Rob Goodlatte  

I rarely have anything good to say about my cell phone — Verizon’s LG Chocolate. The menu interface is slow and impractical, the keys are too small for my oafish fingers, it lacks a speakerphone, and the stylish front-face red buttons give no sensory feedback besides a quiet beep. About the only good thing going for the phone is its outward appearance — and Verizon managed to uglify that by slapping an iPod-esque wheel (which doesn’t function like a clickwheel) ontop of the beautiful original design.

Yet, because of its flaws, it is the world’s best alarm clock.

When the alarm goes off I have to deactivate it through a slow interface using hit-and-miss front-panel buttons. And if I want to re-set the alarm I wade through five screens when two would suffice. It’s a puzzle to turn this thing off every morning — ensuring that I’m wide awake by the time the alarm stops. The Chocolate’s complete failure as a phone makes it the ideal alarm clock — its bad design actually benefits the alarm feature, albeit in a rather backhanded way.