This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.
I don’t think of the LG Chocolate Touch as a phone with a killer music player, I think of it as a killer music player with a phone. The Original LG Chocolate was also media center oriented, but wow, was I surprised with the quality of the audio this phone was able to play. Who knew my mp3s sounded so good? Let’s be honest. God didn’t create all mp3s the same. Nor did he create all headphones and auditory perceptions the same. The Chocolate Touch coupled with the patented Dolby Mobile Technology gave me the power to make any mp3 sound exactly as I wished it could sound. This phone also restored the little faith I had left in my 3 year old ear buds. A few of my songs even convinced me I was listening to music in surround sound. Now I am an avid iPhone user, and swear by the phone, but for a company that started off making music players and progressed to the phone, I want to know why they can’t make MP3s sound as good as Chocolate. It certainly offers an extremely rich listening experience with “potent bass and sparkling clarity.”
One feature that should be a universal standard for all phones and MP3 players is enabling the device as removable storage for your computer and allowing you to drag all your music on as if it were a flash drive. It just makes life easy [end point]. Obviously, the first thing I wanted to do upon receiving the LG Chocolate Touch loaner was to get my music on there and see what all the fuss was about Dolby Mobile. It was a good sign that the box came with no CD, which meant probably no required drivers, which hopefully means no required software installations? Yes! I was able to plug the phone into right in to my computer, see the drive as an external storage device (like a flash drive), navigate to “My_Music” and bam, I was transferring songs in seconds. Love it! I didn’t have to install any software, perform any conversions, or get through a lengthy syncing process. Even better, I was also able to retrieve the test shots and vids I took with the camera from the storage device. Adding photos was just as breezy, no wait, breezier*. I didn’t have to specify photo albums to share or optimize. Just dragged and dropped all the pics I wanted to add. With Windows this was all extremely easy, when I wanted to add more music from my Mac I ran into an issue–lack of support. I couldn’t access my Chocolate Touch via its microUSB cable. Fortunately, I figured out a work around and hat didn’t turn out to be too big of an issue. I was able to just remove the MicroSD card from the phone, pop it in an adapter and then in to my computer. Once again I had easy access to the files on my phone including pictures, videos, and music. Just make sure you set the phone to store these files on the external memory, rather than internal, in the settings.
If that seems like more work than you’re willing to go through, you can connect your Mac with your LG Chocolate via Bluetooth. Similarly all of your phone’s folders and files will pop up enabling you to add pictures, videos, and music, or pull files directly from your phone, wirelessly! There were a lot of bluetooth features on the LG Chocolate Touch, which seem to still be rare for cell phones (ahem ahem iPhone). In addition to sending and receiving files (from phone or from computer), I was able to easily to print directly from my phone to my little wireless Polaroid PoGo printer. I will say I was a bit disappointed that LG Chocolate was unable to pair to my Sony MW600 A2DP Bluetooth headset. It does has A2DP bluetooth stereo streaming support. I guess it just didn’t like my Sony (or vice versa).
Navigating music was easy on the LG Chocolate Touch. Everything is very simple. It doesn’t have the fit and finish of, lets say, the iPhone, but music and media is well organized in a minimalistic fashion still organized by song, genre, artist, album. All of the music on Chocolate, which I had originally organized in iTunes, preserved its meta information i.e. artist, track name, and even the album art. There’s a search button too allowing you to find any song you’re looking for. Another feature I liked was the ability to make playlists on the fly. Notice I said playlists and not playlist. If you’re not in the mood for your own music then tune into the built in FM Radio. FM Radio requires headphones, which it uses as an antenna. You can still play the music over speakerphone, as you can with any of the music on the phone. The FM tuner interface is nice, allowing you to set 12 presets. It also pulls song information (RBDS support) from many of the stations.
When playing music you have options–to keep you entertained and to ensure the greatest possible listening conditions. The most unique is the Join the Band feature. This allows you to join along by playing the keyboard or drums while playing any song of your choosing. The Rhythmical Beat feature is another unique option enabling your handset to vibrate to the beat of the music. I have not yet figured out when this would be necessary, but never the less–cool. For songs lacking cover art you can choose your own image from your picture album. The best feature is the Dolby Customizable EQ settings. As I mentioned earlier, all mp3s are encoded differently and not going to sound optimal on just any headset. These EQ settings give you the control to choose what sounds best. With Dolby presets: flat, bass boost, treble boost, vocal boost, and classical you are sure to find your ideal sound. If you’re feeling daring enough you can use manual EQ and adjust EQ settings across 4 bands. I put music ranging from heavy metal, to indy, to oldies on my Chocolate, so I found myself often changing the EQ for a more pleasant sound. Multi-tasking is great while music or FM is playing. Your listening experience will be uninterrupted. Also on the homescreen is a nice little audio visualizer while music is playing. The speakerphone on the phone, as mentioned, will play your music and FM radio. You can certainly crank it up, but the audio does not live up to the Dolby name. The quality is just subpar (but I remind you, it is loud). Also the speaker is located on the back of the phone, so unless you place your phone screen down on a surface, it will sound muffled.
When your phone is also your camera, it should work like a camera. Hence there should be a physical button to quickly turn it on and a physical button to quickly take a picture. The Chocolate Touch thankfully has this dedicated camera button, allowing you to be taking a picture within seconds of removing the phone from your pocket (not forcing you to go through on screen menus to get to the camera). Also, hold down the camera button for 3 seconds to enter the video camera. You can record 30 second clips to send your friends, or save up to one hour of video. The pictures from the 3.2 megapixel camera come out pretty nice with the default/maximum resolution of 2048×1536. The videos also come out pretty nice, for a phone. Just up the resolution to 320×240 and you should be more or less satisfied. On both Camera and Video Camera there are customizable brightness, white balance, shutter sound, color effects, and self-timer, which certainly come in handy when trying to perfect a picture or video. No camera flash, but that is okay since they usually stink anyway on phones.
Overall I was pretty impressed with the media center aspect of LG’s Chocolate Touch. You can store movies on it too, which is great for those long car and train rides. The only issues I had with this media center of a phone is that there are no hard button audio controls: play/pause skip track…
Specs:
Internal Storage: 1gb
External Storage: MicroSD (not included) up to 16gb
Compatable Audio: MP3, WAM, and unprotected AAC/AAC+ files
Video formats: WMV, MP4, 3GP, and 3G2
Display: 3-inch touchscreen
Camera: 3.2 megapixel
Camera Resolutions: 2048 x 1536 (default), 1600 x 1200, 1280 x 960, 800 x 480, 640 x 480 Pixels
Video Resolutions: 320 x 240, 176 x 144 (default) pixels
Bluetooth: version 2.1 with A2DP
headset jack: standard 3.5mm
Dimensions: 4.3 x 2.2 x .47 inches
Battery: 5.1 hours talk, 470 hours standby
