LG Rumor2 (Sprint)

[ Music ] ^M00:00:02 >> Hi, I'm Kent German, Senior Editor here at CNET.com. Today we'll take a first look at the LG Rumor2. This is a new phone for Sprint service. Of course, this is an update to the original LG Rumor, which we saw about a year and a half ago. Some of the controls have been redesigned, not necessarily for the better. The original Rumor had a circular toggle. This is a square toggle. Some of these buttons down here just have a plastic feel, a little slippery, kind of glassy. I really appreciated the previous controls better. I found them a little bit easier to use. Tip the phone on its side like that, slide it up, I found the slider mechanism to be well constructed. The keyboard is equally roomy. I found that I could get in there and really type the messages quickly, pretty comfortable. The Rumor2 does add an extra row of keys up at the top, so there are dedicated number keys and even though there's that extra row, I didn't find the keyboard any less easy to use. There is a dedicated smiley button right here, so it's a nice touch, you can maybe text a lot, so, nice keyboard. Here on the back there is a design on the back cover, have a speaker right here, camera lens. No flash or self portrait mirror, but the camera remains at 1.3-megapixels, which a little disappointed about. I thought that LG really had the opportunity to come up with this phone and really make it better in the lot of ways, add EV-DO, maybe raise the camera resolution and they didn't do that. So, I found that definitely a new phone, but not so much improved. I really would hope LG to just added features, made this a little bit of a better phone. The one thing LG did at however is access to your work email if you have Outlook Web Access. Definitely you can get the mail, get in to your folders, synching was a little off. I found that I had to refresh constantly to really get the most current mail. Not the ideal situation for your work email, but you still can get it if you have the Outlook Web Access. Inside you will have the messaging and email access, that 1.3-megapixel camera I talked about, a very basic music player and Bluetooth. So, on the whole, good messaging phone if that's really what you're interested in, but really would have hoped LG stepped-in, add a few extra features especially the EV-DO, which will be nice in the phone that you're constantly using to access your work email. I'm Kent German and this is the LG Rumor2. ^M00:02:06 [ Music ]