LG Vx8700 Issues

I purchased a Vx8700 yesterday from Verizon . I notice that when I talk, the phone gets hot by the battery area. I called the Verizon Store and the person told me this was normal. She said all the newer phones heat up from all the features that they have in them. is this true?
I have owned other phones and have not had this issue. I have 30 days to give the phone back. All Im interested in is a slim phone, with bluetooth, and a cam. I dont do music, or all those other things. Thanks.

Did you talk to an actual Verizon employee? It sounds like you might want to find a different store, because that is garbage! The only time my phones ever heat up while being used is if I have them plugged into my vehicle power charger. For what it's worth, our display 8700 stays quite cool even while in use. Have it replaced, there is most likely something wrong with that phone.

I had one 8700 and the battery did get hot and the verizon store I bought it from admitted that other people complianed about that too.

My display started intermittently flashing and a few other anomalies so I returned it and got a new one.. its works flawlessly now.

However the battery area does get quite warm....

I don't see it as a bad thing though.. its pure physics.. the phone is quite thin.. even thinner than the razor and has a stainless steel outer shell that conducts heat.
Lithium Ion batteries get hot when used aggressively and this battery gets used... my only gripe is the run time.

Standby time is great, but you can run the whole battery down in one day pretty easy if you use the phone much without charging....

I Plugged it into my car charger and used hands free bluetooth for about an hour continous one day... the phone got quite hot!!!.. mostly the back battery area.. but the "whole phone" didn't seem to get hot.

This tells me several things... the stainless is an excellent heatsink whereas plastic would not transfer the heat and "feel hot" but may be more likely to cook the phone internals over months of repeated long conversations.

Also, when not holding the phone in your hand, there is nothing but air to transfer the heat to, so the phone is more likely to get even hotter.

However, the phone seemed to handle the heat just fine and never acted up or gave me problems. I"m sure I will see problems within the year warranty if there really is an issue.

I ordered the extended battery, but then sent it back because of the cheap plastic backing it had and the poor fit.
If they would come out with a decent stainless back for the extended battery, I'm sure that would solve the problem as the bigger battery would not get as hot from the amperage transfer during a call.

The display in this phone does not have a brightness adjustment at all that I can find.. I believe that must be because its already so bright that it looks great in the dark, yet also holds its own in the sunlight, so maybe they figured there was no need.. but that bright display is a big battery draw too... so I would advise to set your settings so its not on continuosly while on a call as it only pulls more juice from the limited battery and thus makes more heat too.

If the phone was "plastic" like most of the competition, I don't know if the heat would be an issue or not to "feel", but I do assume it must be good for the phone to dissipate that heat through the shell away from the internals.

The fella that said this store display does not heat up, he must be talking about when its in display mode rather that "transmit" mode.

You can hold the phone open and play with the settings and toys all day and it won't build up heat... the issue we are talking about only happens when in an active call.

I love this phone, the video can camera features are quite powerful and its the nicest looking phone I've ever seen.

This is the very first firmware edition and to date there is not released update that I know about yet.
Maybe they will deal with this issue with the next firmware update if its needed.. either in the form of brightness setting options, or timeouts or similiar... maybe even efficiency settings.....

I figure its LG's problem and if I can punish it for a year without it dying, It should be fine.

That would mean I had two in a row that had those characteristics.. but yes, it was the manager as well as the tech at the store in FortWorth at the 4601 Bryant Irvin Rd address 817 370-0881.. I talked to Darrell in customer Service.

It takes about 15 minutes on continuous connect before you really notice it.

If this in deed is a common "malfunction", I too would like to know about it and get another phone... I'll have to research some more.

Hello All,
I ended up calling LG directly to ask them about the heat issue. They told me that normally the battery area on a cell phone has plastic around it. This particular phone has cast iron around the battery area which conducts heat. I was somewhat skeptical that they use cast iron but that was LG's explanation.

IN regular phone calls the hear really doesn't seem excessive.... my only gripe is is seems the battery life is low... I don't see the 200minutes talk time at all.

The times it gets "really" hot is when its on the charger and your talking at the same time.

Verizon aims for 120 mins. of talk time on all their phones -- according to a service representative.

The 8600/8700/8500 series of phones seem to get about that amount of talk time...but my 8600 is screaming for the charger at "two bars." Once I hit that point, I know I don't have long before the screen will go black!

I took mine in to verizon store to see what they thought... they simply gave me another battery... they have no way to test amperage to see if the draw is normal.....

Seems bettery replacement is a common fix as I saw them give two other people batteries too while I was there for different phones.

Either thats an easy "test and see" or there are allot of bad batteries!

I'll play with mine for a few days to see if I get better talk time now..... I don't notice too much heat with normall phone conversations.. I think my complaint before must have been primarily when I was hook in and charging at the same time which is common for phones to get hot then... especially the thin ones.

I noticed my other battery charged up quite quickly... makes me think the battery capacity was shot.... maybe I did have a bad battery?

I'll have to play with it.

I do remember while I was there, the tech gave one guy a new battery and expained that the 1000 series "assuming 1000mah" were bad and they came out with a new one that was the 1100 series.

This was another type of phone, but it made me wonder if the lg8700 battery is having a similiar bad lot.

If they were bad, you know they would not do a global recall but rather replace batteries only as customers complained.

Anyway, its been a few days now with my new battery they gave me.. I have not complaints..... at the end of a long normal day.. I still have 3 bars left now where I only had one before.
I think the battery before was questionable.

As far as the heat, it seems fine unless I'm talking "and" charging at the same time.. I hear thats pretty typical.

This phone is very thin and the metal does conduct the heat better... which IMO is better for the health of the phone, but if you hold by its sides as you talk, you don't ever notice the heat at all and it seems to dissipate into the air before it ever heats up the whole phone.

All in all, the outer shell of the phone is an excellent heatsink.... now that the battery seems normal I'm good.

My E815 heats up quite a bit on an extended call. Nothing like my old 7868 Startac did though....you could actually smell it.

I went to the Verizon store in Fremont Ohio yesterday to purchase a LG VX8700 and the rep told me that it would cheaper to do it online.
Didn't even try to make the sale. He said he has been telling everyone that comes in for one to just go to verizon website and order it.
Apparently there is no connection fee, or something....and they also offer a $50 dollar rebate to "some" customers, that the stores aren't authorized to do.

The only thing stopping me from buying a 8700 right now is the battery life situation...which may or not be a real issue.
Fairly certain that is the way I am gonna go. If putting music on it is as simple as my wifes VX8300 then I am going to be pleased. And hopefully the calendar isn't a total piece of crap.

I'm rambling....its the Tylox...sorry. I'm medicated and trying to make sense...damn near impossible in my case.

the talk time in reality ends up being about 2 hours and 20 minutes for me... thats no playing with pictures etc... just talking... thats about 140 minutes....
a little shy of the 200 advertised.

But talking to a tech rather high up, he admitted those estimates are exaggerated and rated under absolute perfect conditions in the lab... probrably one call, no screen needing to light up etc.

At any rate, I happy with my phone, its a nice little beauty!

I have a 2 gig card in mine and lots of pictures "full resolution" as well as movies and haven't even scratched the surface of using my card up yet!

Picture quality is great as well as the zoom, edit features.

Audio while in a movie playback could be better however, but recordings of basic audio samples are very good.. I have some nice sound bytes I made of some mockingbirds in my trees as they get happy at night and drive me crazy!

I even pulled off the road once and recorded the sounds of a swamp while holding my phone out the window sitting still with the engine of my car off.

Its also easy to download wavs and send them to yourself and then you can save them both as a sound and a ringtone.

the advantage of saving as a sound is that you have it for later should you want to sent it to a friend or if you ever send your phone in for repair and they replace it, you will still have all your custom ringtones in the form of sound bytes as you can always send them to yourself again and save them "again" as a ringtone.

It interface with the net is nice as much faster compared to my old 6100 lg by far!

And lets not even talk about the picture quality or the screen resolution!... as its no comparison!

No complaints here.