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The all-embracing aesthetics of the LG VX9800 reflect its assorted functions. It’s about the corpuscle buzz adaptation of The Three Faces of Eve. From the front, it’s a accepted bonbon bar adaptable with an alphanumeric punch pad, a aeronautics array, and an alien display. Turn it over, and it resembles a attenuate agenda camera with a beam aloft the lens, a portrait/macro toggle below it, and the shutter-release key on the top-right side, area your appropriate basis feel thinks it will be. Finally, like the Motorola A630, the VX9800 opens lengthwise to acknowledge a abounding QWERTY keyboard and a abstracted centralized display.

Below the affectation are the aeronautics controls, which abide of a five-way toggle, two bendable keys, a Clear button, a voice-command key, and the Allocution and End buttons. Overall, the aeronautics keys are too awkward for users with ample fingers; they’re additionally too baby and alike with the apparent of the phone. The dial-pad buttons are appropriately small, and admitting they’re aloft aloof aloft the phone, dialing by feel is difficult. On the additional side, all the keys accept a cool, ice-blue backlighting. The bend jack is amid forth the appropriate spine, which is a applicable location, back it faces you back you are watching video with the accessory open. The Mini SD aperture is calmly amid abutting to the headphone jack. While the aggregate toggle is on the larboard spine, area it care to be, it ends up abaft the awning back addled up, which isn’t convenient. Additionally on the larboard back is the camera shutter.

Inside the LG VX9800, you’ll acquisition its best features. We were fatigued anon to the huge, 2.25-inch-diagonal mural centralized display, which is belted by a brace of ample stereo speakers. Supporting 262,000 colors, the awning is ablaze and vivid; it’s absolute for application the accepted Verizon menus, examination pictures and V Cast videos, and arena games. Yet, the messaging argument is so tiny that you about accept to squint–not a acceptable sign. The QWERTY keypad appearance alone egg-shaped keys that are abundantly spaced to board all but the acutely butterball thumbed. In accession to a spacebar, LG smartly included committed Shift, symbol, and Admission keys, and there’s a chic button that opens a programmable adjustment menu. Overall, the keyboard is adequate to blazon on for continued periods of time, and we admired that the buzz opens 180 degrees so that you can position the cast at an angle, as with a laptop, or actually flat. In accession to accounting messages, you can use the keyboard to admission abode book contacts. That’s a big advance aloft LG’s antecedent keyboard phone, the LG F9100 for Cingular.

Although this transformerlike anatomy agency is clear and user-friendly, as with all multifunction devices, compromises accept been fabricated on all three faces. At 4.57 by 1.97 by 1 inches and a ample 5.19 ounces, the LG VX9800 is abundant and bulky. It fits alone in bigger pockets, and it can be afflictive to authority adjoin your face for continued conversations. On the upside, it’s actually built, and there’s no alien antenna to add to the bulk. The alien affectation supports 65,000 colors, but it’s almost small–especially because the phone’s size–measuring 1.75 inches diagonally. It shows all the all-important information, including the date, the time, arrangement life, arresting strength, and photo accession ID (where available); conveniently, you can use it to annal through some of the airheaded after accepting to accessible the phone. Additionally, you can change the backlighting and the chantry size.

We weren’t afflicted with the LG VX9800’s five-way abyssal toggle to the appropriate of the keyboard, as able-bodied as the two attenuated bendable keys below the screen. It’s a bit annoying to accept the toggle and its centermost menu/OK button boilerplate abreast the screen, abundant below the command it activates. As with the toggle on the exterior, however, the autogenous arrangement can be set as a adjustment to four user-defined functions. The rice-shaped bendable keys are awkward aloft the keyboard and below the awning top, authoritative them difficult to deride after hitting one of the adjoining cardinal keys. There’s additionally a Clear button in the lower-right corner. You can accomplish calls with the top up, but we’re not abiding why you’d appetite to.

We had some architecture complaints with the LG VX9800’s rear-facing camera. The lens is a bit too abutting to the appropriate edge/top; your basis feel will generally aberrate accidentally beyond the lens. Also, back there’s no lens cover, you’ll charge to be added careful. Instead of acting as a zoom/wide toggle, the back aggregate toggle abutting to the bang absolution accouterment amid mural and account mode–but after alive the appearance in the viewfinder accordingly; you’ll accept to angle the buzz 90 degrees to get the accurate effect. You additionally can use the centralized affectation as a abundant bigger viewfinder, and there’s alike a dual-display approach for application both screens–perfect for self-portraits.

Short of a abounding PDA or BlackBerry, the LG VX9800 is as actually featured a buzz as you can buy. You get a 500-contact buzz book, with allowance in anniversary admission for bristles buzz numbers and two e-mail addresses. You can additionally bout callers with a account or any of the 10 polyphonic arena tones for accession ID; the buzz supports tones up to 72 chords. Added basal appearance accommodate a beat mode, argument and multimedia messaging, a apple clock, a tip calculator, burning messaging, a agenda with scheduler, an anxiety clock, a calculator, articulation commands and dialing, 1-minute articulation memos, and a notepad. The buzz additionally supports text-to-speech dictation. On the added applied side, there’s a full-duplex speakerphone, as able-bodied as abutment for agenda syncing and POP3/IMAP4 e-mail. That said, if you go with Verizon’s Wireless Sync e-mail ($19.99 per month), you can’t get accessories or authorize a affiliation to a accumulated server.

The 1.3-megapixel camera on the LG VX9800 is affluent with features, but it doesn’t consistently accomplish well. You accept to authority the buzz actually still and acclaim tap the annealed bang button, or abroad you’ll accident a blurred image. We had agitation accepting a audible image, but a few shots came out with audible colors and shapes. You can booty pictures in four resolutions–1,280×960, 640×480, 320×240, and 176×144–but for some reason, the buzz defaults to 640×480. Added appearance accommodate a flash; a 4X zoom; a self-timer; a best of bang sounds; and a host of image-editing options, including brightness, white balance, a macro switch, blush effects, and photometry. The video recorder films 15-second clips with complete at two resolutions, 320×240 and 176×144. Back accomplished with your shots, you can accelerate them in a multimedia bulletin or save them to the phone’s memory. The LG VX9800 comes with 128MB of centralized storage, or you can get added amplitude with the Mini SD agenda slot. You additionally can use the camera as a business agenda scanner. However, it works alone hardly able-bodied and was not able to aces up all advice on our analysis cards.

Access to the personalization settings, such as arena tones, wallpaper, and added features, is bound from the alien display. You can adapt anniversary of the screens alone with a array of wallpaper and screensavers. With the WAP 2.0 wireless Web browser, you can download added options and added arena tones from Verizon’s Get It Now download store. There are no amateur included–not alike audience samples.

We are curious, however, as to why LG autonomous for Bluetooth 1.1 abutment rather than Bluetooth 1.2, abnormally because the VX9800’s all-encompassing stereo multimedia capabilities. You can use alone the Bluetooth affiliation to affix to a bend or (thankfully) to a laptop for use as a modem. This actuality a Verizon phone, you can’t use the Bluetooth to alteration files, nor can you affix to Bluetooth stereo headphones. We’re acclimated to the carrier’s phones advancing with such restrictions, but we’re still not blessed about it. PC affiliation via USB additionally is possible, but no cable is included.

In accession to actuality a text-messaging powerhouse, the LG VX9800 is a solid multimedia phone. Beyond the aloft camera, you get an MP3 player, and the EV-DO abutment agency you can sample Verizon’s V Cast offerings. You can tap into hundreds of alive video clips, alignment from CNN account updates to episodes of made-for-mobile TV shows, such as 24: Conspiracy and Love and Hate; Verizon accuse $15 a ages for V Cast access. You can additionally download 3D games. Keep in mind, however, that alone aloft burghal areas get EV-DO coverage; booty a attending at CNET’s quick adviser to 3G for a complete list. The MP3 amateur was abnormally ashore in the agenda for Verizon’s Get It Now Web service, so it took us a few account to acquisition it. But already we were up and running, the interface was accessible to understand. It plays alone MP3 clips (no AAC or WMA) adored to the Mini SD card, but you can save clips as arena tones.

The LG VX9800’s articulation affection was alveolate and metallic, not clashing that of a bullhorn but calmly discernable with affluence of volume. Performance of the full-duplex speakerphone, activated by flipping the buzz open, is added by bifold speakers to aftermath a cleaner chat than with the earpiece. Conversationalists appear alone the accepted accessory speakerphone answer at the added end. Stereo and multimedia audio from the speakers articulate a bit too afar and lacked acceptable aggregate for any ambiance added than a quiet room’s. Audio affection application the Jabra BT350 Bluetooth bend and the Jabra C220’s active stereo earphones, however, was aloft our expectations.

Considering the ample centralized awning and the stereo speakers, the rated arrangement activity of a beard added than 4 hours of allocution time and 8.3 canicule of standby time is exemplary. In our tests, we got a actual admirable 5.5 hours of allocution time and a solid 12 canicule of standby time. According to FCC radiation tests, the LG VX9800 has a agenda SAR appraisement of 1.1 watts per kilogram.

We activated the triband (CDMA 800/1900; EV-DO) LG VX9800 in New York City application the Verizon Wireless service. Overall, it did not accomplish able-bodied for articulation calls, although it was still aloft boilerplate on Verizon’s Manhattan network. Conversations cut in and out a little added frequently than we were acclimated to on Verizon or with added LG phones. This may be the amount to pay for the artful accommodation not to accommodate a bulging alien antenna.

With its ample display, stereo speakers or alternative stereo headset, and 3G capability, the LG VX9800 is a admirable multimedia phone. Like best EV-DO phones, the VX9800 downloads best simple apps, V Cast TV clips, and all address of letters accepted at aerial EV-DO acceleration (300Kbps to 500Kbps). However, fatter stereo and video files tended to clog the download pipe. Green Day’s 7-minute “Wake Me Up Back September Ends” video ($3.99), for instance, took about 3 account to download. Videos looked aciculate on the ample centralized awning and flowed artlessly after the accepted dribble begin on slower networks. Images can be zoomed to abounding frame, consistent alone in slight blush and flesh-tone splotches, as able-bodied as almost discernable jerkiness

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