Review: LG Rumor Touch
If the touchscreen on the LG Rumor Touch was a high resolution, finger friendly capacitive display, perhaps the menus, with their tiny buttons, long lists and iPhone-like effects would make more sense. But the touchscreen stymies the user trying to tap small icons or drag through long shortcut lists. Press the Home key, and you aren't taken to a home menu screen, but rather a standby screen, then press again to get a customizable shortcut menu. But if you want a list of apps, you'll be tapping or dragging. It's like you rang the doorbell, but instead of letting you inside the house the Rumor Touch sticks you in the garage.
The main menu is an ugly list of options. It's poorly organized and confusing. For instance, where's my music, under Entertainment, or My Stuff? Right, under Entertainment. How about Sprint's exclusive NASCAR app? Thats under My Stuff. These could have been more intuitive. You can customize the shortcut list to your heart's content, including adding Web bookmarks and application shortcuts, but if you add too many you'll have to start scrolling, and scrolling is never pleasant or even reliable on the Rumor Touch's screen.
When you quit an app, you get the option to send it to the background or simply exit. If you send an app to the background, you can then open it much faster the next time, or you can shuffle between open apps by digging until you find the Application Manager (it's hidden under My Stuff, better create a shortcut). Too bad, because this ersatz multitasking is a nice feature, and a dedicated hardware shortcut would make this feature much more accessible. Also, the App Manager could be buggy, and it was sometimes impossible to exit out of apps, dragging down the phone's performance.
There are a few little niceties built in. New alerts pop up as bubbles on the otherwise spartan standby screen. It's a cute look. There's also a cutesy contacts feature under the address book called Hello. Overall, the LG Rumor Touch's interface isn't unattractve, and it can range from slick and polished to adorably cute. But it can also be difficult to control with even my dainty hands, and the attractive design doesn't work well on the unresponsive touchscreen.