LG VX8600 Review

The lower half of the VX8600's exterior sports three touch-sensitive music control buttons - play/pause and track forward and back buttons - which can be activated to a glowing red by pressing the music control button on the device's right side panel. Once the red backlighting is off, the controls disappear from the face of the handheld.

Above the music controls is a large 128 x 160 px 65K-color TFT LCD screen that displays caller ID, time, battery life and music tracks if the music player is on. The external LCD screen can also be used as a camera viewfinder for self-portraits. Directly above the screen is the 1.3-megapixel camera and camcorder lens. A small external speaker for music features is located near the bottom rim of the VX8600.

The bottom half of the clamshell houses the internal antenna and 800 mAh Li-Ion battery with up to 3 hours and 40 minutes of talk time and up to 16 days and 14 hours of standby time. A carrying hole on the top of the bottom half allows a hand strap or other cell phone bauble to be attached.

A thin volume control button on the top left side of the VX8600 offers five volume settings in addition to a choice between vibrate and alarm only options. Just below the volume control is a charging port and headset adapter port. The top right side of the phone also has two thin control buttons: One button for activating the music player, voice command and speakerphone and another button for controlling the camera and camcorder features. Just below that is a slot for a microSD memory card, which is sold separately.