Now that the LG Chocolate has finally launched, Verizon has apparently figured out that charging $15/month for the privilege of visiting the V CAST Music store is probably not such a bright idea. In what appears to be an intentional simultaneous release with the Chocolate phone, V CAST Music is now free to browse -- sure to delight 2-inch-window shoppers everywhere. The monthly fee previously required to access the V CAST VPak, which allowed you to shop for tunes on your mobile, has been nixed. Now anyone with a "V CAST Music-enabled" device can download tracks to their cellphone at the current rate of $1.99/song (or $0.99 if downloaded to a Windows XP-based PC). The $1.99 downloads contain two songs: one for the phone and one for the PC, but songs downloaded directly to the PC can be transferred to the mobile free of charge (Verizon, making things easy?). While it might seem a tad ridiculous that such a fee was charged in the past, at least Verizon is headed in the right direction here, and who wouldn't be excited about having to "only" pay $1.99 for a single?

[Via Mobiledia]

With the flurry of phone and mobile industry announcements this past week (Engadget Mobile even outposted the original once or twice), you'll have to forgive us if we didn't catch some of the more, um, run-of-the-mill handsets revealed at CTIA, but hey, that's what the weekends are for. Truthfully, the Kyocera K822 isn't really all that ho-hum, as it sports both a 1.3 megapixel camera and 30MB of memory complemented by a microSD slot for pics and tunes (MP3/AAC/WMDRM), packed into a clamshell design with dual color displays. Other niceties on this tri-mode CDMA model include Bluetooth 1.2 with A2DP, FM radio, and external media controls, as well as a pretty attractive $140-after-subsidies price tag.