The Wall Street Journal's Walter Mossberg took a look at the LG Chocolate cellphone offered by Verizon Wireless this week, and one thing's for sure: nobody can call him an LG Chocolate fanboy. The buzz-proof curmudgeon panned the phone up one side and down the other, calling its user interface "ham-handed," adding that it was designed as a music player first and a phone second yet doesn't do either of those tasks very well.
About the only thing the respected reviewer likes about the phone is that it's "handsome." But he goes on to slam its control wheel, "which isn't a wheel at all, just a common five-way navigation pad made to look like an iPod wheel." He goes on to call its touch sensitivity "poor," where no matter how you adjust it, it's either too sensitive are not sensitive enough. He doesn't like the placement of the "end" button, either, nor does he care for the music application itself, which he writes is "full of unwelcome surprises."
Here at the Giz, we're hearing more complaints lately about how appearance has overtaken functionality in popular industrial design, where form often doesn't follow function at all. Sounds like Mossberg found similar problems with the LG Chocolate phone. He concludes, "I do believe that, someday, the merger of the cellphone and the music player will result in a great device for consumers. But the Chocolate isn't it." Wait a week or two, Mr. Mossberg—help is on the way.
Chocolate Cellphone Only Looks Sweet; Its Design Is Flawed [Wall Street Journal]