Got me a brand spanking new LG 8500 "Chocolate" phone and boy-howdy does this thing make me smile. The formfactor alone is slick, with th phone essentially being a sandwich that slips open, the lower half sliding down from behind the screen to reveal the dialpad. Below the sizable (for a regular celphone) screen is a touch senstive wheel, inspired but not designed like the i-pod (come to think of it the whole thing is like an i-pod and for good reason).
While not a PDA or PSP multimedia powerhouse, the 8500 does playback MP3's, ACC and video in the MP4 container .3gp. It comes complete with data and web connectivity and can even take phone calls. Customizable ringtones can be downloaded and assigned to specific callers in the very robust contact folder.
Best of all, the device has a microSD port, allowing for expandability up 2 gigs of music, images, ringtones and video.
The biggest drawbacks to the device are significant but not a deal breaker. First, the bundled earbuds are uncomfortable and plain suck, I replaced them with a midrange set of "ear-plug" style headphones from JVC with much better results. As well, the media player entirely lacks any presets or equalization functions which, in a mp3 player, is ridiculous (I understand the US version by verizon does not have this failing as each provider uses its own software). The bass reproduction with the JVC plugs, after some wiggling, is acceptable but would be improved with bass amplifying headphones, as would the overall volume as the inline volume of the 8500 is acceptable at best. Strangely enough, sound through the speaker, either ringtone, speakerphone or music is quite loud, noticably more than other cell phones.
The glossly plastic sheen of the phone, like the ipod, is easily marred by scratches within nanoseconds of dropping it on a pocket. I bought a third party clear plastic cover which has improved the situation drastically as now only the buttons and screen are exposed.
Most unfortunately, one is unable to maintain mp3 playback while browing other functions on the phone as far as I can see, rendering the device a one or the other but not truly convergent device.
I down-converted a 250 meg DIVX 45 min video down to a 80 meg 3gp file, using mp4 and acc for playback with no problems. The video is crisp and clear, though limited to half the resolution of the screen (240 x 320) for best results, at 15 fps. Oddly the volume of the video player is much louder than the music player.
The phone came free with an extension of my contract with Telus, and having experienced all of the mobile providers, I see no reason to leave as they are least of the evils.
Now outfitted with a mobile multimedia experience that fits in the palm of hand, if only it played games more advanced than bejweled.
