"Good Phone for you basic needs"
Pros: Good feature set for non-smartphone with email, Facebook, Twitter, Opera Mini, and has touchscreen; touchscreen is pretty accurate; 3G is definite plus; bubble-style texting interface is handy; includes predictive text feature for a decent keyboard.
Cons: Touchscreen can be a pain when scrolling through menus; Hello UI hard to get to, therefore kind of useless; keyboard layout not great; game selection sucks unless you are willing to pay; data plan priced like smartphone; Sprint's network; camcorder
Summary: Verizon has its Envs and Sprint has its Rumors. LG and Verizon obviously have a decent partnership, because the Rumor Touch is not the Env Touch. However, the Env Touch was an editor's choice, so it's pretty hard to be as great. That being said, the Rumor Touch is pretty decent in its own right.
User Interface (Touchscreen):
The touchscreen is not bad for a resistive one, but it is still resistive. Scrolling through menus often results in the accidental selecting of an icon, and keep your fingernails long. All in all, though, it is responsive enough for all but those who have been using capacitive screens since 2007. And let's face it, if you have been using capacitive screens since '07, you're probably not going to buy this phone anyway.
Overall, the UI is simple enough to understand and navigate, and the menus are easily customizable in an intuitive and simple way. The Hello UI is cool, but it's really hard to get to, and so I, for one, never use it, which is a real shame because it is a great concept, just poorly executed. Still, BREW (Qualcomm's OS, used on the phone) is simple and straightforward and will appeal to the heavy texter, and even the average one.
Features
The Rumor Touch has a great feature set for the most part, with dedicated Google Maps, email, Twitter, and Facebook apps. It also has both a default browser and the excellent Opera Mini, which is speedy and easy to use and great over a 3G connection. The email app is far from spectacular, and only works with Yahoo! and Gmail (so I couldn't hook up my Verizon account), but hey, it's there, and most people I know use Yahoo! and Gmail anyway. Still, it's really not a Blackberry. The Twitter and Facebook apps are similar to the email in that they are far for great, but they're there and that's a bonus any day on a feature phone (P.S.--I don't use Facebook and Twitter, so I really haven't used them except to see what they were--you should get a second opinion on them.). Google Maps is an awesome app that works as a GPS; it's kind of slow, but it will help if you are completely lost and need help, which is really what it's supposed to do.
Media
There is a microSD slot on the phone that can support up to 32gb microSD cards, so if you use it, you can put all the music on it you want, provided you buy the card. The multimedia is not bad. Sound quality is good, and videos are pretty much what you would expect from a 240x400 screen--kind of watchable.
Wrap-up
There was really nothing about this phone that really blew me away, but there was nothing that made me cringe either. The good things about this phone definitely outweigh the bad, and the few bad things are really mostly minor and hardly deal-breakers.
For everyone except heavy smartphone users, this phone will be great.Read full review
