LG Cosmos Touch: Good Keyboard, Average Messaging Features

With smartphones dominating the mobile landscape, it's easy to look past the ever-improving range of feature phones out there.  For those who don't need a smartphone, but could use a touchscreen in their lives, the LG Cosmos Touch should provide quite an attractive option.

Physically, it's a very compact messaging device for a handset that pairs both a touchscreen and a sliding QWERTY keyboard.  We like the soft feel of the primary material, as well as the rounded corners that make for a stylish design.  Display is a 2.8-inch resistive touchscreen (400 x 240 resolution) that, unfortunately, lacks the responsiveness we're used to with most modern phones.  Brightness and colors are all nice, though.  The four-row sliding horizontal keyboard is comfortable to use and plenty roomy, which is a surprise for such a small device.

As a phone, the LG Cosmos Touch made for average calls.  Voices came through loud and discernible, although there is noticeable static that creeps up on occasion.  Those on the other end reported a rather poor experience, claiming that our voices sounded hollow.  Speakerphone experience was similarly average.  Battery is rated at 6 hours of talk time.

All the usual phone features are onboard, including a variety of calling options, PIM tools, Bluetooth, voice recording and basic messaging.  Since this is a messaging-focused phone, more advanced communication features are offered, too, including mobile email (for POP3 accounts), IM (AIM, Yahoo and Windows Live) and SocialBeat (a social networking app).  There's no 3G or WiFi, though, so data is slow, even when working with light text transmissions.

There's onboard GPS with VZ Navigator, a wireless web browser and a rather basic music player.  Camera is a similarly basic 1.3 megapixels.  As expected, pictures are one of the weaker points, so forget using this for any involved image capture endeavors.

Overall, the LG Cosmos Touch is a strictly midrange messaging phone for casual use.  While we love the touchscreen and keyboard combo, it's quite lacking in features for more involved business use.  Plus, we think the price is a bit too much at $79.99 with a two-year agreement.