LG VX8700 Cell Phone Reviews

Audio quality: Playback of songs is acceptable through the cell phone’s speakers, but songs sounded a bit tinny. The LG VX8700 lacks a headset jack; however, it comes with an adapter. Unfortunately, it won't take your own pair of headphones. Instead, you’ll need to purchase an optional Bluetooth stereo headset if you want to listen to music privately.

Camera/video: The LG VX8700 sports a 2-megapixel camera and the ability to record short videos. Though this camera phone lacks a flash, we didn’t miss it. On the plus side, the LG VX8700 probably has one of the fastest shutters we’ve seen to date. You can almost capture the moment when it happens, though there’s still a bit of lag time. You can also snap self-portraits, though it’s hard to see yourself entirely in focus since the external screen is a narrow rectangle. Our favorite feature is Photometry (photographers have a more technical term for it: metering); use it when choosing a specific spot to meter in your frame, which helps with unevenly lit scenes.

As for image quality, we found colors to be vivid and the images bright on the cell phone’s screen. Unfortunately, as is the case with many camera phones, we weren’t nearly as impressed once we downloaded images taken with the LG VX8700’s camera to a computer. We found outdoor photos lacked contrast, but the colors were true; colors on the indoor photos were muted. On the plus side, this cell phone has the least amount of noise we’ve seen to date. As a result, images didn’t suffer from pixilation -- a true plus! Additionally, we had no problem detecting sharp details in both highlights and shadows. Video quality is acceptable but not stellar.

Music: The LG VX8700 sports an MP3 player, and since the cell phone has 30MB of memory, you should be able to store about 5 songs on it as long as you don’t load up on too many photos or applications. If you want more storage, we recommend buying an optional MicroSD media card. You can play MP3s and WMA (Windows Media Audio) files on the MP3 player. As noted, the audio quality is pretty good through the cell phone speaker. Though the LG VX8700 lacks the ability to adjust audio-centric controls such as bass and treble, there is a Shuffle option.

However, unless you’re downloading music from Verizon’s V Cast service, getting music onto the LG cell phone is an entirely different story. You can’t transfer music from a PC to the VX8700 cell phone using Bluetooth. However, if you purchase an optional cable and software, you’ll be able to transfer WMA and MP3 files to the cell phone using Windows Media Player 10. The easiest way to transfer music is via a separate MicroSD media card. Once the card is formatted and you have a way to access the card from your computer via an optional reader or cable, you can then drag and drop your songs into the My_music folder on the media card. Then slip it into the storage card slot located beneath the battery cover on the back of the LG cell phone.

Connectivity/Bluetooth: We were able to pair the LG cell phone with a Motorola H500 Bluetooth headset. Call quality isn’t as stellar with a headset, but it is quite acceptable. We should note that while you still can’t use Bluetooth to transfer songs from a computer to the cell phone and vice versa, we had no problem connecting to an Apple computer. However, we couldn’t send pictures from the cell phone to the computer.

While the LG VX8700 bears a striking resemblance to the Razr line of cell phones, it does have a few distinguishing marks of it own. For starters, we much prefer the placement of the buttons along the sides of the LG VX8700. Unlike the Razr, the VX8700 situates the record button under the volume buttons, not across from them on the other side of the cell phone. Why do we like this? Well, on the Razr, the voice record button tends to be on the opposite side of the volume keys, and we constantly find that we inadvertently hit it while on a call. Also, the external display is decidedly different and shiny. When not in use, the external display is a long thin mirror, which is best for checking to see if you have food in your teeth or applying lipstick. When in use, the external display shows time, date, network strength, battery life, and other alerts (such as whether Bluetooth is activated). Speaking of displays, the internal screen is beautiful. Colors are bountiful and bright, while letters and numbers are extremely crisp.

Keypad: There’s something eerily familiar about the LG VX8700’s keypad. It’s as if we’ve seen it somewhere before -- and of course, we have. It looks an awful lot like the trademark flat keypad found on the Razr. But unlike the Razr, the LG VX8700 sports a keypad backlit in white instead of blue. While you might think it would be hard to dial on a flat keypad, we found it pretty easy.