dzoey
08-07-2007, 10:32 PM
I've had the LG Musiq for about three weeks now, after having used a Sanyo 7400 for a few years. This is an awesome phone and clearly shows new features over the Sanyo. What I like about the phone:
MP3!
Large Screen
FM Transmitter
Removeable/upgradable memory card
Looks cool
The MP3 player is awesome. The 64MB uSD card that comes with the phone gets used up pretty quickly, but a 2GB card is only $35 and holds lots of songs (or a few 50 CD audio books). The sound quality has been good if you plug in decent head phones. What's really nice is that FM transmitter. You can pick any empty station, and in the Baltimore-D.C. area it's hard to find empty stations so this is useful, and it sends the music through the car speakers. Much better than driving with an earbud. Plus, with the MP3 controls on the outside of the phone, you can easily change songs while driving.
Another nice touch is the ability to throw the MP3 player "in the background" while using the phone as a phone or running another application. When the call (or app) is done, you can bring the MP3 player to the foreground and the music picks up where it left off. It's not necessary to find the track you were on and fast forward to the last spot. Very convenient.
As a phone, the Musiq works fine. The signal strength is good and the audio comes through clear. The speaker phone is OK, certainly not the best feature, but it works acceptably.
The phone has more Bluetooth profiles than most. For a few days I lost the USB chord that I was using to download songs to the phone, so I transferred the songs via Bluetooth file transfer. Works great.
The camera is 1.3MP and works OK as a "need a pic now" camera. Pics and videos can be saved to the uSD card, so with a 2G card, you can take a really long movie.
Here are some things that could use improvement
MP3 player controls can be buggy
FM Transmitter can be staticy on some days
Flat keys cause typos
Old apps/games may not work
Picture and Video quality is so-so
I had configured the phone to alert me if service changed, so that a little pop-up alert appears if the signal drops or the phone changes from EVDO to the old data network. If this alert occurs while listening to MP3, an error m509 is displayed and the MP3 player exits. Turning off the alerts made the problem go away. Sometimes, holding the left or right buttons down to rewind/ff doesn't work. The player will go to the beginning or end of a file but not move forward incrementally. It does work on some files and not on others, so it's possible the files it fails on are not well formed. Or the player could be buggy.
On hot, overcast days, it seems like there's a lot of static when playing MP3 via the FM transmitter. I have to hold the phone in my lap to get the static to go away. I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid and there's all sorts of RF noise because of the electric engine, so it might be this is just a problem in my car.
I find that I keep accidentally hitting the Back button, which is placed right under the direction keys (rocker keys?). Very annoying when surfing the web or playing games. I think this is because the sleek, smooth look requires similar buttons.
I had quite a few games that I'd purchased from Sprint on my old 7400. When I went to re-download them from Sprint's Content Manager, a "version mismatch" was displayed and the games would not download. I could go to the games page and redownload from there and everything worked well, but many of the games I'd purchased in the past were no longer on the games pages. After a few conversations with various Sprint tech support folks, they gave me a credit for all the games I couldn't download. Still, I would have rather kept the games. There are no replacements for some of them.
Over all, I'm very happy with this phone and recommend it to others I am really enjoying the MP3 player, especially in the car, and holding the phone in my hand on staticy days is not much of a problem. Many of the problems I've encountered are software problems that will hopefully be fixed with patches in the future. It's a good phone.
MP3!
Large Screen
FM Transmitter
Removeable/upgradable memory card
Looks cool
The MP3 player is awesome. The 64MB uSD card that comes with the phone gets used up pretty quickly, but a 2GB card is only $35 and holds lots of songs (or a few 50 CD audio books). The sound quality has been good if you plug in decent head phones. What's really nice is that FM transmitter. You can pick any empty station, and in the Baltimore-D.C. area it's hard to find empty stations so this is useful, and it sends the music through the car speakers. Much better than driving with an earbud. Plus, with the MP3 controls on the outside of the phone, you can easily change songs while driving.
Another nice touch is the ability to throw the MP3 player "in the background" while using the phone as a phone or running another application. When the call (or app) is done, you can bring the MP3 player to the foreground and the music picks up where it left off. It's not necessary to find the track you were on and fast forward to the last spot. Very convenient.
As a phone, the Musiq works fine. The signal strength is good and the audio comes through clear. The speaker phone is OK, certainly not the best feature, but it works acceptably.
The phone has more Bluetooth profiles than most. For a few days I lost the USB chord that I was using to download songs to the phone, so I transferred the songs via Bluetooth file transfer. Works great.
The camera is 1.3MP and works OK as a "need a pic now" camera. Pics and videos can be saved to the uSD card, so with a 2G card, you can take a really long movie.
Here are some things that could use improvement
MP3 player controls can be buggy
FM Transmitter can be staticy on some days
Flat keys cause typos
Old apps/games may not work
Picture and Video quality is so-so
I had configured the phone to alert me if service changed, so that a little pop-up alert appears if the signal drops or the phone changes from EVDO to the old data network. If this alert occurs while listening to MP3, an error m509 is displayed and the MP3 player exits. Turning off the alerts made the problem go away. Sometimes, holding the left or right buttons down to rewind/ff doesn't work. The player will go to the beginning or end of a file but not move forward incrementally. It does work on some files and not on others, so it's possible the files it fails on are not well formed. Or the player could be buggy.
On hot, overcast days, it seems like there's a lot of static when playing MP3 via the FM transmitter. I have to hold the phone in my lap to get the static to go away. I drive a Honda Civic Hybrid and there's all sorts of RF noise because of the electric engine, so it might be this is just a problem in my car.
I find that I keep accidentally hitting the Back button, which is placed right under the direction keys (rocker keys?). Very annoying when surfing the web or playing games. I think this is because the sleek, smooth look requires similar buttons.
I had quite a few games that I'd purchased from Sprint on my old 7400. When I went to re-download them from Sprint's Content Manager, a "version mismatch" was displayed and the games would not download. I could go to the games page and redownload from there and everything worked well, but many of the games I'd purchased in the past were no longer on the games pages. After a few conversations with various Sprint tech support folks, they gave me a credit for all the games I couldn't download. Still, I would have rather kept the games. There are no replacements for some of them.
Over all, I'm very happy with this phone and recommend it to others I am really enjoying the MP3 player, especially in the car, and holding the phone in my hand on staticy days is not much of a problem. Many of the problems I've encountered are software problems that will hopefully be fixed with patches in the future. It's a good phone.