LG VX8300 thoughts

"The recipient" read the"No end in sight" blog entry over my shoulder and let me order the LG VX8300 cellphone.

Before I get to the cellphone some mild gripes about Verizon's online ordering service. Although I supplied an email address they didn't send any order confirmation. They also didn't email me when the phone shipped. However it arrived on the Tuesday after being ordered on Saturday evening.
What always amazes me are how small the boxes are that cellphones are packed in. The Verizon boxes seem particularly small.
Okay, the contents, I know, I know.

I'm not going to do a full review as there is a fairly good one (albeit badly in need of a spellchecker) with pictures at HowardForums.
Admittedly it is bigger and thicker and doesn't look quite as cool as the RAZR.
However, unlike some other LG cellphones I have seen though (notably the VX5200), it looks professional.

Okay, first my doubts - I'm not sure how good the RF would be it borderline areas with patchy coverage. In pseudo-scientific tests, when one bar of signal strength showed, conversations tended to break up a lot.

As a counterpoint, when the signal strength is two bars or more, conversations are clear. The microphone also doesn't pick up as much wind noise as that of the RAZR.

Customization is a pleasure with the VX8300. I liked being able to silence the Verizon power on and power off jingles. The backlight of both the main screen and the keypad can be set to "Always On". Unfortunately the brightness of the main screen cannot be adjusted though. This would make it more readable in sunlight, but it is already miles better than the screen of the RAZR.
The Flash Lite interface offers two animated interface themes in addition to Verizon's standard interface themes.

I prefer the way that LG handles messages (showing unread/total), as well as the way speed dial numbers can be assigned to numbers after the fact. The keypad is easy to use, and it didn't take long for me to get used to the layout.

Although the LG VX8300 is bigger and bulkier than the RAZR, I would swop in a heartbeat