As a reviewer, there’s nothing more frustrating than having a “music phone” dropped on my desk with a 2.5mm headphone jack or even a proprietary one. That’s useless to the everyday consumer that has drawer full of 3.5mm headsets at home. LG hit the nail on the head this time around, and replaced the 2.5mm jack on its VX8550 (Chocolate 2) with a legitimate 3.5mm one. Bravo, LG.

Read on for a full gallery and more first impressions.

LG ditched the slider design of the two previous Chocolates for a clamshell form instead. Fans of the soft spin wheel will love that LG kept it on the front cover, and you can also use it as a 5-way navigation pad. A 2-megapixel camera is also on the top lid.

Our unit has a silver mirrored surface with a 1.8-inch external display, which is barely visible unless turned on. When it is, it displays the time and caller, as well as battery life and signal strength. Unlock the external display to access a full menu for My Music, My Pictures, Camera, Calendar, and Messages, in that order.

The left side of the unit has volume controls, a voice-command button, and a mini-USB charging slot. On the right is the lock/unlock button, a music button, and a microSD slot that supports up to 8GB.

I noticed the Chocolate 3 also has VZ Navigator v.4.1 loaded on it, which means you’ll have access to current traffic information, as well as the standard offerings such as location-based search and navigation directions through the unit’s AGPS feature.

We haven’t tested it yet, but the phone has a built-in FM transmitter so you can play music through your car’s speakers. We think this would be even more useful with voice-guided directions.

The keypad is black with a white backlight, and it seems spacious to us right now, but we’ll get into that more in our review. The 2.2-inch display is large and bright and good enough for viewing maps and Web pages.

Like the LG Dare and other music phones in Verizon Wireless’ lineup, the Chocolate 3 is paired with the Rhapsody music store, so for every $1.99 song you download on the road, you’ll get a DRM-free copy on your computer.

My only complaints right now are that the phone’s keyboard is a bit too spacious, and the speakers sound pretty bad at high volumes. I spent most of the morning surfing the Web and noticed that bringing my thumb from the right soft button down to the keyboard to type felt awkward. When I viewed a clip from CNN.com, the voices weren’t very crisp and the experience wasn’t as good as we’ve seen on phones like the LG Dare.

Other than that we have no complaints so far and we’re excited to get started on our review. To tide you over until then, here’s a quick glance at some notable stats:

Data: EV-DO Rev. 0
Camera: 2 MP
Dimensions: 3.9 x 1.9 x 0.6 inches
Weight: 3.4 ounces
Display:
Internal LCD: 2.2 inches, 320 x 240 pixels, 260K color TFT
External LCD: 1.8 inches, 220 x 176 pixels, 260K color TFT
Standard battery: 800 mAh
Usage time: 4.5 hours
Standby time: 14.6 days

via blog.laptopmag