LG VX-8300
Average Ratings
Loving It So Far!
Ok, I just got the LG 8300 on the ânew every twoâ plan from Verizon. This is the first upgrade I've had since the LG 6000. I could have gotten the phone online for free with the instant rebate, but I couldnât wait so I paid $50.00 at the Veizon store (which Iâll get back via rebate) and have been loving this phone for the past 3 days. Hereâs my pros and cons so far:
PROS
Thinner
Sleek, professional look
Good feel in my hand
Holds 27 times the memory of my 6000
Can take videos
Color front screen
Holds thousands of pictures
Picture resolution twice what I had (the 6000 only went up to 640 by 480)
I now have speakerphone!
Can charge with the case still on
My 6000 leather case fits this phone (I only use the back part)
Camera has a flash
Still have âGet It Nowâ
Can download ring tones
Lighter than the 6000
Longer battery life
Different colored screens
Good reception so far
CONS
I canât put my phone on vibrate or silent with the phone closed
When I miss calls, I am only told âmissed callsâ not how many, so I have to look inside my menu to see if there was more than one and who
When I tried speakerphone, the other party had trouble hearing me
Discovered after I got the phone my area does not have V-Cast coverage. I donât really care because thatâs not the reason I got the phone and Iâm assuming when I travel I could have access to this or maybe it could come to my area? Could someone here who knows more about this enlighten my understanding?
Ok, this last one hopefully wonât be a con, but since it could be Iâll list it: My 6000 had excellent reception and I traveled across NC from the mountains to the beach and almost never dropped a call even in analog areas. It had something called âdual band.â The 8300 has âdigital dual bandâ and I havenât driven anywhere to test to see if this will make a difference in my reception in analog areas. If someone here can give me any info on this, it would be greatly appreciated!
Great phone
Sound Quality is awesome. Also, I love having a speaker phone and this is one of the better ones. Camera is an improvement over my last phone but it's no the best I've seen. I love the size and feel of the phone in my hand and pocket the slimness is great. Can't wait to play with the mp3 player. and vz navigator. The phone is very easy to use and the 4 shortcuts on the arrow keys is really nice.
Very good phone, Best phone for Verizon by far
I have had the vx8100 since the day it came out, and now I have moved on to the 8300. I would say that you should read the 8100 reviews first to see theirs, because in a way this phone IS the 8100, just updated. It keeps all the good features of the 8100 except for a few features mentioned in the cons, and added a lot more new features. In my opinion, this phone blows away the e815 motorola and the razr.
Pros:
- Style is so much better, skinnier, sleeker and lighter. The outside is also very nice, the buttons not as protruding.
- New animated wallpapers
- Earpiece is way louder than the 8100 and very clear.
- Camera is clearer than the vx8100 and they delay is not as bad
- Signal is improved in that it is more consistent than the 8100.
- Great main screen display. Very clear.
- OBEX via bluetooth works, at least on my Macbook Pro using Bitpim.
- LG's great navigation still here
- Keys are easier to use and raised further
- Better battery life with its 1100 mh battery
- Different signal bar that gives a better description of your signal strength (8 bars instead of 4)
- Takes away the funky colored lights outside of the phone. However you could take this as a bad thing :)
- Strong vibrate.
- MP3 player is satisfactory
Cons:
- Ringtones NOT as loud as the 8100, but a little more crisp. This applies to all sounds in general.
- Outer screen is more pixelated. It still is an LCD display, so the color is good, but it is not as clear as the 8100, however, still better than any other phone out there besides the LG 8100 and 8000.
- New UI's are slow, take longer to scroll through than the old UI.
- Speakerphone still doesn't work closed. However, access is easy now that it isn't shared with the clear button.
- Text messages can only be exited on the main screen, not read.
- Charging port is different, and in my case, does not stay on! I am hoping its just a bad charger.
Well thats it, all in all its a really great phone. I would write more but I don't have enough room!
words can't define how much i love this phone.
seriously. i love this phone.
i upgraded 4 days ago from a samsung a950. that thing was garbage. it was big, heavy, and just ugly.
this phone is beautiful. it's the perfect color, the right size and it doesn't have a stupid jog dial on the front.
and the main thing that i love, is that the t9 on this phoneactually saves my words. the a950 didn't do that and it was a huge pain. i mainly do text messaging so it's an important factor to me.
i upgraded to a two year contract because i know i'm gonna keep this phone for a long time.
it's the most simplest v-cast phone out there. i recommend it for everyone.
Good Phone.....
Okay, I'll be brief...
I had the Motorola E815 which I liked, but my family had upgrades due, so I took the new phone and gave the E815 to my wife.
The problem I had with the Motorola was that it kind of worsened the muffling of certain people's talking. People who tend to mumble got more muffled than usual. This issue was better with other brand phones.
PROS:
Good screen
Good UI
Good ease of use
Good sound
Good call quality
Good connections
Good design
Solid performer
CONS:
One biggie:
You can't adjust the DTMF for long tones..except in the middle of each call, which is a pain in the A$$ as I have to use the touch tone to access bank records and the like. Why LG? Why? You would've gotten a perfect "5" from me apart from this oversight!
Best phone out there
I have to agree with most of the positive reviews here. I've had the LG 8300 for about 3 weeks now, and love it. It's the best phone Verizon offers. Great reception, great call clarity, great battery life, good speakerphone. And a nice camera (for a cellphone), and bluetooth. This phone seems to do everything well, including the VZ Navigator service.
Best Verizon Has to Offer.
This is my second phone with Verizon, my first (and still using) being the 9800. I like both equally, but there are so many good things about this phone.
Pros:
- Customizable interface (major improvement over the red bars and standard boring Verizon UI)
- Gunmetal color and design is excellent
- Sharp main screen
- Great call clarity
- Great reception (in SoCal, Cerritos)
- Ringtones are loud
- Large, roomy keypad. Keys are raised to allow better feel
- Easy access to speakerphone
- Nice to be able to use Flash wallpapers
- Stereo BT (have yet to use this, but it's a great capability)
- MP3/WMA sounds great on the phone
- Small size
- Phone has a great overall feel to it.
Cons:
- No reading of txt messages on outer screen
- Supposedly not as loud as 8100 (have not had 8100 to compare, but I read this)
- microSD (I've spent a good amount of money on miniSD and now I have to spend more for microSD)
- MicroSD cover feels like the hinge is gonna break easily
- Camera is sub par compared to my 9800
- dull looking OLED outer screen (not LCD)
- Flash UIs are a bit slow (but still look great)
- Battery life can be improved (or maybe it's because I let it go down to one bar before I started to charge it when I first got it a few days ago?)
Overall, this is one of the best phones I have seen that Verizon has to offer. With their standardized UI slapped on every phone (with some exceptions), it is at least nice to see that it can be customized this time around. And having DUN supported is a nice change (have not used DUN yet, but it is a useful feature), as well as having the support for stereo bluetooth, so we don't always have to have a cord connecting from the phone to the ears in order to listen to music. LG has surely made a winner with this phone, one of the nicest phones I've ever had.
Good outweighs the bad
My contract ran out on and I decided to go with this to replace my LG 4500. So, far it has been a good replacement with some good and some not that good. I was looking mostly at this one and the Razr, but did not get great feedback on the latest Razr.
First of all, I really look at a cell phone as a phone first and all that other stuff is just nice extras. I wish they would honestly make a phone that could get a good reception all the time before adding other "perks."
Pros:
*Good design
*Sturdy
*Decent reception. I live in a basement and do not always get the greatest reception, but that would be the same with any phone. Hard to compare with the bars as this one has a max of 4 and the 4500 had 6. I have dropped a couple of calls, but they were with another guy that lives in a bad reception area.
*Camera is nice. Nothing fancy, but I can't ever see using it that much other than those "man, if I only had a camera" moments.
Mp3 player is a nice feature. Just buy the card for it because I could only hold 3 songs.
*I have the ability to make my own ringtones. I hate spending $2-3 for a 20 second segment of a song when Itunes has the whole thing for $1.
Cons:
*I miss the shortcut on the 4500 where I did not have to open it to switch to vibrate.
*Vibrate not very violent.
*No airplane mode. It would be nice to be able to have games when on flights.
*I don't carry a watch and use my cell as my watch and hate having to push the button to see what time it is. And, it does not show time when I am talking even if I do hit a button.
*Battery life not great. This has to do where I talk, but also I am not sure if there is anyway to not have the front screen lit when I talk. Big waste of juice.
*Really bad choices (and very few) ringtones.
*I liked how the side buttons did not bulge thinking they would not get pushed as easily, but still happens.
Overall, I like the phone and glad I got it so far. I know I had to commit again, but can't complain about a free phone.
Wow it's durable
Barely had time to evaluate this phone but will order more after this experience. Bought an 8300 as a replacment for a 6100. Impressed with quality and ease of use compared to Razr which we tried first. Signal strength was excellent in NYC area on Verizon. Problem is it got dropped roughly 30 feet onto concrete and the earpiece no longer works. It was 5 days old. Speakerphone works but with a vibrations, all screens are fine, camera still works. Besides the earpiece the only other signs of damage are stratches and dents from the impact(s). WOW, what did they make this out of titanium?
Great, but could be better.
I've used this phone heavily for two days. I live on UW campus in Madison, WI and my last two Verizon phones were an LG VX4600 and a Samsung A670.
It seems to get pretty good reception. I haven't had any dropped calls, but the signal meter fluctuates a lot, even within the same room in my apartment.
Sound quality is great. I really like how I can hear myself through the headset, which is something my old phones didn't have. This way I know when I'm breathing into the mic or the wind is bad. I talk to my girlfriend for about an hour a day and she says that I sound a little clearer than I did on the A670. The speaker phone is loud and works fine.
Build quality is so-so. It looks nicer online than it does in my hand. It feels very "plasticy" and the shell is slippery. The top half of the phone wiggles slightly about the hinge, which makes me concerned about its durability. The overall feel when I'm talking on it, though, is very nice and the mic is naturally placed in a good position on my face. I was surprised at how thin and relatively light it is. The buttons are good but I expected them to be "softer" based on the pics online.
The UI is awesome. I use the "Pulse" Flash theme, and it's definitely not as slow as I've read it is. The inside screen is very nice and bright but the outer screen is just plain bad. It's very difficult to see when outdoors and the digital clock is pretty small.
While I use it primarily as a phone, the other features are nice. The camera is great for a phone. I've created a few ringtones with Audacity and they sound great over the stereo speakers. I think VCast is a racket but it looks great on this phone.
Overall, I'm very satisfied but it could be better.
Pros
- Good reception
- Excellent sound quality
- Sweet Flash UI
- Clear speakerphone
- Loud stereo speakers
- Good camera
- Battery life
Cons
- Durability is a concern
- Mic doesn't pick up whispers very well
- Outer screen hard to see outdoors
