Review: Verizon / LG VX 5300 phone

Had to switch to Verizon to stay with 'In-Calling' because of lack of National offer for 'family' accounts. Sprint has a deal there. But Sprints coverage sucks.. too many dropped calls. No problem there with Verizon.

The 5300 is a great phone for my purposes....
First and foremost audio quality - EXCELLENT on phone mode, so-so on speakerphone.
- But 5300 Speaker Phone gets high marks for the Microphone/switch algorithm because the person at the other end cannot tell you are on speaker UNLESS they speak in choppy sentences... in which case you tend to step on each other, no matter what phone you're using. Remember, Spkr is 'half-duplex' which means the phone has to 'guess' whether you or the other end is speaking. This also means 'noise-canceling' is good.

Usage: Slightly different than previous phones I've looked at. I cant be a good judge because I've been using a Palm/phone for years. Wife says it's not quite as 'friendly' as her prev two Nokia's but she's gotten used to it.

Battery: Great life, even twice as much as a two year old higher end Nokia the wife was using. Seems to be able to handle several hours of calling.

- Downside, not a barrel type charger connector, instead uses the multifunction connector and we all know those become intermittent as the phone gets some wear, tear and dirt.

Pix features:
I thought I could settle now for a regular phone because there's a decent snapshot camera, a 'notepad' and the contact list has expanded... but it seems Verizon will go through hell and high water to make you pay for imaging. I've yet to be able to pull the '640' pixel wide images from the phone, though it has bluetooth and I've downloaded 'BitPIM' as a user interface.

Bluetooth:
I bought a bluetooth USB dongle for this but have found I cant even get it working enough to set up PIM exchange, let alone images.

Perhaps a direct USB cable will work better for that. Others have found it relatively easy to pair with their Bluetooth earsets, though.

All in all, the phone's a very good low-cost option.

All and all Verizon is great for connectivity, but try to nickel and dime you for the 'extra features'.

 

I am a big fan of Verizon's service and I rarely have a dropped call. Text messages, pictures texts and all the other bells and whistles do "nickel and dime" you as you mentioned above.

I'm looking upgrade soon to possibly a blackberry or something along those lines...any thoughts on a good one, are they worth it, so on and so forth?

 

My son uses the high end Motorola and he seems to like it... Web functionality seems to be pretty fast and easy from watching him use it.
But he says if he had it to do over, he'd go for a Blackberry. He's on his second Moto Que and knows other guys on their fourth. Thinking those problems should be solved by now, though, as they were 'software' related..

 

Thanks for the advice Fog...I'll take a look into the Blackberry then.

 

I wouldnt have the slightest, Don. But if they do well on the lesser models, then.....

Except dont expect any easy time getting pix off than I have had. That's a Verizon thing.

If I figger it out, I'll let you all know, of course.