Unreliable, glitchy phone (LG Chocolate KG800)

Member Name: auburnette

Product:	LG Chocolate KG800
Date:	13/07/08 (59 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Cool styling, very nicely designed

Disadvantages: Dubious quality and touchscreen flaws present big problems

I have never had so many issues with a phone before! Seriously! I got the KG800 when it was fairly new on contract - seduced by its (admittedly very stylish) lines and the cool touchscreen features.

However - all the styling in the world won't help if the product is fundamentally unreliable and difficult to use, and the KG800 is unfortunately both of those.

First off - the menus are fairly intuitive and easy to use, so no quibbles there. Texting is a bit of a pain - the keys aren't responsive enough and require a lot of pressure, which slows your texting speed down. I noticed within the first week of using this phone that the backlight on the keypad was erratic - sometimes it would illuminate, sometimes it wouldn't. Perhaps I should have noticed this as a sign that more trouble would follow?

Anyway, the first major annoyance came when trying to navigate touchtone menus. If you do things like pay credit card bills over the phone using automated menus - forget it with this phone. Impossible. Unfortunately the touchscreen facility becomes a menace when you're trying to do this - as in call, the phone locks to prevent you accidentally hanging up by touching the phone to your ear etc. Fine, you might think. You can just unlock the keypad and enter the number? So you try...and then you either end up cancelling the call accidentally when you put it to your ear to listen to the menu options, or the phone repeatedly locks so you're having to unlock it every time you want to select a menu option. This turns the simple process of paying a bill into an absolute nightmare.

Secondly, the slider on my phone was hideously unreliable. It developed a fault within the first six months which required it to be sent off for repair. Within the two weeks after it had been returned to me it developed the same fault again! They sent me a new one this time, but at this point I had already had enough with this phone's quirks - the touchscreen got really annoying, especially in the rain (if rain gets on the screen it will call random numbers) or if you have wet hands (the phone basically goes crazy). I like the concept of touchscreen - and love my iPod touch - but I am sceptical about its use in phones, and even more sceptical about the reliability of LG's products. I changed this phone for a Nokia which I have been happily using ever since.

Summary: Cool concept; poor execution.

Processing/Quality:
Reliability:
Ease of use:
Sound quality:
Variety of features: