Price Range: $79.99 - $149.95

The gorgeous display measures two inches diagonally (320×240 pixels) and supports 11 lines of text. With support for 262,000 colors, it’s one of the most attractive displays we’ve seen on a cell phone and arguably the best on an LG handset. Graphics and animation were sharp, and colors popped. Our only gripes, and these are small, is that the display has a reflective quality and attracts smudges and fingerprints easily. Also, it’s hard to see in direct light and nearly impossible to see when the backlighting is off. You can change the clock style, the backlighting time, and the font size but no other options are customizable.

The Chocolate’s buttons take some time to get used to. The “send” key is where it usually is, left of the cursor pad, but the “end” key is on the side of the phone. The cursor pad, meanwhile, looks like an iPod-style scroll wheel but isn’t – it’s just a cursor pad. And the cursor pad and soft keys are touch-sensitive, with no tactile feedback. The learning curve is sharpened by the beautiful new Flash-based menu system, which doesn’t look like other Verizon phones. (Fortunately, you can kick the phone back into the familiar Verizon menus.)

With the interface, you are able to theme it to fit your personality and style, something we enjoy doing. By default, the phone uses the “Rock n Roll” theme, which places all your menu items in a circle. It almost seems to invite you to use the touch wheel in a similar fashion to an iPod, but really you just need to click to the right or left to spin the onscreen wheel navigation. Once you make your first choice, the submenu is a simple list layout which you tap up and down on the wheel to navigate through. This is the point where we started to get the hang of this thing. As we said before though, you can change wallpapers and themes to your liking. The phone is Get It Now compatible, so there is how you access additional ringtones, games, and other applications as well.

That said, if you’re looking for a music-phone on Verizon, learning the Chocolate is worth the effort. This is Verizon’s best music-phone by a long shot. It supports stereo Bluetooth, playing music easily through our wireless Plantronics Pulsar 590 headphones. It has a roomy 68 MB of on-board memory, accepts MicroSD memory cards up to 2 GB, and – finally – can play both WMA and MP3 files natively in Verizon’s V CAST Music player. You can put music on the phone by dumping it into a MicroSD card, or syncing it via USB cable with Windows Media Player. Verizon has also gotten rid of the $15/month subscription fee for their V CAST Music service, so if you feel like buying songs over the air for $1.99 each, go for it.

A cool perk is the phone supports Bluetooth for talking and listening. This comes in particularly handy for MP3 and music playback, as you can conserve the phone’s battery life while listening to music via wireless stereo headphones. I used the Motorola HT820 Bluetooth stereo headset, and was very impressed. I could crank the music as loud as I wanted with little or no distortion before the volume became painful. I didn’t notice any pops, clicks or anything indicating the headphones were picking up wireless signals.

Price Range:

Chocolate 3G with touch sensitive music controls

Using the design cues of the stylish icon, the LG Chocolate, comes the U830 clamshell 3G handset. Featuring a slender body, a luxurious black and silver glossy finish, a hidden exterior screen and hidden touch sensitive music controls the U380 is the handset for people who value style and require the latest features. Open the handset to reveal a large, well laid out keypad and a highly detailed colour screen.

The U830 is an HSDPA-enabled phone — our test sample was a 3 branded model — with two cameras — one internal VGA for video calling, and a higher quality 2-megapixel external camera for photographic use. The phone has 184MB of available memory for storage, which initially seems very generous, until you realize one of the key omissions on the U830 — there’s no external memory port whatsoever, so the 184MB you’ve got is all you’re going to get. The primary LCD is a 240 by 320-pixel, 262K TFT screen, while the smaller external screen is a 128 by 160-pixel, 65K TFT. A2DP Bluetooth is supported for those with stereo Bluetooth headphones.

A 2.0 megapixel camera is on board to capture life going by, and viewing your photos is a pleasure thanks to the 2.2″ QVGA TFT internal display. LG has included 185MB of on board memory, but this only goes a short way to alleviating the need for a memory card slot. The device is already being sold through network operator 3 in Italy, Hong Kong, and the UK, but so far no other markets have been announced.

The camera has also been hiked from 1.3 megapixels to a more respectable two and despite occasionally suffering from over exposure, the photo quality is decent enough.

Key Features:

Network WCDMA
Form Factor SHELL
Message Email
MP3 Player yes
Bluetooth yes
Ringtone 64ch
Internal Memory 128MB
Standby time(h) 180
Java yes
GPRS yes
3G yes
USB yes
Color Black
TV yes
Video Camera yes

Specifications:

Dual cameras
Dual colour screens
Wireless connectivity with Bluetooth
Multimedia at your fingertips
Video telephony
Flight mode
Maxisim
Email

Price Range: $286.00 - $329.00

It’s dark, with a dark LCD screen, and just an LG logo and a silver OK button to give any clue about what to do with it. The hidden keypad is touch sensitive and glows red when in use. When opened, the full keypad is available. There are also buttons around the edge for volume control and multimedia - MP3, camera and video. The design works well and looks fantastic, although the touch-sensitive keys are quite sensitive and take a little getting used to.

The LG KG800 Chocolate comes with a built in video feature which allows the user to record, play & store video in the gallery. The user can record & watch 3GP videos on their KG800 Chocolate which is all displayed on the LCD 256k colour screen. The user can edit, change settings & add effects easily to ensure the perfect video is recorded & saved.

Surprisingly, the touch sensitive controls are very accurate, though you do have to make sure you use the tip of your finger to press them, rather than use a finger nail. The KG800 would be useless for a female with long nails, as the d-pad works off the heat in your finger tip. When the slide is closed, the d-pad turns off, making it impossible to press the keys with your leg . The non-touch sensitive numeric keypad does not have any spacing between the keys, but each key is convex in shape and quite large, producing one of the best keypads I have used on a slider handset.

Specifications:

Network GSM
Form Factor SLIDER
Message Email
MP3 Player yes
Bluetooth yes
Ringtone 64ch
Internal Memory 128MB
Standby time(h) 200
Java yes
Digital zoom yes
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
USB yes
Color Black
Video Camera yes

Price Range: $299.00 - $328.00

A new addition to the Chocolate range

Building on the award winning Chocolate, the Chocolate Platinum takes all of the premium design cues of its predecessor and enhances them to produce yet another iconic handset. Boasting a body that’s just 46mm wide and a luxurious piano black finish the Chocolate Platinum has a designer look that will suit all tastes. Concealing a large colour screen, touch sensitive pad that glows red when activated, a keypad and a 2 megapixel camera with autofocus and flash, its more than meets the eye!

The KE800 Chocolate Platinum comes with 60 Mbytes of internal memory space for the user to save their information on & the user can expand the phones memory capabilities further by adding a MicroSD™ memory card which can expand the memory up to massive 2 Gbytes. The fitted battery will provide the user with up to six hours of talk time & two hundred & seventy hours of standby time from a fully charged battery. The LG KE800 Chocolate Platinum weights ninety five grams with the fitted battery which gives the handset a solid & sturdy feel. The handset measures 95mm in height, 46mm in width & 17.5mm in depth which provides a compact & easy to handle mobile phone.

The KE800 is a sleek little slider phone with GPRS and EDGE compatibility. It has an internal memory of a low-memory thumb drive (256 MB), but it has a microSD expansion. Not only can this thing play audio files (MP3/AAC/WAV) but it has a built-in FM radio as well. And, unlike other cell phones, which come with a cheap camera, this one has a 2 megapixel shooter with autofocus and macro mode.

The slider’s few external buttons are well embedded in the case and can be used even when the phone is slid down. The left side of the phone features only the volume key that can be used if the phone is not set on the ‘Vibrate only’ mode. On the right side of the handset, it’s the MP3 player key that can be used to access the music player (when the phone is slid up) or to activate the touch sensitive keypad (press twice when phone is slid down), the camera button, the ‘End’ button used for powering up/down the device (can only be used when the phone is slid up) or for rejecting/ending a call, and the charger port hidden by a cap, which also serves as an USB port for synchronization or earphone port. On the back of the phone, there’s an external speaker and if you slide up the handset you’ll discover the 2 Megapixel camera.

Key Features:

2 Megapixel camera with autofocus and flash
A colour screen that appears when you need it
Expandable memory slot and portable mass storage device
Music, FM Radio, Video and more!
Wireless connectivity with Bluetooth
Tri-Band and EDGE
Loud speaker
Email on the move

Specifications:

Network GSM
Form Factor SLIDER
Message Email
FM Radio yes
MP3 Player yes
Bluetooth yes
Ringtone 64ch
Internal Memory 256MB
Memory Slot microSD
Standby time(h) 200
Java yes
GPRS Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 - 48 kbps
EDGE yes
USB yes
Color Black
Video Camera yes