A nice looking practical phone with a good camera

Author's Rating:

Pros: Nice look, good camera, feels like a phone, not a toy.

Cons: Volume levels, battery life,gets hot, placement of charger socket.

The Bottom Line: 
It is a sturdy, good looking, practical phone with MP3 capability and a good camera. Better than most VZW phones at the time of purchase.

Author's Review
I purchased this phone a couple of months ago as a replacement for my LG VX9800, after problems with the phone abruptly shutting down after a few minutes of conversation. For the most part I liked the VX9800, mainly for its larger screens and little heavier design.

The VX8700 is a nice phone. Its outer brushed metal shell gives it a cool look and feels good in lieu of the plastic phones flooding the market. Flip the phone open and you are greeted with a nice layout and larger screen that is crystal clear. It reminds me of the Razors in layout but it's a little easier to navigate. The backlight is white, making numbers easy to read. If nothing else this is a nice looking phone.

It features a 2.0 MPix camera/video, which surprisingly has great photo quality. It can be a little slow to snap sometimes, but for a phone it's pretty impressive. It can record 30 seconds of video, and has the ability to use the video as your wallpaper. I took some video of my elkhound and whenever I open the phone, I'm greeted with a wagging tail.

External controls include a button to activate the camera and video, microphone recording button, and volume sliders. The power socket is located on the left side of the phone, which is an annoying place to put it, should you talk and have the charger in at the same time. More often than not, I end up knocking the socket out of the phone. The socket is multi-functional meaning that you can hook up the charger, headset, and computer hookups all in the same socket. It's Bluetooth capable, but I just don't think it works as well as some of my other phones I owned in the past.

Volume levels are decent but not great. I can barely hear the ringtones most of the time. The speakers tend to crackle at higher volumes (anything above half way). The good news is that it doubles as an MP3 player. With a stereo headset, the music is actually pretty good. But in order to store any significant amount of music on the phone, you will need a mini S-Disk.

Reception quality is pretty good. What I have noticed though is that battery life is not all that great. It spends more time in a charger than what I am used to. Being that this has a metal casing, the case tends to get rather hot while on the phone. It doesn't take that long either.

Being that this is a "Hell-rizon" phone, its programming is rather sorry in features. The first item in the drop-down list is "Get it Now", which I would prefer to be somewhere other than the top slot, and reserved for something that gets a little more use such as "Contacts". The phone book is a little difficult to navigate through when you are in a hurry. I did try the V-Cast service for a month, and I just don’t see what the big deal is. Considering that it costs a lot, I just don’t see the value in the service. Yes you can download music, ringtones, and watch ESPN, but almost everything at a minimum costs $0.99 on top of the service cost. That to me is insane. Verizon of course made sure that you cannot add ringtones to the phone, other than downloading them, so I'm not happy about that. Going through the Verizon features list, the cost of some of the add-ons is way too much. Texting on phone is decent. Not as good as the 9800, but I wouldn't expect it to be. The phone also comes with VZ Navigator, which I do prefer over some of the other features. At $10.00 a month though, I'm really questioning why I have not gone out and bought a GPS unit. It’s hard to evaluate phones, because much of what we use highly depends on the functionality of the programming by the provider, rather than how good the phone really is. In my opinion most of the phones on the market are decent phones, only to be neutered by the programming of the providers.

To conclude, this is probably one of the nicer phones on the market, it does lack a little in certain areas, but probably no more than most of the other phones I have used from Verizon. What I would like to see is a little better battery life, better speakers, and ability to modify the menus.

Now on a little side note...
I just got back from Europe where I was dumbfounded with the phones they have there. It's because a good number of them use SIM cards, they are not flooded with crappy programming, and can easily be switched from carrier to carrier. But just to put it in perspective, the number of phones available just by Sony-Ericcson alone, out-number all the phones available by Verizon, ATT, and T-Mobile combined. And the phones are so much better! The major providers there are not all that interested in selling you phones, so they could care less about what phone you have, leaving the market open for all sorts of options. They are just interested in selling you service. Which why I believe the sorry state of our cell-phones here, geared towards purchasing add-ons and carrier specific phones is just ridiculous. Did I mention that most of the phones are GSM phones? Maybe this needs another review about carriers.