The KG800 Chocolate GSM by LG Phone

They say that chocolate is better than cell phones, right? Well, maybe that isn't the exact adage. Cell phone manufacturer LG must have misunderstood the old saying because they decided to combine the richness of chocolate with a mobile phone model. This phone is highly fashionable with a mirror-like shine that screams "Fifth Avenue." The sleek, black design of this sliding phone with its glowing red buttons works well as both a women's accessory or a man's toy. Its design has actually earned the LG KG800 Chocolate the 2006 IF Design Award in Germany. Good luck keeping fingerprints off it, though. LG brings into the forefront a new keypad feature that uses conductivity, rather then pressing, to activate a button. This is great if you are super careful with your phone but metal objects and wet fingers, or even moistness in the pouch, can damage the sensors. The keypad deactivates when the phone is closed and when you have connected a call to avoid accidental rubbings against your cheek or inside pockets.

Slider phones are often mistaken for clam-style but not so with the Chocolate. The sliding mechanism locks when it is closed so there's no grabbing the top half and yanking it open. The only real problem with the keypad, save the moisture or metal sensitivity, is that the buttons are rather small. Ladies (or men) with dainty, small fingers won't likely notice this but men (or women) with large fingers and hands most definitely will. The 1-2-3 buttons are difficult to press for large fingers as well, since the top slides up so it just uncovers this top row of buttons. Some users won't notice, others will. Make sure you test drive it before you sign a contract.

Of course, if you are looking into picking up the LG KG800 Chocolate to use as a phone, in addition to a fashion accessory, then you'll want to know about it's functionality. The battery life is far less than LG advertises, but that's to be expected with almost any mobile phone these days. LG claims 16 days standby but you'll probably only see half of that. Charging the phone requires opening the phone, making it susceptible to damage.

You'll be able to see a wide range of vivid colors on the Chocolate, more than many other fashionable phones. LG offers 262,000 colors compared to just 65,000 on other models. Corners are sharp and images do not suffer from cell-phone haziness. The buttons and menus aren't intuitive, even if you are familiar with LG devices. Expect to spend some serious time – up to 4 hours – fiddling around with the phone while reading the manual. For the first few days you might find it a bit cumbersome but you'll probably catch on pretty quickly. Once you get it down and know how to use it, you will find the menus response time is very fast. This phone isn't plagued with the slow menus of other phones on the market.

As for application features, there isn't much new here. You'll get the standard messaging, file browsing, games and a variety of included sounds. You can download more games, MP3s and other music files in addition to ringtones and menu sounds relatively simply. You will get email, a quality-sound MP3 player and a web browser in addition to Java, still photograph and video capture. The phone book holds up to 1000 contacts. The LG Chocolate is Bluetooth enabled.

The camera, now pretty standard in the cell phone aisle, is 1.3 megapixel with resolutions up to 1280x960 pixels. There is an integrated LED flash for snapping pictures in low light and a night mode that reduces noise. Use the 2x digital zoom whilst snapping photos or the 4x zoom to crop and resize your images once the photo session has ended. You can also choose from a few color modes, including black & white, negative and sepia. The biggest complaint about the camera mode – there is a very noticeable delay between pressing the button and actually capturing the image.

Video capture is considerably better than taking still photos. Night mode works on video as do the color settings. The Chocolate also allows for 4x zoom while shooting video. Music files must be in MP3, WMA or mPEG format so it takes a bit of work to load audio from your iPOD to your LG Chocolate. The sound quality is very good for a phone. Standard 3.5mm headphones aren't compatible, though; you'll need to either purchase a pair of 2.

5mm headphones or an adapter. The FM radio, becoming a standard in the mobile phone industry, was oddly left out of the Chocolate's applications package.

Installed memory is 128 megabytes. If that isn't enough or you just like keeping your data separate from your phone, you can pick up a 2 gigabyte microSD card for about $100 (often bundled at Verizon for $70 after rebate.) Synching to your computer or accessing email is effortless with the Chocolate. While other phones have intermittent access via Bluetooth, this LG phone has a solid connection. Check your email or surf the web from the café or Trump's house. Jet setters will be disappointed with the omission of airplane mode on this phone. Other LGs offer this new feature, it's beyond me why it was overlooked when designing the Chocolate.

So, how did this black, not brown, phone earn its name Chocolate? In the Korean market, where this model was pioneered and debuted, the phone was made to smell of – you guessed it – chocolate. The name stuck as did the scented design. Apparently LG didn't like the competition between cell phones and chocolate so they decided to double-team their potential customers by combining the two.

The LG KG800 Chocolate is a great phone for those on the cutting edge of fashion – or those who want to be. Don't abuse it and you can take calls from your agent for a long time while getting faint whiffs of delicious chocolate. Don't eat your phone, though, it doesn't taste as well as it smells.