LG Chocolate 3 VX8560

The LG Chocolate 3 VX8560 is the very model of a midrange music mobile phone. It's a slim flip phone that delivers decent performance, reliability, flexibility and quality all at a reasonable price. LG has abandoned the previous Chocolates' slider form factor this time around. The 3.3 ounce Chocolate 3 is a slim but broad (3.9 by 1.9 by 0.6 inches HWD) flip phone, with a shiny black front and a matte black back.

On the front of the handset there's the signature Chocolate scroll wheel, along with a 2-megapixel camera and a large color screen. Flip it open to find large, flat number keys well separated by ridges and a large, bright 2.2 inch, 320 by 240 pixel color screen. The front of the phone and the keypad are both shiny and tend to attract smudges, but in general, it's a nice workaday look.

Quick action buttons let you get to the camera, music player, and speakerphone quickly, and there's a microSD memory card slot in the side. With the flip closed, you can use the big 1.8 inch, 176 by 220 pixel front screen to access your music, messages, and photos, the phone's calendar, and the camera.

The calendar is the one sore spot there: Like most LG calendars, it doesn't sync with anything on your PC or online, so it's completely useless. As far as call quality is concerned, there's little to complain about here. The Chocolate 3 gets good reception, though the handset tends to under report its reception.

This means you'll see it display one bar of signal a little too often, but it will still be able to make calls without a problem. The earpiece is quite loud, and there's plenty of in-ear feedback of your own voice. When there was a lot of background noise, the quality of transmissions through the microphone degraded somewhat, with some "popping" artifacts; on the other hand, it couldn't hear the background noise at all.

The speakerphone is moderately loud, but it doesn't work with the flip closed, which is odd, since the speaker is on the outside of the flip. Voice dialing uses the excellent Nuance VoiceSignal suite, over a wired or Bluetooth headset. Battery life, at 4 and a half hours of talk time, was average for a Verizon phone.