I got the lg vx 5500 for free. It was worth that price. It normally retails for $200 if you do not sign up with the service. I cannot see why anyone would pay for this phone at all since phones of this level are almost always given away for free with a contract.
The is a mediocre phone that does some things well but mostly it does everything just ok.
The sound quality is good, it is clear and you can hear the other party well. The sound that you give to other people is also good. I have had no complaints about others not being able to hear me.
The volume control for the incoming rings is awesome. This is one thing LG has done well. If you have the sound all the way up as I do you can really hear this phone. I actually picked this one out by trying the sound on all of the phones they had at the store and this one rang the loudest. I can even hear this one when listening to the radio and driving on the freeway which I could not with my last two cell phones.
The battery charges very quickly and holds a charge well. It has 5 hours of talk time or 18 days of standby time. I typically plug mine in once a week and I have not had it run out of battery on me.
This phone comes with 24 ring tones. They are all the boring ones you get for free with any phone. I never like the free tones that come with phones. If you download a song it will play pretty well on this phone. I have been happy with the songs I paid to download onto this phone, they sound like they are meant to.
There is a one touch speaker phone button on this phone. Mine worked well although the sound quality was not great, but after owning this phone for a few months the speaker phone function broke and now will not work.
This phone will take videos. The sound quality on the videos is bad and goes up and down in volume. You cannot take videos at night as the camera cannot get a good light. Even with lights on in your house you will get a very dark video at night. The video comes out quite jerky and looks very poor like with a lot of phones.
The shape of this phone fits well in your hand but makes it harder to hold against your head. If you are on a call of any length it is difficult to hold the phone next to your head after awhile.
The camera feature is just ok. It takes pictures quickly but the quality is poor. The ease of viewing on the camera is fine. It is not hard to flip through pictures but you cannot store very many on the phone at one time.
I hate the buttons on the outside, they are meant to be easy to use, but I like to keep my phone in my pocket and it beeps every time I bump the side buttons.

Rating: 4