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This is a Sponsored Post written by me on behalf of LG Chocolate Touch. All opinions are 100% mine.

LG Electronics, in conjunction with IZEA, sent a brand new LG Chocolate Touch for me to try out and review. The timing couldn’t be more perfect since my two year contract for my VX8600 (a clamshell version of the LG Chocolate) just ran out and I’ve been looking for a replacement for it. I’ve experienced nothing but great things with the previous version of the LG Chocolate so I was more than happy to try out the VX8575. This version stays true to the other Chocolate phones with its sleek design and superb music capabilities. The most significant update obviously is the gorgeous 3 inch touch screen.

The very minute I received the new phone in the mail, I went online to activate it on my existing Verizon account. I was a bit surprised to find that I wasn’t allowed to complete the activation over the web. It probably had something to do with this being a review phone and not something that I purchased through my personal account. I’m pretty sure if I had purchased the phone through Verizon, activation would have been a whole lot smoother. Anyway, after speaking with Verizon customer service on my other phone, I was up and running within five minutes.

The touch screen interface took a bit of getting used to but once I became more familiar with dragging my finger across the screen, everything fell into place. I think the technique I had the most difficulty with was pushing items upwards in order to scroll down the screen. The 240 by 400 display is crisp and colorful and the touch screen features haptics vibration feedback which helps when typing on the screen. The other nice feature is the internal accelerometer which will rotate the orientation of the screen depending on how the phone is held in your hands. For instance, when you’re creating a new text message, turn the phone to its side and a full QWERTY keyboard appears on the screen.

And now, on to the music capabilities. First of all, thank you LG for including a 3.5 headphone jack on this phone. This basically means you can use your normal set of headphones to listen to music and not have to purchase an additional item designed with a specific sized jack. The phone has a decent-sized 1 GB of internal memory. And if that’s not enough (and for us music fans, it’s never enough), LG included a microSD slot so that you can add up to 16 GB of additional storage. Another big positive about this phone is that LG/Verizon doesn’t require you to use their software to transfer music files onto the phone. You simply have to hook up the phone with the included USB cable. The trick is to go to the music menu on the phone and hit the “sync” button or else you won’t be able to see the “internal memory” folder via windows explorer. Once the phone is in “sync mode”, you can drag and drop your selections into the music folder. The Chocolate Touch recognizes both MP3 and AAC tracks. Once the mp3s are on the phone, you can create customized playlists or simply listen by genre, album or by artist. I’ve listened to the tracks using both my trusty old Sennheiser headphones and my Shure E3C sound isolating earphones. Honestly, the music on the VX8575 sound as good as on my ipod nano. The music player even features Dolby Mobile for enhanced clarity and simulated surround sound.

LG also includes the ability to play along with your music tracks using the virtual drum and piano interface. It’s a bit of a novelty and it’s not something you would use extensively since the touch screen only allows one-input at any given time. In other words, you can’t play more than one note on the keyboard at a time. And on drums, that’s a bit of a hindrance when you want to recreate those big “Phil Collins” drum solos on the phone!!

Another nice added feature is the FM tuner. The radio definitely comes in handy when I want to listen to the news while out on my walks. Oh and don’t worry about missing any calls, even while listening to the radio or the mp3 player, the phone will automatically pause the music and let the call come through.

And thank goodness the LG Chocolate Touch isn’t that restrictive with ringtones. Most wireless companies try to lockdown their phones to try and force their consumers to only purchase ringtones through them. But with this LG phone, all you have to do is transfer your favorites mp3s into the “my ringtones” folder on the microSD card. I simply customized 30-sec snippets of my favorite songs on an audio editor like audacity and then used a SD card reader to transfer the files to phone’s microSD card. When you re-insert the card, the phone automatically recognizes the new ringtones in the folder. sweet! I absolutely love this phone.

To sum up – the LG Chocolate Touch is geared toward people like me that don’t necessarily need the power of a smartphone. The VX8575 is sleek and hip and yet very simple to use. Call quality is excellent and the phone has great signal range. And on top of all the solid phone features is the fantastic music player. LG continues to be a top-notched phone manufacturer and the VX8575 is just another great update on an already well-regarded Chocolate brand.

retroGrade: A

LG Chocolate Touch VX8575 specs:
Service Provider: Verizon Wireless
Screen Size: 3 inches
Screen Details: 240-by-400, 262K-color TFT LCD resistive touch screen
Camera: 3.2 Megapixels, video records at 320 x 240 pixels at 15 frames per second
Network: CDMA
Bands: 850, 1900
High-Speed Data: GPRS, 1xRTT, EDGE, UMTS, HSDPA, EVDO Rev A
Battery life: 306 minutes of talk time
other features: mp3 player, FM radio, videos, photos, alarm clock, calendar, microSD, 4-band equalizer, bluetooth, web browser

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reviews by retroDan