Tasberry's Full Review of the LG CHOCOLATE

Normally I don't really care for LG cell phones. I've always been partial to Motorolas. Moto gets a bad rep sometimes but I've never had any problem with any Motorola that I've even owned except for those old ass ones with the long ass battery/back that used to just die after three seconds of conversation. Anyway, I've owned two previous LGs ONLY because they offer the one sided phone conversation recording feature and the Motorolas for my provider are not capable of it. That is the ONLY reason I owned LGs because this was a feature I decided I could not live without.
When I heard about the Chocolate I immediately had desire to get one. It was different, it was hot looking, they marketed it really well, and it was something I knew would cause a big commotion. OMEGOODNESS an ipod/ phone right? Yeah. Well anyway I ran out on August 6th to be one of the first people who got this phone. I've now been experimenting with it for an entire two weeks so I feel I can give my entire review now. So here goes:

LOOKS:
Looks hot, there's no doubt about that! I love the glossy casing (even though it gets dirty as shit), the red touch pad lights, and the overall size of it. I've never owned an ipod so I didn't really know if it looked like one or not but it damn sure looked smokin'! And I dont' even like slider phones but this one caught my eye. A plus on the eye candy aspect of the design. Sweet indeed.

RECEPTION:
I've had no problems with the reception on this phone, but then again I had no problems with the reception on ANY phone that I've owned. I live in a well towered area so i can't really say if there's issues or not. The phone would have to be REALLY bad to screw up in my area.
Voice clarity is excellent. Yes, I can hear you now. Volume settings are sufficient enough for my liking. No static or weird tunnel sounds or anything. They did ok there. A for reception/voice clarity/ volume.
The music player is actually pretty good. Kicks pretty good ass for only having one speaker but I still think the 8100 and 8300 had louder sounds. Factory ringtones are pretty loud and "interesting" but they took one away that I had on my 8300 that I used to use for texts :-(

BATTERY LIFE:
Sucks complete and utter monkey balls. The extended battery is a MUST with this phone. Original battery did not last an entire day when I had it and I wouldn't say I'm a real heavy user. I talk, I text, and I go on the internet a few times a day to check my e-mail but wtf? Plan on spending an additonal fifty dollars for the extended battery unless you enjoy being CLICKED in the middle of a really good conversation. D- for battery life.

FEATURES:
This phone is packed with a lot of great features. Well you've got your music player (which can play mp3 and wma. awesome), your camera (which takes excellent pictures), your long ass video taking capabilities, your bluetooth, your internet, your v-cast, your touch pad, your voice command, your voice memo, your tty, and your blah blah blah. What you don't have is a speakerphone and just for that I want to throw the phone out the window. How can a manufacturer even think about making a phone without the speakerphone feature??? When I found out I had no speaker phone I almost pissed myself. I use bluetooth sometimes but mostly I like to put my phone on speaker and sit it next to me when I'm doing something. I prefer that option to bluetooth. We should have a choice.I'm going to have to give this phone a rating of WTF for the missing speaker phone. Is LG on crack? So I can listen to music out the speaker but I can't listen to another caller out the speaker? What the hell?

QUIRKS AND FLAWS:
Now for the good part. I just don't think LG was thinking much when they developed this. It was a good concept but the flaws on this phone are just too annoying. For one...no speakerphone. Number two there is not enough area for text messaging and the keys are too close together. I am a lady with very small fingers and text messaging has become a really hard TASK. I text a lot and I literally have cramps from screwing around with this matchbox sized texting area. No effing good unless you are an elf with a toothpick handy.
The touch pad is way too sensitive even after playing with the sensitivity setting. I find myself going into the wrong menu items a lot, activating menu items with my cheek while i'm in a call, muting myself with my cheek by mistake when the phone's up to my ear and other such bloopers.
The keypad has a lock that you can't change the settings to. It locks on you if you don't press anything in three seconds. I'd rather have the option to lock my keypad when I feel like it and unlock it when I don't. This is extremely annoying especially if you have a thought that takes more than three seconds to process. Well then you have to stop and unlock the damn phone! Not only that but when you're in a call and a call waiting call comes in you have to UNLOCK the keypad and then answer the call. By that time the other caller has probably gotten pissed off and hung up and your other party will probably hang up on you too because most likely you will activate the mute button with your cheek and they won't hear wtf you're saying anymore till you again unlock the keypad and then turn the mute off. Oh and I forgot, to unlock said keypad you have to press the voice memo side button TWICE. Not just once.
If you're listening to music with a stereo headset and a call comes in, you can't answer the call and talk through your headset like on the 8100 and 8300s. Oh no no no, you have to take your headset off and then put the phone up to your ear and talk in it.After of course unlocking the keypad and accidentally activating the mute button. Wtf kind of bullshit is this??? There's a setting in the music controls called "music only." It makes it so that you can only listen to music and not be bothered by the phone. It's really not necessary because you pretty much will be listening to music only after you and your caller get frustrated as shit a few times. No one will call you anymore.
When you're connected to bluetooth and you use voice command...after the conversation ends the voice command bitch keeps asking you if you want to call so and so. If you say no she calls them anyway. You can't slap her so it becomes another annoyance.
Weird software stuff happens like phone freezes and speaker stops working intermittently. I like the fact that I can get and respond to text messages while I'm on a call but sometimes that feature does not work properly and the phone freezes up on me. Lost all of my sound one time for no apparent reason. Had to reboot the phone to get it back. Not good.
No standard headset jack. Have to use stupid looking adaptor that most people lose from jump because they have no idea what the hell it is.

GOOD STUFF:
There are a few good things about this phone. You can make and send your own sounds to yourself and save them as ringtones. That's a good one. You can set your texts to autoplay which I love because I'm too lazy to press buttons and open them up. You can listen to music. Text messaging ringer id is pretty cool. And er...well...that's about it.

OVERALL OPINION:
My overall opinion of this phone is that it's way more glamour than goods. It's really sharp looking and different and all that, but basic functionality becomes a really hard and annoying task way too much with this. So...come September I will puttting my candy back in its box and getting something a little less freaky and possessed. It's not going to be a keeper.

THe Einstein Award

And the Einstein award goes to...the guy who dropped his cell phone in the toilet and then rinsed it off in the sink as not to leave "toilet germs" on it. Oh yeah, that's reeeal smooth, boss. I'm sure the phone wasn't damaged enough from falling in your funky toilet. You had to run a stream of water over the electronic components too. This idiot's wife had nerve enough to ask me to do a phone book transfer on that phone too. Some how I didn't quite think that that machine was going to be reading any phone numbers off of that particular phone. I don't know what clued me in. The piss coming out of the charging port or the fog on the display. Hrrrm. Anyway, this guy was definitely on my Einstein list today. Yeah.

Pissed

I was a little pissed at my job yesterday because the LG 8300 was officially released so naturally I wanted to buy it. I'm not eligible for upgrade so I had no problem with pay full retail cost. Latest and the greatest, you know me. Turns out that my employer does not care if I have the money or not, employees are not allowed to buy said phones at a retail store location. We are only allowed to order phones on the online store. Of course I was off yesterday and couldn't access the employee store from home so I just wanted to go to the store and buy a new phone. What's the fucking problem? I don't know but this company has way too many stupid rules for me. I see now why they pay us so much. It's because if they don't they know we'll get aggravated with their stupid rules and leave. Yeah I almost fought with employee accounts three times because I think it's so ridiculous that I have to order this phone online and then wait a fucking week or two for the order to get processed and for fedex to bring their lame asses to my house. By that time the phone won't be new anymore. Ug, I am not a happy camper. At all.

Summer Cellphone Releases

There's a few interesting CDMA phones coming out this month. some have already come out and some are days away from being fully released. Motorola has come out with a revised CDMA version of the razr (bottom pic). This version will sport a memory card and an mp3 player. Well DUH! It should have had these things to begin with, dorks! It only took Motorola two years to get their thumb out of their asses on this one. Way to go Moto! Why do I even bother? Anyway, I won't be getting the new razr. I dont' believe in getting the same phone twice and I already had the razr when it first came out almost two years ago. I had it when not many people had it. Yes, I had it when people were crazy enough to spend $650 for it! Ha. My razr craze ended in about two weeks back in '04 or some shit. Now everyone has it so I don't want it.
Motorola has also released the Q (second pic from bottom)...its razr styled PDA phone. This puppy comes packed with windows mobile 5.0, windows media player 10, STEREO bluetooth capabilities (listen to your music with bt headet), a kwerty keyboard, thumbwheel navigation (like the blackberry), and other nifty treats. I won't be getting this either. No matter how feature packed I can't stand PDAs. I like a phone that looks like a phone, NOT a a brick. That's what this phone looks like. A gray brick that got run over and flattened. A paper thin brrrrrick. Yeck. I love Motorolas, but not enough to carry around their newly released bricklette.
There's a Samsung 930 (third from bottom) being released also. Don't know any of the features of this phone because I wasn't excited enough to even do research on it. I hate Samsungs with a passion and to me this particular Sammy looks like a very discreet knockoff of the Motorola Pebl (third from top). This offends me greatly as I feel the Motorola Pebl is GOD. This phone is so freaking hot I'm still sweating over it. Too bad there's no CDMA version of the pebl (gsm only). My mom has it through T-Mobile. I am mad jealous. Anyway, yeah, the Samsung 930 sucks.
So...that leaves me with the Lg Vx 8300 (second phone) as the phone I will be upgrading to. This will be the updated version of the 8100 which is the one I have now (top phone). The casing on the 8300 isn't as nice as the blue casing on the 8100 but it doesn't matter because I use a leather case at all times anyway. This phone adds STEREO bluetooth capabilites, customizable Flash interface, and uses microSD memory cards instead of miniSD. Oh and I also read in reviews that you can also voice record your own ringtones and send yourself mp3 files to use as your ringtones. That's a huge PLUS. However, you can't view your pic messages and text messages on the outside display like with the 8100. Wtf?! And I don't understand the whole mini SD to micro DS situation. So what they're telling me is that I'll have to buy a whole new memory card when I move to the 8300. ????? What an asshole (LG). Lg is good for removing important features and changing unecessary shit. Still and all I have to have the latest and the greatest and the 8300 is the best out of all my options. I was hoping Motorola was coming out with something new other than the Q but I guess not. Maybe next time.

Testing testing 1,2,3

I'm just testing this out. The reason I haven't been posting much is
because I couldn't get on blogger from work. Lol, but now I've found
a way around it. Yes. So I'll be stopping in more frequently. Word!
See you soon.

Work

I fell asleep on the couch again and didn't even set the alarm. I'm surprised I got up at all. Gotta be in at 8AM. One more day and then mini VACA. Yay! Forgot to mention I got two compliments yesterday from my customers. One guy told T I was very helpful and such. The other couple told J. I was like "Yes!" I love when they say shit to T. I wish we had comment cards. Glad they went out of their way so he knows I do shit.
D is trying to transfer to Vineland. I will be so pissed off. I'll really feel like the outsider once he leaves. We kind of formed a mini click because we went to training at the same time. Once he leaves I'll be the lonely outsider, lol.
It was a crazy day yesterday. The guy that complimented me almost got into a fight with this other dude. Both men were like 65 years old and I don't know what the fight was about but the one guy was waiting for the other guy outside doing jujitsu warm up excersises and shit, lol. He was ready to bang this other fool out. We had to call the cops. It was hilarious.
About an hour later I was fighting with a Russian (?) couple about their bill. They had $600 worth of bills and when I looked at their bills I noticed two things: 1. They hadn't made a payment since March and 2. They were going WAY over their minutes every month. They tried to argue with me that their bill should be $100. Yeah, IF THEY HADN'T GONE OVER THEIR MINUTES it would have been. But they did and plus two more bills had been generated since they paid last. The billing period was on the 20th. They made a payment for $100 on March 18th. That was for the previous bill. Then March's bill was generated on the 20th. No pay pay. Then April's on the 20th. No pay pay. Of course it was $600. Duh! They just didn't get it and I got real tired of trying to explain it. They ended up going to J who went and got T and T came out and gave them whatever the hell they wanted anyway (a new phone). T is so customer oriented but sometimes he just lets the fuckers walk all over him. They aren't supposed to get shit until their bill is current. Wuss. I guess they didn't bitch about me though because he would have said something.
My last hour and a half this retarded guy was blocking my station talking to prepaid customer service. His name was Wyatt and someone had stole his phone and switched it for another while he was at work. He was flipping. You just had to be there for that. I can't even put into words how crazy he was but when he walked up to the greeter I was just looking at E like "Please don't send that guy over here." She did and she thought it was funny so when he wanted help with the bill payment machine I sent his ass back over to her. Lol. We were both cracking up. I had to hide behind the wall once because I was laughing. He wasn't really retarded, he was just nuts or something. It was a hoot when he was snapping to customer service about his phone getting stolen. He was like "My phone was stolen by a 'theif by coincidence'" What the fuck is a "theif by coincidence"? I don't even get that. Whatever. At any rate he made my job easier 'cause I couldn't help anyone else for the last hour and a half being that he was standing in front of my computer from 6 till 7:30. Lol.

A Crazy Day

*12:13 PM*. Today is starting out to be the day from hell already. OMG, my very first customer was a guy with a business account who wanted to do assumptions of liabilities with FIVE of his numbers. Two to one of his workers, and three to his himself. Need I say what's all involved with just one of these? Yah...it took an entire two hours to do these assumptions because his numbers were split up into two different accounts And they were all on family share so of course "the old system" wouldn't let me move the numbers until splitting them into five individuals, etc. It isn't hard it just takes a long time and there's a lot involved. One assumption usually takes 20-25 minutes with no complications...but there's always a complication, lol. After all that this guy actually had the nerve to request an early upgrade just because he did assumptions. T of course did it for him. I wouldn't have. Oh and he asked me to do the upgrade and such like I was a salesperson. Wtf?! Two entire hours. Everyone gossips at my job so when K came in someone had chirped to her that I had done this great big multiple aol early this morning. She came to me and said "Damn, after that I would have told them I had diarrhea and went home." Yeah it was a pain but the time moved fast.

My second customer was a very grumpy old man who jumped out of the tech line, came to me, and started snapping out calling his phone a piece of junk because he didn't know how to use it. I showed him the manual but he said he didn't understand it. He was so mean and he wanted to return his motorola e815 and reactivate his kyocera 3125 because he was used to it.Well I definitely didn't feel like doing a return and I hate to see a good E815 come back so I took my time with the man and showed him how to dial and press the send key. Then I showed him how to text message. By the end of our time together I had turned this grumpy old man into a smiing E815 user who thanked me for all my help. You're welcome. Now, get the Fuck out!

*3:17 PM* Just took my break and got a little catnap. Ready to get the rest of this day over with. Things calmed down a little after my customers from hell left. I got a couple that came in and said that I had helped the woman yesterday activate her 3300. I don't even remember these people. I see a million people a day so I had no idea what the hell she was talking about so whatever. Today her husband's phone seemed to be having a problem. Problem was he was getting his voicemail every time he called his wife. I was like "wtf?" That didn't sound right. Figured out the problem really quick. Problem was they had accidentally swapped phones because they both had the 3300 so he was actually calling himself when he thought he was calling his wife, lol. Yeah they switched phones and they were out in five minutes.

*3:54PM* Customer just got irate with me because he wanted to return an acessory and I had to tell him he was out of the 15 day return policy (which btw is stated on EVERY receipt) period. He looked at me and said "Ok, so you're not going to do it!? That tells me a lot about the organization." Mmmmm, ok! Yeah verizon sucks. Get over it. Two minutes later I got a guy and a girl who just wanted their credit ran to see if they would qualify for service. I am not a salesperson but a salesperson asked me to perform the credit checks. Why? Because he probably figured he wasn't going to get any money out of it. So anyway, the girl came up $125 security deposit and that was just too much so then the boyfriend wanted me to run his credit. His non driver id was expired and his birth certificate was crusty as was his social security card. Neither of which we could take for service anyway. I verified it with T and he said no. So when I notified the dude as nicely as I could he responded with "Fuck this!... we're going to cingular." He stormed off. Guess what pal? Cingular isn't going to take your crusty outdated id either. Not only that but in a case where we ask for $125, they will ask for $300. Been there. Done that. See ya, lol.

8:09PM. I'm home now. The rest of the night was ok. Had to help a woman in the tech line with bluetooth. I don't like pulling people out of the tech line because if it turns out to be something I can't help them with then they get pissed because they can't get their place again. Luckily this time she just needed to be paired up and I knew how to do it so I did.

After that I got a couple of insurance phone activations I had to do and then at the very end I got a triple line deal from Lisa which was a little complicated because the dude was tax exempt and all this. Well it wasn't hard, it's just that we have so much remarking to remember and if we don't the ding happy bitches on the morning shift will get us. Tomorrow I will be said ding happy bitch and I'm going for blood. Fuck 'em and fuck 'em all. DING! DING! DING! HAHAHA!