LG Rumor Touch

“The Rumor Touch proved to be a warrior in our performance testing. Callers said we sounded very clear, possibly a bit muffled but we had a head cold while trying it out which could easily explain that. On our end we had no problem hearing them and their voice sounded plenty loud and realistic. They rated us an 8.5/10, we may even give it a 9 on our end. Battery life was equally stellar. It is rated at 7 hours of talk time, quite a feat for a CDMA device especially with a touchscreen. It appears that even the heaviest of social networkers will have no problem going a few days with the Rumor Touch.”

“As a strict improvement over the LG Rumor2, the LG Rumor Touch offers significant benefits, including faster networking, a larger keyboard and better social networking support built in. But it still falls behind with a lackluster, and occasionally frustrating interface design. The addition of a sub-par, unresponsive touchscreen didn't help matters, and much of the long, list-based menus and tiny buttons were more difficult to use because of it. Worst of all, the new interface still doesn't live up to the Sprint One Click interface that you'll find on a phone like the Samsung Exclaim, without the bother of the touchscreen. That isn't to say there's nothing to recommend the LG Rumor Touch. The phone does a fine job handling calls and contacts, at least better than most feature phones, and the contact list acts as a nice jumping off point for the rest of the phone's features, including messaging, calling and even GPS navigation. The music player is simple, but the hardware is solid, and you can use high capacity memory cards as well as your own headphones, which means the Rumor Touch has some potential. I was even impressed by the new Social Zone software, which gives some proper respect to social networking communities that I haven't seen represented elsewhere.”

“The LG Rumor Touch is the third Rumor phone from LG on Sprint, and it's the first to offer a full touchscreen display. While the phone worked well during my testing, I wholeheartedly thought it felt dated from the second I turned it on. Data speeds were slow and web pages rendered awkwardly, the user interface wasn't fun to use, and its primary focus, messaging, was limited and watered down. The Rumor Touch may serve well as a first phone for some, or as a strictly SMS/MMS and calling device, but anyone else will soon find themselves wishing it could do more. For $79.99 with a 2-year contract, if you're planning to purchase one of Sprint's Simply Everything data plans to take advantage of some of this phone's data features, you'd be better off purchasing a smartphone. A smartphone, such as the Palm Pixi or HTC Hero, will offer better web browsing and deeper integration with your social networks.”

“The LG Rumor Touch is a good option for pay-as-you-go cell phone users because it comes with many advanced features and superior calling and messaging options. The phone's large size and operating system are limiting factors, but not ones that get in the way of keeping in touch or listening to music and occasionally enjoying web content.”