An update to the popular LG Fusic, the Muziq retains the FM transmitter and music features. But does newer always mean better?
Review summary of the LG Muziq:
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 Unlike the overly flashy Chocolate, with its unresponsive buttons and stodgy menu setup, the LG Muziq leaves a very good taste in your mouth. Though far from perfect, the Muziq manages to surprise in ways that reinforce the music experience. The FM transmitter, usually a disappointment, was surprisingly good. The Sprint music store, though a bit ugly, had loads of personality, with a wide catalogue and speedy downloads. If the screen kept streaming videos from being as fun as they could be, the network connection made up for this shortcoming, loading Web pages and On Demand content quickly. Overall a solid phone at a good price, considering the 3G capabilities and features that are still rare for most phones, like the FM transmitters and the vibrating feedback. Now we'd like to see what a high-end version could do. Release: July 2007. Price: $150.
Pros: All the nice music features of the Fusic, with a cheaper music store and better transfer software. Unexpectedly good e-mail app. Zippy multimedia performance.
Cons: Either the screen is poor, or the theme was poorly chosen, but either way, something in the display needs an upgrade. Reception suffered in some areas.
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Full LG Muziq Review:
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Design – Very good
The new LG Muziq looks a lot like the older LG Fusic, only more chocolaty. LG has dropped the playful colored shells of the previous phone in favor of the now-familiar glossy black and glowing red scheme. The look works for the Muziq, as the phone retains its pleasant, if boxier design, while differentiating itself from the so-called Chocolate flip phone, the LG VX8600. Though we're not a fan of touch-sensitive buttons, if they must be included, we like the vibrating feedback buttons on the Muziq, especially with their adjustable vibration strength. We also liked the phone's keypad, which was very flat on appearance, but revealed nice ridges and plenty of travel for the individual keys as we used it. Buttons were wide enough to avoid mistyping, though we would have preferred better soft key assignment, as two camera buttons seems excessive.
The screens left something to be desired. While we enjoyed the screen on the Fusic, we're not sure if quality has taken a hit, or if our standards are simply higher, but the Muziq's screen felt a bit blocky, with an obvious screen door effect. The exterior screen, as well, seemed a bit washed. Occasional app screens, like the FM Transmitter's selector, seemed very sharp and colorful, but menus, the standby screen and especially Web pages seemed to lack eye-popping color and sharpness.
The menu is the standard Sprint grid of icons, which is not a bad thing, though organization could be improved. We like easy access to features like Web browsing and the convenient "Favorites" list, but for a music phone, many of the music features, like the FM Transmitter, are hidden under the generic "Tools" menu. Bluetooth settings are split between "Tools" and "Settings." With a name like "Muziq," these controls should have been front and center. Also, we'd like to be able to access more functions using the dedicated music keys on the face, like we've seen recently on the Nokia N75 and N76.
Music – Very good
Like the Fusic, the Muziq is loaded with great music features, some of them unique to this phone. For listening, you have a choice of the included 3.5mm headphone adapter cord for using your own cans, stereo Bluetooth or the FM transmitter. We were quite skeptical of this last option, as FM transmitters have always given us trouble, but we found the transmitter on the Muziq to be among the most powerful we've tested. With less difiiculty than we expected, we managed to lock in a channel in our car in New York City, no easy feat. And though Sprint claims a range of 8 to 10 feet, we got reception on our Bose Wave radio from 20 feet away, easily. The stereo Bluetooth could learn something from the FM transmitter, as reception was spotty paired with our Motorola S9 headset, and cut out frequently, multiple times per song verse.
The music player on the Muziq is the same Sprint player we've seen before. Though it now reaps the benefit of Sprint's lower pricing, at $0.99 per song, the player offers little else, and seems especially sub-par compared to the digital audio players it is aimed at replacing. Though the store has a vast selection, both the store interface and the player interface are in need of a graphical overhaul. Also, it should be easier to purchase an entire album, instead of having to buy each song individually and wait until it has downloaded before buying the next.
While we appreciate the included headphone adapter, the 64MB microSD is not enough for a music collection, or even a full album, unless you purchase the low-bitrate tracks on the music store. No MP3 player available today comes with such a laughably small memory capacity, and if Sprint wants this phone to be taken seriously as a DAP replacement, they need to bundle a larger card with the phone, instead of simply advertising its capability to use high-capacity 4GB microSD cards.
Calling – Good
Calls on the Muziq phone sounded good, though reception was an issue as we left New York City for Morristown, NJ, about 30 miles west. Though reception didn't seem to affect call quality, we did lose an occasional call to lost network signal, even as our Sprint Treo 700p had no such difficulty. Otherwise, calls sounded clean, though a bit hollow. All our favorite calling features are present, including speaker-independent voice dialing, which worked almost flawlessly in our tests, struggling only once every few calls. We had no trouble connecting our Bluetooth devices to the phone, and the connections seemed even more stable for calling than we experienced with stereo music. The contact list has all the standard fields we've come to expect, but nothing special. Searching contacts was live, while we typed.
Messaging – Very good
The Muziq comes with all the most popular messaging features, which will please AOL, MSN, Yahoo and Gmail users. SMS messaging worked well, but suffered a bit due to the disappointing screen, which made text look a bit blocky and thick. The poor text display couldn't hold back the excellent e-mail program, however, which was more robust than we've seen on most non-smartphones. With presets for all the popular services, plenty of options for navigating and organizing the mailbox and even a "push" feature, we were impressed by the e-mail inbox. POP and IMAP accounts are supported, and we had no trouble setting up our Gmail account and downloading dozens of messages quickly. MMS was no problem either, and the phone can send a single message as an MMS and an e-mail to various recipients. VoiceSMS is also supported.
Multimedia – Very good
Only the sub-par display held back the Muziq from being a stronger multimedia phone. Streaming videos on Sprint TV loaded very quickly, and shuttled smoothly, but the blocky display diminished the full screen viewing capabilities of the phone. Web pages loaded quickly as well, and the browser did an admirable job of reorganizing pages into a usable, single column layout, but again, pictures and text looked faded and pixilated. Handmark's On Demand app was still useful, though the icons looked dated, and keeping the program's live information bubbles on the standby screen made the already-garish default theme even more unpleasant to behold. The camera displayed photos with fairly accurate colors, but blurring was a serious enough issue that we won't be taking pictures with the phone unless we run into Chris Rock on the street again.
Odds and ends
We had some trouble with Sprint's software, though not as severe as the problems we had with the HTC Mogul. On one computer, Windows repeatedly failed to recognize every last function for the phone, and stopped short of allowing the music transfer software and the phone to synchronize. On another, the two found each other only after two consecutive restarts, and for no apparent reason simply started working properly. Your results may vary. Also, though we did not get a chance to test the feature, we were pleased to find tethered modem support on the phone, a rarity for non-smartphones. With fast EV-DO support, the Muziq should make a nice, light option for wireless internet on the road, though we suspect many customers lured by the handset's lower $100 price might shy away from the expensive data plan that tethered modem requires.
Price and availability
The LG Muziq is available from Sprint for $150 with a contract agreement. A mail-in rebate of $50 are available, when signing up for a qualifying plan.
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