Thumbs Up - Music & Ringtones Blog - Thumbplay.com

No, that's not a wireless dessert. Verizon and Rhapsody just announced a joint venture to merge the popular Rhapsody subscription music service with Verizon's V CAST music service. Since everyone in the popular media is covering this partnership, we'll deal with the hardware side. Verizon said that nine of its current V CAST phones can be used with the new service.

But the first true Rhapsody-optimized phone, due later this summer, will be the LG Chocolate 3. No pricing has been announced yet.

This year's Chocolate will be a flip phone rather than a slider, with the music control wheel on the outside flap. You'll also get an FM transmitter to beam your Rhapsody tunes through your car's stereo system. For slightly more private listening, the C3 has dual speakers and for even more private listening, stereo Bluetooth.

For storing your songs, C3 has a GB of internal memory and a high capacity micro SD card slot. The specs say you can add up to 4 GB this way, but the high-capacity SD spec says you should be able to slide in up to a 32 GB card, when they become available.

Aside from Rhapsody, the C3 is also an ESPN MVP phone and sports a 2 MP camera.

Labels: cellphones