LG's musically talented Chocolate Touch for Verizon review

LG Chocolate Touch

LG Chocolate Touch

LG Chocolate Touch

The $79.99 VX8575 Chocolate Touch is LG's fourth phone in its Chocolate series for the U.S. market. It's the first to offer a full touch screen interface and it continues the line's focus on multimedia performance. Despite excellent call quality, good music playback performance, and chic industrial design, there are a few hitches that you should be aware of.

Physical Aspects

The 119g (4.2oz) Chocolate Touch reminds me of a thinner and sharper looking LG Dare. It has a candy bar form factor and measures a thin 109mm x 56mm x 13mm (4.3in x 2.2in x 0.5in). During my testing period I found the phone to be very comfortable in the hand; its lightweight and slim design made it barely noticeable in my pocket, even while I used the phone as a music player during afternoon jogs.

The front of the phone is dominated by its 3-inch 400 x 240 pixel resistive touchscreen display that was fairly responsive to my finger taps, but not as responsive as capacitive displays. I found the screen was bright enough to read even under direct sunlight.

The VX8575 has a host of keyboard options: In vertical mode you can touch-type on the alphanumeric keyboard with T9, use an incredibly cramped vertical QWERTY, or try scribbling a message using its highly inaccurate "Pen" feature. The QWERTY keyboard in landscape mode was usable but not nearly as accurate as the QWERTYs found on other touch screen phones like the Samsung Instinct HD or smartphones like the iPhone. I found I had to be very deliberate in each key press to write a message without any typos.

The device has a faux chrome finish that adds a premium look. All of the keys offered good feedback; the volume controls, charging port, and a speaker toggle button are on the left side of the phone. A screen lock button, a music player launch button, and a camera quick-launch key are on the right side, and there's a 3.5mm headphone jack on the top of the device.

The chrome color carries over to the back cover of the Chocolate Touch where it splashes through four rubber grip pieces that do a good job preventing slippage. A second battery cover comes in the box with purple rubber grips. Under the back panel there's a microSD card slot for adding your own microSD card for additional storage. A 3.2 megapixel camera and the speakerphone are both on the back of the device.