypad of the phone.

Battery cover and battery itself are extremely secure, thanks to the best latch/release system I’ve seen.

Charging port, while still on the side, now has a more secure cover which swings towards the bottom of the phone, rather than the top. Hard to explain but this makes a lot more sense than the design of the 8600’s charging port cover.

Charging port is a lot tighter and more secure feeling than the 8600.


Cons:

Exterior screen is not flush with the body of the phone. Almost sharp to the touch when you slide your fingers over it. A design flaw that I think will cause the material covering the screen to quickly chip.

Battery life on this is even worse than the 8600 (due likely to the crisper interior screen) and seems especially susceptible to draining because of text messaging. For example, I got a dead battery after ~35 minutes of talk time, 30 or so text messages and only 15 hours of standby. This is on a new battery, fully charged! Hardly 3.33 hours of ‘talk time’ in my book.

Bluetooth is great but having it in addition to a standard 2.5mm jack is even better.

The adapter that allows the use of 2.5mm headsets results in a tinny sound.

New menu system (also an option is the standard Verizon menu) may look great, but it definitely suffers from a processor-lag and is consistently slow to respond to button-pushes. You’d think they wouldn’t include it with this obvious flaw.

Charging port is on the side of the phone, therefore making talking on it while charging the phone rather awkward.

Exterior screen stays lit during charging – annoying when trying to fall asleep.

T9 is quite intuitive and learns new words, but switching between it and abc always results in the first letter being capitalized.

Left and right softkeys are placed too close to the speakerphone and clear buttons.

No ‘vibrate-then-ring or vibrate-and-ring options’. This seems to be an LG oversight on many of their phones.

The unit is stainless steel, but not in it’s entirety. Portions of the sides and a good chunk of the bottom of the handset are the standard cell phone plastic. I would have liked to have seen the whole thing be stainless, especially the bottom which I feel is most prone to scratching and chipping.

Exterior screen does not display photo caller ID. A small con for me but I could see how others would like it.

‘Clear’ button has been moved to an unusual, unexpected location in the middle upper left.

Lack of flash (although I do realize the battery life ramifications) makes a great-quality camera somewhat useless.

Speakerphone only works when the phone is open, leaving it susceptible to breakage.

(Not sure on this one as I have yet to load any music) Music may not play when the phone is closed (it did with the 8600), resulting in the same problem as outlined above.



Overall – I listed a lot of cons because they are easier to identify and explain than pros, however this phone is absolutely STELLAR. After a week of regular use, I can say that this is my favorite phone of 2 LG’s, 3 Sanyos, 2 Ericcsons, 2 Samsungs, 1 Nokia, 2 Motorola’s etc that I’ve owned.

Bottom Line: The best that Verizon has to offer if you’re looking for a super-compact, cutting-edge-style phone with a fantastic set of features for the size and price.