Review: LG Cosmos Touch
The LG Cosmos Touch is an adorable little phone. It's fairly nondescript on the surface, but it's remarkably small and fits nicely in the hand. It's a bit thick, and a little heavy, but that doesn't make the phone any less appealing. It's a bit larger than the LG Neon II on AT&T, for instance, but it also features a larger display and a much more attractive look.
The Cosmos Touch is clad in all black, mostly a very appealing soft touch finish, except for a glossy face. It feels great holding this phone. The keyboard is clad in a dull, metallic paint with a light bronze tint, and this gives the phone a metal band around the middle. The 4-row keyboard snapped out with a reassuring clack sound. If I tried hard, I could wobble the top and bottom half of the slides, but this phone feels solid and very well built.
Up front, beneath the 2.8-inch touchscreen you'll find three hardware keys: Send, Back and End. That back button also doubles as a voice recorder button, so holding it will start the phone recording a voice memo. That's an odd choice, but not without some merit. All around the edges of the phone, the buttons are far too small and flush with the surface. They all need to be larger and raised higher, especially the volume rocker. On the right side you have a screen lock key, a camera button, and a microSD port with a port cover that felt solid. On the left you have the volume rocker, which does have a slight curve to it, but it's difficult to find without looking hard. There's also a microUSB port with another solid port cover. Up top you have a 3.5mm headphone jack.
The keyboard was a mixed bag. The keys are nicely rounded, but also very slick and small, so I made plenty of typos during my messaging sessions. The slightly tinted metal looks nice, but the light blue keys, and especially the lighter orange symbols, are very difficult to see under certain lighting conditions. It's actually easier to use in the dark, as the keys are well-lit from behind. The keyboard is somewhat generous, with a full row for numbers, but I would have made some different choices. Instead of a number row, I would devote more keys to symbols useful for messaging and email fans; give a key each to the @ symbol, the .com shortcut, and the smiley menu. All of those are present, but require the Fn key to activate.
The keyboard has shortcuts for voice dialing, silent mode, starting a new text message and jumping to the favorite contacts list, but these are not intuitive. The shortcut symbols are placed like punctuation marks, but they don't work with the Fn key. In fact, pressing the function key once, when you are not on a text field, takes you to the favorite contacts list. To activate the voice dialing, vibrate or new message shortcuts, you have to hold down those keys. That's too confusing.
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LG Cosmos Touch / Attune / Beacon
