LG VX8100 for Verizon

I Went into Verizon today and asked someone (she was a temp so i dont think she knew she wasnt suppose to tell me this) but she said that there was a paper on there bullitin board saying that the 8100 will be coming out on Friday but she wasnt sure if it was friday 7/15 or friday 7/22

I just spoke with Verizon Wireless at Circuit City down here in Ft Myers and the rep said he has the LG VX8100's available for $200 minus a $50 rebate. I will get mine for just $50 after the $50 mail-in rebate because I get $100 off for agreeing to a new 2-year contract since my old one is up and I will get to keep my old phone#.

As for which is best the 8100 or the E815... I was told they're pretty much the same except that the E815 has a Trans Flash card with only 128 or 256MB for storage where as the VX8100 has a Mini SD card with 512MB for storage.
The rep said I may want to go with Motorola E815 since I have a Motorola T720 and I'm used to Motorola's menu but I will be going with the VX8100 since I already have a Card reader that handles the Mini SD Cards but not the TransFlash Card.
It does seem that Verizon has once again screwed the Bluetooth capabilities for transferring files but at least you can upload and download Pics and Mp3's to the phone with the Mini-SD card but you can't download Mp3's for ringtones off the SD card and will have to buy them from Verizon (Greedy SOB's!)

But all in all I think the VX8100 will be the best phone out for Verizon customers and just a hair better than the E815 since you can store more on the Mini-SD than the Transflash Card. Other than that though, both phones are pretty much the same so it really depends on if you want to learn a new phone menu which I know I will have no problem doing.

OK, I just picked up the 8100 this morning from the Verizon store here in New York. Having literally just gotten it, the salesmen knew very little about it and were just playing with it after I showed up and asked them if they had it.

Initial reports: The speaker is very loud and I could here it across the busy Verizon floor. The 8100 has its intergrated speakers on both the left and right side of the clamshell "joint", with the camera in between them on the front face. The screen is extremely vivid, and is, in fact, the reason I got it instead of the E815. It's simply clearer and brighter, although slightly smaller than the E815. The camera is 1.3 megapixels (like all the rest), with the flash directly below the lens, and is easy to operate. Also, you can see the picture being taken without opening the phone through the outside display, which is a nice feature not available on the E815. Also, there are multi-function keys just below the outside display, which appear to be useful to look at call info without opening the phone. Actually, it might be an annoyance if you tend to bang your phone around constantly, since you might accidentally press these buttons. Time will tell for me.

The size of the phone was my biggest question mark, as I feared it was around the size of the 8000. It's not. It's very similar to the E815 in size, which makes it much smaller than the 8000. It's not terribly heavy either, and although heavier than my old 6000, isnt noticeably so.

I havent had a chance to make many calls on it yet, but so far, reception is adequate. The camera flash lights with different colors to let you know a call is coming in. Keep in mind that this is a blue-tooth phone, and although I did go ahead and buy the bt headset, I havent had a chance to check the reception using that.

The phone is also VCast enabled, which I understand the E815 initially had disabled. The Verizon rep told me that they simply had to flash all of the 815's they had in their inventory, and now they all work properly. But the 8100 had no such problem anyway. Since I previously had the text messaging and web at a total of $10/month, I took the Vcast service, since for another $5/month, I got all three, PLUS, it didnt use airtime like my previous web agreement did. Note that right now, Verizon is offering the first month of Vcast free. After that, $15/month.

The web is one of the best features of this phone. I thought the web was decent on my old VX6000, but wow, is this fast by comparison, plus graphics! I held the 8100 up to the 815 and used the web identically at the same time and found the 8100 was much faster. I cant explain that exactly, but the phones were only about a foot apart or less when used.

The 8100 can also play mp3s, which I havent tried yet, and has more memory than the 815. The two do use different types of flash cards though. And like all Verizon BT phones, the BT is partially disabled to allow Verizon to rake in more money with their "get it Now" service.

The phone comes with only a travel charger, so an accessory pack is a must. For $119, you get the car charger, case, and BT headset (made by Motorola, ironically). The old phone charger and case wont fit (of course!). The phone itself is $200 for a 2-year contract and $250 on the one year, but their is a $50 rebate on either. All in all, the whole package cost about $400, which is pretty damn pricey. I'm hoping that for that price the phone will make me a better human being. The E815 is only $50 less anyway.

I'll hopefully follow up in a few days after I've had a chance to put it thru its paces. Any questions, let me know.

Just got off the phone from Verizon care center. Got it ordered, along with a 3300 for my wife. Only had to extend for one additional year. Qualified for the ne2 $100. deal along with the $50. mir, not too bad. I did ask for one of the NON-DISABLED phones. Believe it or not, he did say that there were some that hadn't been disabled.
All in all, all that I do want is a good receiving phone, at least able to get through one day on the battery and clear reception. That's all.

I got a VX8100 yesterday from Verizon and today Im using it as a Bluetooth modem on the broadband EVDO network. So far works well with both PDA and laptop, getting about 300k according to speed test sites. I am in LA and coverage has been good so far, only rarely dropping down to 1xRTT.

Hi All-

hope someone here can provide some thoughts on this...

just got the LG VX8100 for my wife yesterday (7/24); did not realize it was so new until i started reading the forum to get some more info on it. i have a few questions i'm hoping someone can answer:

1. i have the VX7000, been very happy with it. I'm not terribly technical, but i did learn from these forums and elsewhere that you can e-mail yourself ringtones on the 7000 so as not to have to pay for them thru the "get it now" service. Well, i tried this with the 8100, and although you can e-mail them, save them down to your phone and listen to them, you CANNOT use them as ringtones. when you save them from e-mail, they do not appear in the list of available sounds for ringtones like they used to, but are rather stored elsewhere. i know this is just a way for Verizon to make you buy your ringtones, but there must be some enterprising folks out there who can figure out how to work around this...??? thought i saw in one of the previous posts that you could upload them from the SD card, but not sure...??

2. there were discussions in previous posts about BT being disabled on these phones, but there may be some out ther that are not disabled. how do i tell if it's been disabled on ours? and, more importantly, since i don't know too much about BT, what functionality do you lose when it's disabled? we bought the BT headset with the phone; being wireless and hands-free was the big draw for my wife...what else are we missing?

thanks for any info anyone can provide!

Update - played with the phone a little more last night...initial thoughts and more questions:

- i have the vx7000 so i'm very comfortable with the menu; easy to follow and find everything.

- Further to the discussions about BT being disabled or not. when i went to "Settings & Tools," and selected "Bluetooth," it gave me the option of turning it on or off. It also gave the option of pairing it with other devices. since i don't have any other BT devices, it didn't find anything to pair with, but if it's giving me the options to turn it on and off, does that mean that it is not disabled on this phone? it also lets me choose between USB, BT and something else for PC connection, which again makes me think the BT is not disabled. then again, if i had another BT compatible device, maybe i'd've found out i couldn't do anything with it anyway...?

- still annoying as all get out that you can't use e-mailed sounds as ringtones. it doesn't even let you select some of the pre-installed "songs" as ringtones (i.e. on my 7000, you can set ringtone to "train," "rainforest," "Ode_to_Joy" and a host of other pre-installed sounds. those are all on the 8100, too, but you can't make them your ringtones). Kinda cheap, if you ask me, but i guess they gotta make money. Besides, i'm hoping sooner or later someone on here will find a way to work around this.

- speakers seem to work very well.

- supposedly there's 512mb memory, but i tried to get some video clips via Vcast and it said my memory was full! Since getting the phone on Sunday, we'd taken maybe 6 pics, one accidental 1 sec video, traded a few pic and text msgs, and saved a few e-mailed ringtones...no way does that constitute 512mb! only after deleting some of the saved pics (got rid of the dopey pre-installed animated pics), the video, and some e-mailed ringtones was i able to use the vcast service and view some of the video clips. Clearly, something is goin on with the memory...anyone have any ideas?

- re: VCAST, once i was actually able to use it, i have to say it was pretty cool getting up to the date news (only one i looked at so far); picture and sound were much better than i expected.

bout all i can think of for now...

i just got the 8100 and took it back it sucks!! they blocked all software on the phone so you cant download off sites and gets worse reseption and picture quality sucks and you have to buy the mini sd card dont come with it!! and mp3s i dont think so!! all around if you have the 8000 keep it trust me the 8100 is NOT worth it its pretty and fancy looking and thats all,verizon launched it on 7-16-05..hell i even like the 7000 better than the 8100 my friend has that one,so choose your self just a little input on the 8100

I've had mine for a week now and I like it, though I too have had some volume issues with the earpiece. I am waiting for arrival of a data cable I bought so I can transfer ringtones and such to this phone (and salvage some of what is on my VX6000.

So today I started surfing on the net and found out some ugly things y'all should be aware of.

First off, they may claim 512M, but anyone who has tried to add data has not come even close to that limit and ringtones are limited to 2M and can't be read off the data card.

Some of the forum posters claim that Verizon has disabled the date card slot, but I have read where some have it working. Not sure why that discrepency exists except to say I haven't tried.

I was SOLD on the idea that it is an mp3 player too. That's why I bought a data cable, so I can upload music I already own. But the mp3 player is disabled! Someone will eventually develop a hack, but the phone is brand new so that doesn't exist, but more importantly this was a feature that was given to sell me the phone. I shouldn't have to hunt for illegal means to use it!

At some point Verizon will enable the mp3 player for music you download and BUY from them. I have no idea if at that point, music added via the sd card or data cable will work in the phone.

They also disabled the external camera button (on the right side), why? I have no friggin' clue.

Lastly the Bluetooth has been crippled to limit a lot of what you would be able to do for free if it was fully functional.

I haven't decided what I will do about this. I hate Motorola phones and not only have I personally had several fail on me, but the 815 is known to have issues and even the guy in the store said "they have lots of problems."

Samsung has a new one that should be competitive with this phone coming out prolly in Jan, but I broke my 6000 and need a phone now. Plus Verizon may well disable all the fun stuff on that one too.

Quite frankly unless Verizon can do some 'splaining' that doesn't sound like a crock of hooey, and quote real dates when this phone will be fully functional, I'm not sure I'd buy this model at all. Seems to me you can step down to the 8000. I hear the camera on the 8000 is better too (the main reason I bought this phone was for the camera).

LG VX8100 for Verizon

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