With its innovative LCD display that swivels, the LG VX9400 is an eye-catching device that will please people looking for media content on their mobile device. At the top of this phone is a 2-1/5-inch LCD that supports 262K and offers excellent resolution. When you wish to watch videos, the entire screen can be turned 90 degrees until the LCD is positioned in landscape mode. Obviously, a screen positioned as such an angle has a large wow/geek factor for mobile enthusiasts, but it also makes watching television a far more enjoyable experience.

The VX9400 is definitely designed with the VCast service in mind. With subscription (currently $15 per month), you can watch television shows at their regularly scheduled times as well as access to Verizon's ESPN MVP. To improve reception, a five-inch antenna can be raised from the top of the phone, but your best option is to watch outdoors because obstructions seem to pose quite a few problems (pixilation greatly increased when indoors and the video began to lose synchronization with the sound as well). If you don't feel like watching your show at its regularly scheduled time, you can simply download it to your phone for later viewing. Meanwhile, the large and vibrant screen also makes the various 3-D mobile games on the market truly come alive. All of this content is delivered to the phone via the high-speed EV-DO network. Since it is a 3G technology, EV-DO ensures that download speeds are swift and that streaming video is relatively free of fits and starts.

Though VCast is generally seen as a video service, it also offers access to music files that can be downloaded to the phone. The music player on the VX9400 is fairly straightforward, but the large screen does make the experience much nicer as it displays track information clearly.

Although the screen is beautiful and excellent for viewing video, phone calls present a serious design flaw. Somewhat like other slider phones, to access the dial pad you must open the phone or, in this case, rotate the LCD. Unfortunately, though, the phone's speaker is placed on the top of the screen so that to keep it beside your ear, you must rotate the screen back after dialing, thereby closing off access to the dial pad. This doesn't pose much of a problem until you use automated services. If you want to be able to use both the microphone and the speaker on the phone simultaneously, you have to open and close the phone every time you have to press a button. Otherwise, if you leave the screen turned for landscape viewing, the speaker is now rotated 90 degrees too, putting its location closer to the back of your neck. It also doesn't help that the dial pad buttons are smooth and lacking space between them. All in all, this is a serious design flaw and one that Samsung should have considered when positioning the phone's speaker on a swiveling component.

And speaker positioning comes up yet again: Given how Samsung wants people to view the VX9400 as a television, it's surprising that they've placed the main speaker on the rear of the unit. Watching shows with the sound on the back of the television set is not exactly intuitive. Fortunately, you can plug in a headset or stereo Bluetooth headphones.

Aside from the video possibilities, the phone can also create its own multimedia files with the 1.3-megapixel camera. Snapshots have good resolution and color clarity and can be taken at five different resolutions, while video has two choices. The camera is equipped with quite a few editing features for adjusting the effects or the photos themselves, and there are also more standard features such as a self-timer, and flash. If the videos are kept under 15 seconds, they can be sent via MMS to others, or larger files can be stored on the phone. Depending on the size of your microSD card, the phone can hold up to an hour's worth of footage. Without the card, the phone has a reasonably large internal memory that can hold 60MB worth of files.

The phone is also equipped with a GPS locator, which gives you access to such features as Chaperone and Navigator (both require a subscription). The former allows parents to track the whereabouts of their children via the web, while the latter can give turn-by-turn directions to destinations as well as maps that look great on the large LCD. As for more regular features, the VX9400 has a 500-entry telephone book, as well as an alarm clock, vibrating ringer, voice-activated dialing, USB data port, world clock, currency calculator, calendar, and note pad.

Reception on the dual-band CDMA networks was quite good, with no problems to report regarding clarity, even when entering the recesses of large buildings. The battery provides about four hours of talk time and an impressive two weeks of standby. Obviously, this performance is diminished when watching a lot of television. Overall, the LG VX9400 is a device with a few design problems but with quite an array of interesting multimedia options.

Pros: Swiveling landscape LCD, good camera, Vcast, GPS, EV-DO network
Cons: Poorly designed telephone feature, poor speaker placement

Warranty
1 year