What's Good: Good reception, decent battery life, roomy QWERTY keyboard.
What's Bad: Resistive screen can be wonky at times.
Verdict: It's a good mid-range device, but the screen isn't always accurate.
The LG Rumor Touch offers a 3.0-inch resistive touchscreen with 262,000 colors and 240 x 400 pixels. Having worked with AMOLED displays in the past, it's not the most amazing screen in the world, but will certainly get the job done. The device ships in a small box, complete with the phone, battery, AC adapter, 1 GB microSD card, microSD card adapter, and instruction manuals. Overall, it feels good in the hand, and isn't too large (even when the keyboard is out).
Slide the device to the left to view the full QWERTY keyboard. With five rows, the raised keys made it easy to type long text messages and the like. Though navigating Sprint's OneClick interface was easy as always, I had issues with the resistive touchscreen. As with all resistive displays, I had to push the screen rather hard to get it to register my gesture, and it would often register in the wrong place. As a result, it became quite frustrating to use, and I found myself relying on the QWERTY keyboard for most navigational tasks. I'm still working with it for the full review, but I haven't been pleased to date.
The Rumor Touch offers a 2.0-megapixel camera, and while it works decently, it's nothing to write home about. Featuring four resolutions, you can customize several settings (white balance, color tone, and brightness, just to name a few) to your liking. The phone also offers a camcorder, which can record in MMS-length or longer for storage on the microSD card.
I've been working with the Rumor Touch in the Charlotte metro area, and call quality has been very good. I've had no issues whatsoever, and when I took the device to a Sprint dead spot in the area, the device was able to hold the call despite being a bit choppy. During calls, users told me that they could hear me fine, and I had no trouble on my end. I paired the Plantronics Voyager Pro Bluetooth headset to the device, and used it through conference calls with no issues.
The Rumor Touch offers 3G (EVDO Rev. 0) connectivity on Sprint, so the HTML web browser worked well throughout my testing. The mobile CNN webpage loaded in about 11 seconds, and the PhoneDog homepage loaded in 31 seconds. Other data-intensive tasks such as Sprint TV, Sprint Music, and Twitter worked incredibly well. Sprint's 3G connectivity has been flawless during the time that I've been working with the unit; I can't think of a single time I've seen it revert to 1X.
At the time of this writing, the LG Rumor Touch can be purchased at Sprint retail stores or online for $79.99 after a $50 mail-in rebate and new two-year customer agreement. For more information, check out Noah's video review, and stay tuned for my written review of the device!
