LG

I just got a UX585. I'm hoping that the things that get posted here get back to the LG engineers and product people. Its a cool phone, but it could be better.

I've always been impressed with LG products. My last phone was a VX6100. Yes, pretty old, but pretty much bullet proof, which was why I had it for so long. When looking at new phones, I wanted more than what the VX6100 offered. Being a music lover, I ended up with the Rhythm. On the whole I really like it and hope that its as durable as the old LG I had. Unfortunately I can't quite rave about it. In some respects, its pretty disappointing and not up to the same standards as other LG products I own.

As a phone, its every bit as good as the VX6100 was. Generally straight forward controls with lots of good options. Its has a quality feel to it and its fairly comfortable to hold. US Cell has a My Contacts Backup feature that's really handy. The fact that I can easily copy my own .jpgs and .mp3 files for wallpaper and ring tones is a big plus. Voice quality is good, though a bit tinny at times. The VX6100 had excellent and consistent voice quality. I really like the My Menu short cuts. It saves a lot of clicks when using regularly accessed options. The options for the display in the sub-menu are not necessary, but add a bit of fun and flashiness. The lock button on the side should be standard on every phone, period. The touch screen buttons are too sensitive, even set at their lowest setting. And who thought it was a good idea to put up that silly help screen every time you accidentally hit the Back button when at the main screen?

As an MP3 player, it still leaves a bit to be desired. Its supposed to be a premium music player. The really good part is that the sound quality is excellent. Probably among the best in MP3 players that I've heard. The EQ presets are quite good, though I wish it had one user customizable setting. I hate ear buds so I don't use the supplied headphones. Instead I have a pair of Razor ProTone M250s. They lay flat on the ear and are intended for gaming, but are excellent for music on small MP3 players. Where the device falls short is when selecting music from the menus. It doesn't do a good job of reading ID3 tags, so when going into the Albums menu, it doesn't sort by track #. It would be very nice to at least have a menu option to change the sorting type. Worse, it displays an album title multiple times, the first with the correct # of tracks, subsequent listings with 1 track each. The next annoyance is that it can't natively use .m3u files for playlists. Yes, you can import .m3u files, but its limited to 30 (does anyone else find it strange that they can parse an .m3u file, but can't simply just use it for a play list?). Not very helpful when you've got 100+ CDs worth of music stored on the memory card. It also only reads .m3u files that are stored in the root folder of the card. Meaning that every .m3u file created has to be edited with the correct path to the mp3 files. And, the phone has to be rebooted before it sees new ones, but I'd rather have it do that than to scan for them every time you need one. The player should really be able to scan all the folders in the My_Music directory looking for .m3u files and automatically display them as playlists. I've spent far too many hours setting this thing up just get a minimal amount of convenience out of it. Of course, if it did read ID3 tags properly, I wouldn't have to spend so much time setting up m3u files. Anyway, I add and delete playlists as I listen to albums. Its clunky, but it works, and its the only way I can get the play back to work the way I think it should. The scroll wheel was a little strange at first, but once you get used to it, it works well and is pretty handy for quickly scrolling long lists.

The manual that comes with the phone is about the worst I have ever encountered in any product. It's nothing more than an expanded list of the menus. No explanation of how things work, nor why you might want to use certain features. If not for previously owning an LG and already knowing how to setup contacts and other features, I probably would have returned it the day after I bought it. The worst part was the section for the mp3 player. Thank goodness for Google. I found more useful info scattered on various forums than from the manual or on LG's web site.

I share your frustration with this phones music playback capabilities. The organization is annoying at best. I spent a long time getting m3u files working at all, and still cannot get the feature to work properly.

Tell me, have you ever tried getting wma files to import from m3u playlists?

I cannot get the phone to include them when I import the m3u file. It just doesn't work. I have ripped a lot of my music to this format and don't really want to redo it to mp3. I have been trying to find just one person who not only says they got this to work, but can give me the exact steps to do it.

No, sorry Elwood. I have not. A few years ago I toyed with what format I was going to rip CDs to, and settled on .mp3 because of its wide acceptance. If I want to listen on the home system, I don't listen to .mp3s.

BTW, since I wrote the above review, aside from the annoying menus and sensitive touch screen buttons, I've come to like this phone a lot. The sound quality is above average for devices in the same class.