LG Rumor Touch – a breeze for messaging
For:
Excellent call quality; instant access to social networking Web sites including Facebook, MySpace, and Twitter; 3.5mm headset jack, stereo Bluetooth, GPS, EV-DO Rev 0.; full QWERTY keyboard
Against:
Average picture quality; QWERTY keyboard layout needs improvement
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
The LG Rumor Touch is based on the CDMA technology that supports dual-band of CDMA 800/1900. Its micro-SD expansion slot accepts up to 32GB cards.
3-inch touch screen has 240×400 pixels resolution that supports 262,144 colors. 2-megapixel camera features 4x digital zoom, and video-recording. The video capture resolution is QVGA 320×240 pixels.
The additional features are stereo Bluetooth 2.1, EV-DO Rev. 0 Network, GPS, and 3G support. Accessories supplied inside the package are wired headset, power charger, user manual, and battery.
Razzle Dazzle:
The LG Rumor Touch is 2.2 inches wide, 4.2 inches tall, and 0.6 inch deep and weighs 4.7 ounces. It feels solid and nice while holding in hands. It has rectangular shape with soft-touch back cover and curved sides.
Inside Dope:
The messaging phones become a trend previously and LG is making such handsets with full QWERTY keyboards. It has manufactured the enV and the Voyager for Verizon; while LG Rumor and the Rumor 2 are for Sprint. Now, the company has launched the latest – LG Rumor Touch. It costs $79.99 with two-year Sprint’s contract and has a design quite similar to the LG Xenon. The Rumor Touch features excellent call quality, EV-DO Rev. 0 network support, GPS, 3.5mm headset jack, 2-megapixel camera, and touch-screen. On the dark side, its picture quality and QWERTY keyboard layout needs improvement. The main highlight of the Rumor Touch is the Hello User Interface that provides great experience to organize the contacts. The touch screen is quick responsive even being resistive. Its mobile email supports Yahoo Mail, Hotmail, Windows Live Mail, Gmail, and AOL mail. You will also get the instant access to MySpace, Twitter and Facebook through their respective applications. More to like – the Touch also supports threaded text messages.
Design
You will find the micro-SD card slot, Screen/Power key, and 3.5mm headset jack on the right side; while the dedicated camera key and volume rocker are on the left spine. The camera lens with external speaker is on the back, and charger jack sits on the bottom.
Display
3 inches resistive touch-screen of the LG Rumor Touch has 240×400 pixels (WVGA) resolution that supports 262,000 colors. It shows crisp images and text. You can change the font size, backlight time, and brightness. The resistive touch-screen is not as smooth as capacitive one, but allows using both stylus and fingers. We like that you can also add the haptic feedback to provide vibrations and adjust the precision using touch calibration wizard.
Navigation Array
The navigation array is located beneath the display and includes Call key, home screen key, and back key. The welcome screen shows signal strength, battery life, and date/time on the top and home screen shortcut at the bottom. The new message will be indicated with small bubble icon at the upper right corner with small number indicating the received messages. On clicking it, the messages will pop-up as a floating bubble. We really like this interface. The home screen will show list view of mostly used items on selecting.
Hello User Interface
The main highlight of the LG Rumor Touch is its Hello UI. You can access it through Contacts list and it is very smart way to group the contacts. You will get four colored dots on the left side, which corresponds to different group. You can simply select add symbol and choose a contact from phonebook. The contact will be designated as a cartoon character on Hello UI. It allows adding six contacts per group. You can select any contact to check recent text message history, send new text message, speed dial, and quick access to contacts list.
The onscreen numeric keypad will comes after pressing the Call key. It has large and spacious numbers to dial with feel. It also has shortcuts for Hello UI, phonebook, recent calls history, and new text message. You can also use the T9 predictive keypad and handwriting recognition.
QWERTY Keyboard
You can slide the LG Rumor Touch phone horizontally to access the QWERTY keyboard. It has five rows including one for numeric keys. All the keys are spacious and are raised above the surface in bubble shape. It provides better typing experience. The arrow, Enter, and the Back keys have taken much space on the right side. The natural position of the thumb always goes on right side that causes accidental press of these buttons.
Phonebook and PIM features
The LG Rumor Touch can store 600 contacts in its address book. Each entry can save seven phone numbers, one email address, a Web URL, one instant messenger handle, a company name with job title, a memo, a birthday, and a street address. You can organize these contacts into caller groups and pair them with one ring-tone, a vibration type, and a photo for caller ID. The basic features are four vibration types, 33 polyphonic ring-tones, a notepad, a calculator, a calendar, a world clock, a speakerphone, and a vibrate mode.
Advanced Features
The advanced highlights of the LG Rumor Touch are EV-DO Rev. 0 network support, 3G support, GPS with Sprint Navigation, a document viewer, wireless backup, voice command, USB mass storage, and stereo Bluetooth.
The messaging features include threaded text and multimedia messages, and mobile email. You can also access social network Web sites such as MySpace, Twitter, and Facebook via their respective applications.
Sprint Services
Sprint has also included its services in the LG Rumor Touch. It includes Sprint Navigation, Sprint TV for watching on-demand video and live TV, and Sprint Music Store to buy and download on-the-air songs for 99 cents per track.
Music Player and Web browser
The music player features on-the-fly play-lists creation/editing, shuffle and repeat modes. The Web browser makes the complete usage of 3-inch display. It is not an advanced one that provides access to browsing history and tabbed browsing. However, the browser features Google search, turning images on/off, bookmarks, and adjusting font size.
Camera
The 2-megapixel camera of the LG Rumor Touch features 2x digital zoom, self-timer and the video recording. The still capture options are fun frames, color tone, white balance, brightness, three quality settings, and four resolutions. The overall image quality was average during test. You can record videos limited for MMS and longer in normal mode. The video recorder options are three resolutions and other similar to the still capture.
You can share the pictures and videos by MMS and uploading them on YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, and Photobucket directly from the phone.
Games and Personalization
The LG Rumor Touch comes with demo versions of three games: The Sims 3, the Midnight Bowling 2, and the Family Feud. The preinstalled applications are NASCAR Sprint Cup Mobile, and NFL Mobile Live. You can personalize the phone with available ring-tones, vibration types, screen saver, and wallpaper. More options and games can be downloaded from Web browser.
Call Quality
We made few calls through LG Rumor Touch via Sprint Service for testing. The overall call quality was perfect. We received crystal clear voice at our end without any static or harsh voice. That remained same for both indoors and outdoors. The callers received rich, natural and smooth sound at their end; which was similar to the landline call. The speakerphone calls were suffered from a bit echo, but it was normal.
Performance
We loaded few Web sites and download song for testing the 3G speed. A 2MB song downloaded in 20 seconds, whereas the GSMcellulars.com loaded in 15 seconds. The Sprint Live TV service was good, but some of the scenes were pixelated. The music quality was good on speakers and better on the wired stereo headset.
Battery Life
The battery life of the LG Rumor Touch is 7 hours of talk time. Its digital SAR rating is 1.2 watts per kg in accordance with FCC radiation tests.
Verdict:
If you need a touch-screen messaging phone with excellent call quality, then we will recommend you to buy – LG Rumor Touch. However, we hope that you can type continuously and accurately after some practice.
