Here’s the unedited Review of the LG Chocolate Published at Philippine Daily Inquirer
Here’s something yummy to sink your teeth in, The LG BL40 – The New Chocolate. LG continues to woo the fashionista crowd with this new addition to their Black label line.
Straight out of the box, the first thing one notices about the Touchscreen bar LG BL40 is a clean button-less Scratch-resistant glass that adds sleekness to the exterior design. Save for the LG logo, there are no keys of the face of this beauty. The thin and tall (128 x 51 x 10.9 mm and weighs 129 grams) exterior is prominently accentuated by red highlights at both ends of the phone. It’s 1GB of internal memory is enough to run a couple of widget all at the same time.
The top of the phone is the 3.5mm Headphone port and the Power/Lock key. While the left side hold a dedicated music key and a hinged microUSB slot. The right side equally holds the Volume Rocker and Camera Shutter keys.
At the back is the Schneider Kreuznach lens 5MP camera with LED flash. So you can throw away your digital camera coz this phone takes a mean photo even in low light. The back lid slide off with some difficulty especially if you have oily hands, revealing a 1000 mAh Li-Ion battery, which is quoted at 400 hours standby and up to 6hours talk time. Also inside are the SIM card compartment and the microSD Card Slot which could handle up to 16GB microSDHC trouble-free.
One would really enjoy just holding on to the LG Chocolate as well as just looking at its minimalist design. But that’s not where it’s beauty lies.
Powering ON reveals a 4 inch full 21:9 (cinematic) screen, one of the most vibrant blacks I’ve every seen on a phone screen. The brilliant 16M-color capacitive touchscreen enabled for multi-touch input. It also sports TV-out, Dolby mobile, FM Radio, FM transmitter and DixX/XviD support all straight out of the box. It also has ambient light sensor which automatically adjust the screen’s light according to ambient light availability.
Lets talk about the screen a little; I can’t believe that the screen isn’t a OLED, especially because of the vivid colors and very deep black. The screen apparently is an 800×345 resolution TFT LCD. Unbelievable! The phone also has a built-in Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate which is just as intuitive as the other Accelerometer-equipped phones we see out there. However, the same accelerometer has caused some issues, at least with me; when you try to read your phone while supine in your bed, it Autorotates to landscape. Thus the issue of getting my lazy butt out of bed to read a message.
The S-Class User Interface from LG feels like a cross between the OSX for iPhone and TouchFLO Cube. The gesturing from a locked screen is oddly similar to Samsung’s but with a little tweak (you can see your gestures, like “M” brings out Messaging and so on with 11 other gesturing patterns).
The only hindrance I see with the interface is the size of the phone. In Portrait mode, the button on the top of the phone would call for a longer thumb or using your other hand to get to it. I almost dropped the phone a couple of times when I tried to adjust my hand to reach the top button.
Let’s go to Messaging, since it’s the most commonly used application.
This is where it gets a little cramp. In Landscape Mode, a QWERTY Keyboard is easily accessible. However, all you can see unhindered is just a single line of message especially when the Predictive Text is ON. Ok for really short messages but irritating to massive texters like me. In Portrait Mode however, Messaging reverts back to the Keypad.
MultiMedia is where the LG BL40 gets interesting. Pinching and zooming, both for the web browser and image browsing was pretty much spot on. Image quality (thanks to its 5MP Schneider Kreuznach lens ) and video playback are pretty impressive. The camera support Geo-Tagging, Image stabilization, Face detection, Smile shot, Blink detection, Intelligent Shot and VGA Video recording at 30 fps. Because of its size, though, watch your favorite video appears to be oddly awry, especially in Full Screen Mode. But this little inconvenience is quickly overcome by the quality. But you can always feed your videos through the optional TV Output Lead to your TV. Cool, isn’t it. Bummer though you have to pay for it. It should have come with the box. Audio playback is top notch especially for High Bit Rate recordings. Over all, Audio and Video – fun to watch, great to listen.
Call quality is at par with the other high end phones out there. Like the other touchscreen phone, the Proximity Sensor turns the touchscreen off to prevent inadvertent drop calls and other interferences while on call.
Battery life span, with normal usage, about a day and half. But with Wifi on, internet browsing, listening to AudioBooks, a movie a day and Normal Call and SMS usage, I could barely go through the whole day without charging it.
Connectivity is through WiFi, Bluetooth 22.1 with A2DP, great for your stereo BT headsets. It also has GPS Receiver with A.GPS. Maps are available through Third Party apps.
Multitasking is one of the things the New Chocolate does that the ‘iDonotDo’ phone does not do. Thanks to its new Qualcomm processor, you can now enjoy watching your Ex’s photos while listening to Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance. There is however a lag in applications once you get to 4 or 5 open widgets.
Unfortunately LG New Chocolate does not support Flash out of the box. Boo! You’ll have to install a third party application to watch your favorite YouTube videos or other flash intensive sites. Wink.
Applications aren’t a problem, since LG has launched it’s own Apps store ( http://www.lgapplication.com/web.gateway.dev ). Although not as massive as the Apps from the other phone, LG has developed quiet an array of Free and Paid Apps. I spent hours playing the Motion Fishing, the closest thing to catching anything in my life. There’s also a built-in Office Document Viewer that’s a must for all yea e-book lovers.
I fiddled, played, and tinkered with the phone until exhaustion or boredom is reached, which I never did. Too bad I had to return the phone though. Overall, LG has released a better quality phone, compared to its predecessor. Not really bad for its price. Tall Thin and Sexy, oddly like a VS Model – The New Chocolate, The LG BL40.