Review: LG Fathom
Making calls on the LG Fathom is very easy. With the slide closed, you can just press the phone key and the dial pad opens immediately. With the slide open, just start typing a name into the Today screen and the address book pops up and starts searching your contacts for you. Once you're in a call, all the most important features are available as large buttons on the calling screen. It's easy to turn on the speaker, add a connection for a three-way call or mute the phone quickly, without any menu digging. You can also jump into your contacts list or open a note pad.
The Fathom uses Verizon Wireless' Visual Voicemail app. Verizon's voice mail is among the better looking visual message systems for voice mail. It worked great and was easy to use after the initial setup.
My contacts synchronized perfectly from Gmail using Google Sync as an Exchange service. You can set favorite contacts to appear on the Today screen as one of the tabs. Tap on a contact and a pleasant looking bubble pops up that lets you call, send a message or jump to your inbox to see messages from that person. There could be more quick jump options, like email or even navigation directions, but it was still fast and easy to use the shortcut.
The address book could be a little glitchy. Sometimes contacts simply disappeared and wouldn't even show up with a search. My own contact card disappeared mysteriously, only a moment after I had been editing the listing. Browsing the contact list, only names starting with "#ABC" showed up, and the Fathom wouldn't register my taps on the subsequent letter taps. I restarted the phone and all was well. This sort of bugginess and unreliability was unfortunately common on this phone.
You can add up to ten phone numbers per contact. You can also add three email addresses and three IM accounts. From the contact card, you can send an email, but you can't start an IM chat or jump to any other complicated action, so these fields are really wasted.