LG Chocolate BL40 Reviewed

Gulp a pinch of salt as we aren’t talking about Hershey’s dark chocolates or Amadei, but not less than that either. Remember how LG glimmered streets with the original Chocolate in 2006 and sold it by the bucket load? Now, LG has gone all gung ho with its sleek Chocolate BL40 mobile device in its Black Label Portfolio. A sweetened treat for the true fashionistas and tech geeks, BL40 has for sure created a stir in the mobile market with its innovative entertainment features. Before you open up your question-box, we brought our desk in order and turned on our examining-eye to bring to users an in-depth review of the LG Chocolate BL40 phone. Packed in a myriad of cutting-edge attributes, the shell around the kernel of this eye-catchy nut broke its cover to give you a detailed view. Pulling us off the chair, the extremely bold piece comes dressed in pretty sultry red and black attire. Sure enough, a diamond in the rough is something that won’t cross your mind when you look at this handset. Stepping in as ‘a marvel to behold’, the truly luxurious phone looks incredibly slick, which is why it’s a member of the Black Label range. The moment we took it in our hands, the word ‘beautiful’ surely came out. But the sleek BL40 probably gulped lots of nutritious food resulting in such a ‘tall’ height (just a tongue-in-cheek thought). The phone is ridiculously long, partly due to its 21:9 aspect ratio of the display. It’s about 2cm taller than the iPhone so may be users who want something smaller won’t be puffed with a smile. Flaunting off engaging stylish overall looks, the red upper and lower edges of the body add some color to the austere, graceful design. At 10.9mm thick, the candy-bar shaped unit weighs around 129g and is a sturdy, well made phone to hold. While the intriguing lay-out may put some people off, when the BL40’s display strikes an opportunity to play videos/movies, hardly any voice will be heard with a word ‘but’ on how well it performs.

In hand the phone sits quite well despite its long design and will also fit in most pant pockets. It feels a premium product too, a hearty thanks to LG’s smart brains who suggested the use of metal and glass on its exterior frame. Well, the front of the handset is home to the huge 4-inch display with a resolution of 345 x 800 pixels, yes more of a WVGA resolution. Colors are really saturated and the only displays that caught our attention nerve to a great degree were AMOLED ones. Impressively, BL40 is a full touchscreen phone eschewing the need for any single button on the front side of the device. It smartly features a towering screen, earpiece, video call camera and proximity sensor. On either side you have microUSB port, button to fast start the audio player, 3.5mm jack, screen lock button, volume rocker and camera shutter. The topmost portion embraces a power on/off cum lock/unlock button. The left panel exhibits a USB port with an LED light that lights up ‘red’ when the USB cable is connected. Below the button is a dedicated music button that makes one halt before ‘music library’. The right panel on the top has an elongated volume up/down button which helps in adjusting the ring-tone and touchtone. Further, the lower part of the right panel includes dedicated camera button. Above it is a satiny elongated button to help one increase and decrease the volume when listening to peppy tunes. At the bottom of the screen, there’s a special minimize button that enables multitasking at the same time. Cracking a grin, the new handset tilts head high with its capability to function as a media player as well. You’ll find a standard 3.5mm audio jack, letting you use most headphones without those irksome expressions.

It is enriched with a wide capacitive touchscreen which is simply stunning. The display offers vivid colors and there is pretty satisfactory contrast if you are planning to wear your reading glasses under the sun. You can simply hold it horizontally to view every single option under categories like Communications, Entertainment, Utilities and Settings. Well, navigating the tall display doesn’t come as easy as falling off a log. In fact, its occasional freezing made us little agitated to turn it on and off every now then. And yes, both our hands were assigned to work on holding the phone. Using only thumb to control things made it a bit uncomfortable. Contrarily, a menu with 32 on-screen icons displaying at once is a noticeable aspect. But unfortunately, there’s no text description for each icon and trust us it will take you a while to recognize them all. One plus point is that users can place widgets, contacts and other media on a range of panels, and the large screen grabs higher number when placed on a comparison scale with other S-class models, like the Arena or Crystal. LG has adapted the S-class user interface and certain applications offer split-screen views for certain tasks, like messaging, allowing you to view threaded conversations and see contacts at the same time. Besides, the phone paves the way with travel adapter, USB cable, headphones and CD guide. Now jumping straight to the photography fiends, the LG Chocolate BL40 hugs an impressive 5 megapixel Schneider Kreuznach camera. We clicked a few pictures which turned out to be pretty limpid, but gladly, it didn’t notice too many details. But, if you are planning to pose like a supermodel and do the job of a photographer as well, then face the studio of disappointment. Users will find it very inconvenient to take their own pictures since the touchscreen option at times leads to other options. There are five Scene Modes, Auto, Portrait, Landscape, Sport, and Night, all with normal, fine and super-fine quality options. The bold and glossy handset comes with improvement with the tiny LED flash now doing a surprisingly decent job. Our sneaking-eyes discovered a good color balance along with significantly ebbed noise in low-light situations.

Further, LG’s fun S-Class interface has been tweaked to clinch the handset’s Web prowess. Along with the stylish 3D main menu icons, the multimedia homescreen has been replaced with a browser panel that lets you customize the space with your favorite web bookmarks. The capacitive touchscreen is also very versatile and responsive. But the multi-tasking dual screen feature is a little disappointing, as it only works in the calendar, music player, text messaging and email client. Scrolling on the menus was fluid too. The Chocolate has ten games/fun apps preinstalled, making you all entertained for sometime. As for GPS navigation, there’s Google Maps, or the more feature-packed Wisepilot. On the other hand, the handset has to be praised for the sheer number of features such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS connectivity, 3G HSDPA 7.2MBPS networks. The interface category ‘Entertainment’ brings lively music, Movie Maker, FM Radio and Games & Apps. Yes, we played a few captivating games like Bubble Breeze, Hidden Catch Wide and Real Motion Fishing and also tracks like Forever and A day, Blue Night and Breaking My Heart. Simply rejoice the phone delivers an unprecedented sound quality with unrivaled clarity.

Moving on, the video camera features auto and night scene modes. Video quality impressed us in spite of handshakes and disturbances. Basically, there are three recording modes, normal, MMS and DLNA. Apart from this, Internet browsing encompasses multi-windows option to let you open many windows concurrently. We found surfing and browsing simply seamless. Just touch, swipe fingers and toggle between windows. Additionally, many progressive aspects can also be experienced for easy browsing like adding bookmarks, multi-windows, history, re-setting zoom. You can facilely call up someone and browse without getting disconnected from the Internet. Coming to the most basic thing, battery thwarted us even in power saving mode. Long usage of the phone emitted a warm feeling from it while its multitasking function permitted only three apps at a time to be accessed. We were little taken back to realize that interface froze quite a few times and that too with only one application running. On positive front, users can personalize three homescreens.

Well, the LG Chocolate BL40 we would say topples as a great phone. If given a wide berth to its tall structure the scalding piece manages to clinch a truckload of innovative features. The elegantly attired device for sure stands out from the crowd. But as a wise man said, ‘the proof of the pudding is in the eating’. So, users on the prowl for a good touchscreen phone combined with snappy, dashing looks and amazing features can cudgel their brains to skid one in their pocket. The bold as brass phone will make one fork out around Rs. 25,000. On our scorecard, we give the handset 8 out of 10.