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 LG VX9400A mobile couch potato's dream, the LG VX9400 offers a sweet swing-up display and lots of endurance when watching TV. Price: $199
By Stewart Wolpin 
The appeal of the VX9400 starts and ends with the large 2.2-inch display. With a simple thumb flick, the screen flips up 45 degrees to the left into a widescreen position perpendicular to the phone's body, revealing the slightly recessed dialpad. Whatever happens to be on the display automatically reorients itself depending on its position, although some functions require the screen to be up.
There's only one minor drawback: When a call comes in while you're watching TV, the earpiece is at a right angle to the microphone. Fortunately, you can slip the screen back into Portrait mode so you don't lose the call. After you end the call, the TV or music resumes automatically. The VX9400's screen is 0.2, which doesn't seem like much but makes a world of difference when watching for longer stretches. More important, the LG provides a high-quality TV picture, with dark blacks and true colors. TV reception also was reliable. Another area where the VX9400 excels is in camera quality. Images from the VX9400 camera, like its TV playback, exhibited better contrast and truer colors. Plus, LG's optics provide a longer focal length, so you can see more scenery in the viewfinder. However, the VX9400 has a remarkably quick shutter release. This isn't an issue for outdoor shots in bright sunlight, but indoors, when the shutter speed slows to compensate for low available light, the image gets snapped while the phone is still recoiling from you pushing the camera button, resulting in blurry images. The VX9400 also benefits from speedier EV-DO Web access, averaging two to five seconds faster both in bootup and page fills than, for example, the Samsung SCH-u620, and much faster (up to 15 seconds, depending on our location and type of download) for music and video clips. Connectivity was also more consistent, and benefited from the absence of the "server not responding" messages that often popped up on the Samsung phone we tested at the same time. As a phone, the VX9400 delivered clear conversations with plenty of volume and with ringtones loud enough to be heard from a pocket or pocketbook. Dialing and texting, however are made more difficult by the black-on-silver characters on the unevenly blue-backlit keypad, a combination that makes the tiny alpha characters difficult to read. But where the LG really shines is battery life, especially for TV watching. Our tests yielded six hours of TV watching time on the VX9400. This staying power alone may be enough to justify the pricetag for this phone. But add in the larger screen, top-notch camera quality, and faster downloads, and you have a surefire winner. Suggested Stories: Read our comparison of the first two VCast Mobile TV phones We test Verizon Wireless' first two MediaFLO TV phones to see which one is ready for prime time. Samsung SCH-u620 Review Above average is not good enough for this sleek but slightly underpowered V CAST Mobile TV phone. Sidekick iD Review The iconic messaging phone hasn't just slimmed down in features to hit a friendlier price; it's undergone gastric bypass.
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