Hi,

It's quite in here, so I thought I would share a recent discussion I had, maybe start a conversation.

Recently there was a group of us sitting at a casual restaurant. The group included some friends of a friend and this person started talking about his new cell phone. He was surprised to learn that my VX-8300 is almost three years old. He spend the better part of 'more than enough time' trying to convince me of all the things I was missing out having such an "old phone".

I really don't see what the big deal is all about. So what if the phone is nearly three years old. The VX-8300 is a solid phone that does the one thing I need the phone to do, communicate. I'm a firm believer that the latest is not always the greatest. If you still have your VX-8300, I applaud you and use it proudly. :)

I'm reminded of a quote from Bill Maher:
"I don't need my cell phone to play video games or take pictures or double as a Walkie-Talkie; I just need it to work. Thanks for all the bells and whistles, but I could communicate better with ACTUAL bells and whistles."

A Vikings' death ceremony for the brave lad. :) Sounds like the SEND and END buttons are starting to wear out or possibly might need cleaning (can't say how one would go about doing that). I suppose you could always get another VX-8300, I don't know where exactly, but I suppose it is possible. Perhaps Verizon keeps extras for replacement?

My VX-8300 from day one has sat in one of those thin spongy black leather-like cases that snap over the hinge. It has a belt clip that slides on to a knob on the backside, but that has long ago been trashed. The leather-like case, even without the belt clip tends to make the phone a little more bulky, but when I take it out every so often to clean the case, the phone looks brand new. Despite the efforts of the Verizon store personnel to the contrary, I still have the original rubber cover for the charger port. :)

With nearly 3 years of non-stop operation it looks like a battery replacement might be forthcoming. While not always possible to do so, I try to drain the battery as often as I can by using the VX-8300 to determine when enough, is enough. I consider getting nearly 3 years out of the battery a fair deal.

The only disappointment I have with the VX-8300 is a couple of tiny bugs. I blame Verizon/LG who knew about the bugs, but chose for whatever reason not to fix them, even though the fix was a very minor one. Like when moving a file between the internal memory and a MicroSD card. The properties of the file and date stamp gets screwed up. But again, it is a tiny bug and I can manually fix it once the file is on the computer.

As to finding something comparable, I can't offer you a suggestion as I haven't done any homework, sorry. I wish you luck finding your next phone.

I think I have dropped the phone while standing up twice, fortunately both times on carpet. Far too many times to count just knocking it over while reaching for it. Both of our VX-8300 phones weren't purchased from a Verizon store, but from an independent company that sells a variety of phones, services and plans. While there I was looking at some of the other phones on display and to this day I remember picking up the, at the time, new Motorola phone and commenting on how it had such a flimsy hinge. It wiggled back and forth. The store owner commented that it had a lot of use from people handling it. At the time I figured, well, yeah, I suppose so. I then went on to purchase the LG. Here we are nearly three years later and with daily use the VX-8300 still doesn't have any wiggle in the hinge. Yep, it's a very sturdy phone.

Can the phone still take pictures with the lens protector removed?

Admittedly I haven't done a lot of research when it comes to "modern" phones. Of those I have seen, they appear bigger compared to the VX-8300 (although not the smallest phone itself). I don't text message or send data (I have both features disabled on the account) and many modern phones have mini-keyboards of one type or another, or a larger screen (battery consumption?), which tend to increase their physical size. I'm not a fan of slider type phones, clamshells rock (pun attempted :) ). When the VX-8300 had a new battery I recall getting 14+ days of standby or 5+ hours of continuous talk time. From what I have gathered, modern phones haven't improved the phone's up-time all that much.

Now having said that, I'm not opposed to modern phones. I just feel that if I should have to replace the VX-8300 (who knows how long the little champ will continue to work), that I would want to replace it with something similar, but not identical. For example, it would be nice if the replacement phone had a better camera (for Pix and Flix) and used a format/aspect ratio that was more, "standard".

Awesome phone. I've had it for about three years and it's worked flawlessly since day one. It still has v03 firmware. Most of that time I've just carried it in my pocket with no cover of any kind and it's still in reasonably decent shape. I'm sure some day I'll replace it (nothing lasts forever). I only hope that whatever I end up with is as good. It'll certainly be an LG. Incidentally, a quick search on Ebay netted 388 vx8300's for sale.

Congratulations on fixing your 8300.

I still have mine and it is working beautifully. The original battery seems to be holding it's own as well.