Chocolate 3 doesn't like long MP3's - Can any VZW media player phone play them well?

I just got a new Chocolate 3 with the hope that I could stop carrying an MP3 player around with me as well as a phone. So far, I love the phone, but the MP3 player is worthless.
I sync with MediaMonkey and mostly listen to podcasts, some of which are as long as 2 hours. Here is a list of issues I've seen so far:

1. The phone loses its place in the MP3 playback when I answer the phone, make a call or do any function that interrupts the MP3 player, even if I've paused the track first. Which means that I have to start over on the MP3 I'm listening to. The "Resume" merely starts you over at the first item in the playlist, rather than where you paused, which doesn't seem much like a resume function to me. This is a big issue that's complicated by:

2. Fast Forward is very slow. It jumps by 30 second increments every few seconds, so to get 20 minutes into a podcast means holding down the fast forward for over 30 seconds. If your finger slips and the button wiggles, you skip to the next item in the playlist and have to go back and start over. The player gets unstable when trying to FF with an MP3 longer than an hour, so FF past an hour is almost impossible. Complicated by:

3. The media player won't show a time longer than 60:17 (min:sec) or so on the display. One MP3 that was 1:55 long showed up at one point as 368:155598 and then crashed the player, zeroing all the playlists. I've started breaking the longer MP3's up into smaller segments, but that's not a long term solution.

Frankly, these are deal-breakers for an MP3 player/Phone combination. Adding insult to injury is an interface that takes too many steps to use common functions and tons of missing or poorly designed features compared to any dedicated MP3 player I've previously used. I could possibly put up with this if I were just listening to 3 min. long pop music tracks, but these issues make it essentially impossible to use this phone to listen to my podcasts.

Are any of the other Verizon LG phones any better, or is the same music player functionality used in all the LG MP3 capable phones? Perhaps a different brand of Verizon phone, like the Samsung Glyde?

I wrote an unhappy email to Verizon and I got a very nice call from the Customer Service the next day. Props to them for a quick response, but no solution seems forthcoming. They apparently dont' have anyone there who actually USED these things and had any MP3 experience who could help me out, or at least nobody they were willing to let me talk to.

I know I can get this functionality if I leave Verizon and use an iphone, but I HATE iTunes ( There's no mediamonkey support for the 3G or 2.0 firmware yet ) and would rather carry two items around.

Keep in mind Verizon Wireless does not make the phone, LG does. Ultimately they only provide the actually cellular service. These are limitations with the phone. I suggest contacting LG. Although also be mindful, most people do not use the Mp3 players to listen to pod cast.

I've called VZW and they've said they'll look into it, but they have never heard of anyone using the phone for listening to podcasts and they don't make any claims of its podcast capability.
Perhaps I should just tell them that I am listening to long classical music MP3's or something, because the phone's behavior would be the same and I might get less confusion about my application...

Since I'm within 30 days of purchase on this phone (I've only had it about 5...) they're willing to give me a different phone, but so far they have been able to provide zero information on what different phone would have better functionality when playing long files.

I'd prefer not to just take a stab in the dark at getting a better phone ( hey, it could be worse), so I'm holding off until I have a better idea what replacement I ought to get. Suggestions welcome, preferably based on firsthand experience with 1+ hour files.

I've spoken with LG, too. I've sent them a description of my bug and they're trying to recreate it. If so, perhaps they can tell me what phone in their line would be better. For instance: How is the Dare at playing larger files? Again, I'm waiting for their response.

My other problem is that I'm 3 hours away from the nearest Verizon store, so I can't simply zip down there with MP3's on my microSD card and give a bunch of phones a try. I can only rely on the suggestions of other folks with firsthand knowledge of other models of phones.

After all, choosing a phone based on the description on the VZW web site is how I ended up with the Chocolate 3. It was praised as an MP3 player and had good reviews, so it seemed like the logical choice for my desire to listen to MP3's.

My hope was that users of this forum might have some experience using the media players on their phones with longer files ( or would be willing to try them...) and I could come back to VZW with an alternative phone for exchange.

I don't know of any phone/PDA/BB that wouldn't have an issue with hour+ long tracks. Many computers can't do that without memory issues. I would suggest trying to reformat these podcasts into a more compressed format (aka WAV to MP3 or WMA) I don't know what you currently use, but it may require less buffer time and free up memory to avoid crashes.

Podcasts already *ARE* MP3's. They're not any different than an hour long classical music track, though they usually have a lower bitrate ( often 64k ) since their content is usually talk.

Perhaps I need to just stop calling them podcasts and just start calling them long MP3's to avoid any confusion.

I've owned five MP3 players in the last 7 years from various manufacturers ( Archos, Creative, Sandisk, Cowon, Samsung ) and all of them have been able to play longer MP3's.

I've also owned (or have used/tested for work ) a bunch of smartphones: both palm and windows based Treos, several HTC devices, Samsung i730, and a palm-OS based Kyocera which was one of my favorites. Currently I have a blackjack II from my job.
Some of those smartphones have required additional software to accomplish it, some have been better at it than others, but all have been able to play long MP3's. The windows based ones can do it with media player, despite the fact that it's a lousy program.

If you have an MP3 capable Verizon phone, will you please test yours?

Here's the URL to a site with a 2 hour MP3 podcast. twit.tv/ttg476 ( Please cut and paste into your browser. Sorry, but as a noob on this site I can't post links)
Click on the link that says "Download MP3".

Put it on your phone and see how difficult it is to fast forward to the last 15 minutes of the show. See if you can make/take a call and return to where you left off. Tell me if the display shows the correct length ( Should be 2:00:00, according to the site ).

Then please post the results. I can exchange my Chocolate for a different phone, but I'm not eager to do that until I know for sure that the replacement phone is an improvement.

I'm having the same problem with an LG Voyager I just bought. I'm trying to listen to the Opie and anthony show on it, and it'll barely play more than an hour or even let me FF more than an hour into it before the phone reboots. Anyone know if a smartphone with windows media player will play longer podcasts or longer radio shows?

I have not been successful in getting my Chocolate 3 to play longer MP3’s. note: I’ve had to avoid using the word “Podcast”, because everyone at Verizon or LG that I’ve spoken to seems to think it’s some of unusual file format, rather than just a long MP3.
I was upset with the capabilities of my new MP3 player phone which turns out to have very poor MP3 player functionality, so I wrote an unhappy email to the President of Verizon wireless. To their credit, I got a call from their customer service department the next day. Unfortunately, since then, they’ve done essentially nothing to help me solve my problem other than call me.
I’ve had two weeks of regular phone calls where they tell me that they never designed these phones to play these types of files, or that they never expected people to use them like this.
Eventually, they got one of their technicians to TRY a long MP3 on a Chocolate 3 and admitted that the test phone exhibited the same faults I had pointed out. The offered to let me buy a different phone and return the one I already have, but were unable to suggest a phone with any better functionality. Nor were they willing to even TRY the same file on other phones and tell me how it worked out. So, while I can purchase a different phone, It’s a shot in the dark if it’ll work any better than my existing phone.
They even suggested that poor MP3 performance on any other Verizon phone would be a foregone conclusion, saying that all of their phones shared similar code for the media player functions. I already know this to be untrue, since I’ve had Windows Mobile phones that could play podcasts, I’ve been told by others that the blackberry pearl (maybe others ) can play them, and my wife’s Chocolate phone doesn’t exhibit all of the same MP3 behaviors. I’ve come to the conclusion that they don’t care about MP3 functions and want me to go away.
They were unwilling to help in any way with choosing a replacement phone, saying that I should instead go to the nearest Verizon store ( Miami, a 6 hour round trip ) to try them out. They were even unwilling to put any of this in writing or connect me with anyone else to try to sort this out.
All in all, a pretty unsatisfactory customer service experience.
I’ve come to the conclusion that if you want a decent MP3 player built into your Verizon phone; get a windows mobile phone or a blackberry. Don’t expect any of the embedded players to do anything more than play 3 minute pop song mixes, and even then don’t plan on them doing it very well. They’re not a feature for feature replacement for a regular MP3 player, and likely incapable of satisfactorily playing hour long MP3’s.
Better yet, leave VZW and get an iPhone. That’s what I’ll be doing.