We must give full credit to LG for being very daring with the design of the Chocolate BL40. It is longer and slimmer than many mobile phones, as if it’s been stretched out a little. Get past that strangeness, and there’s plenty to recommend this handset.
The home screen, which is a generous four inches in size, is very colourful and sharp, and responds very readily to touch commands. It’s definitely one of the best of the new mobile phones, with an excellent five megapixel camera that has plenty of options, including video, of course. One handy feature is the phone’s FM transmitter, which allows you to play the music on your phone through your car stereo. This is unusual, perhaps, but very useful, as is the built-in GPS.
The screen can be displayed in either portrait or landscape mode. Given the screen size, that may sound as if it will offer a lot, but in fact it doesn’t, since in landscape mode, a user can’t see much of a web page when browsing, and icons are small. When texting, the LG Chocolate BL40 goes into a bizarre split-screen mode that offers contacts on the left side of the screen and messages on the right, which can be very confusing at first.
Mobile phone reviews of the handset have been mixed, praising features like the responsiveness of the screen to touch and the camera, but decidedly mixed on other features. It’s not perfect, by any means, but it’s a phone that will stand out.
