My last phone was the Kyocera Phantom; a phone that had very little function besides making and receiving calls. About two weeks ago I upgraded to the LG 8500. At first I was extremely happy with it, but a few days ago I ran into some problems. I'll get to that later.1.) Camera: For a cellphone camera, I'm impressed. You can change the capture resolution for photos, 160x120 up to 1280x960. The photos come out a little fuzzy, as can be expected with a cellphone camera. My only issue with the camera is that there's no flash. As for video, one excellent aspect is that you can change the option to record as much video as you have the space for. Considering you can expand your memory to 2gb with an SD micro memory card, this means you can record rather lengthy videos. Unfortunately, the resolution is very low.2.) Sound Recording; Ringtones: The Chocolate can record sounds, but only up to one minute. I was a bit disappointed with this; they should have used the same feature the video camera offers, allowing you to record as much sound as you have memory for. As for ringtones.. I'm a bit frustrated. If you save a sound, you can only play it in My Sounds or txt message it to someone; you can't set it as a ringtone. HOWEVER: I have learned to make my own ringtones and get around that. What you have to do is make a sound clip, about 40 seconds long, in low bitrate mp3 (I've been using 64 bitrate MONO mp3's. Use a program like GoldWave to edit your mp3's down to this size.) I then e-mail the sound to my phone. When I open the email as a text message, I have the option to save the sound as a ringtone. Note that if you make the sound too long, or the file too large, you will not be able to save it as a ringtone.3.) Mp3 Player Function: I was a bit disappointed with the mp3 player function. The sound is decent enough through the built in speaker, but obviously sounds much better through extrenal speakers or a headset. A few days after I got the phone I purchased the Music Essentials kit and a 1gb SD memory card. After installing the Music Essentials software, I realized that it's pretty much useless if you have a memory card. The interface isn't user friendly, and it converts all of your music to low quality WMA files. The best way to use music on this phone is to transfer your mp3's directly to the SD memory card. Some computers have a memory card port built in (I know mine does,) but you can also get an external USB card reader. This should work on a Mac as well, but make sure your music is in mp3 and not the Apple format, m4a. The mp3 playing program on the phone is just aweful. It isn't user friendly in any way. You have to put all of your mp3's onto a playlist if you want to listen to them on shuffle; scrolling through your songs is laggy and at times difficult; and to be honest, the themes for the mp3 player are just ugly. Hopefully software upgrades will come out within a few months to fix some of these problems.4.) The touchpad, the keypad: I've heard alot of complaints about the touchpad. I have it on the highest sensitivity and I find that it works great. It did take some getting used to, but now I love it. As for the keypad.. the buttons are just too close together, and too small. Txt messaging has been an experience... I'm constantly hitting the wrong button by accident, sometimes two or three at a time.. and I don't even have large hands.5.) Display: I love the screen on this phone. It's a great size for viewing photos, videos, and games. The screen is beautiful, though it does have a tendancy to show fingerprints a bit too much, considering the glossy finish.6.) THE BATTERY: Alright. Here's that problem I mentioned earlier. A few days ago, my phone's battery started dying incredibly fast---in as little as 15 minutes after a full charge. I got incredibly frustrated, and last night I went to a Verizon Wireless store. Tech Support told me that the phone's battery can be drained that quickly because the phone is constantly looking for better signal. In a dead zone, like a basement, a concrete building, whatever---the phone will die within 20 minutes. They told me there was nothing I could do but turn my phone off when I'm in a deadzone. I left, obviously frustrated, because that is a TERRIBLE feature. I went home, and I was researching my phone on internet forums. I was reading a topic about the Version 4 software upgrade (which puts SPEAKERPHONE on the Chocolate!) and someone seemed to be having the same problem I was with the battery. It seems that the problem is Verizon's EVDO network. Here are the instructions on how to disable EVDO and use the standard network. With this option enabled, the battery won't drain anywhere near as quickly. (Since I switched, my phone's been on for over 24 hours and is only missing one bar of batter)To disable EVDO:Go into menuhit 0 the pass is 000000push 3 for network selectpush 1 for mode preferencethen go down to 1x onlyThis will greatly increase your battery life if you dont have evdo in your area.Now that I've fixed the battery issue, I'm back to loving this phone. If the mp3 function was as user friendly as, say, an iPod, this would be the only device I need for music, pictures, and.. of course.. phone calls.