Cell Phone Review: Alltel's LG Scoop

If you are big on cell phones or you are the type of person who likes to know what is what before you buy a cell phone, you are in the right place. Today we are going to take a look at the LG Scoop for Alltel.

NOTE**Alltel no longer sells the LG Scoop on their website (www.alltel.com) or in their stores, but you can still buy a Scoop off ebay.com or find someone who is getting rid of theirs.

Colors and skins:

The LG Scoop comes in a wide range of colors: blue, lavender, citrus (orange), black, and red. When it comes to buying a skin covering for the Scoop, you must know that you will not be able to cover all the original coloring on the Scoop. The Scoop does not have a re-moveable face plate; the color re-mains. You can get a face "covering" to change color and design of your Scoop, but the original coloring of the phone will show when you slide out the QWERTY keyboard. The back of the keyboard will not be covered by the face "covering", so you will have whatever color your phone is - on the back of your keyboard.

The Keyboard:

I read so many reviews on the Scoop before I bought it, and a good 95% of them were about the keyboard. A lot of people were saying "the QWERTY is way too small", "the buttons are small and hard to push", and so forth. Personally, being a female, I have small hands and I like the size of the QWERTY. I find the phone comfortable to hold when texting on the keyboard and I think the keys are just the right size.

Now when men have used my phone, I notice that they have difficulty with texting with the keyboard. Why? Their thumbs are too large and they end up pressing more than one key at a time when they use the keyboard, which is frustrating for them of course. So, I would not recommend the Scoop for men with larger hands, especially if you are looking for a QWERTY keyboard phone in specific.

I do have a complaint about the keyboard. After I first purchased the Scoop, I was 10 seconds away from throwing it out the window. The QWERTY's "backspace" key tends to delete your entire message sometimes. This gets very irritating when you completed a full text, but messed up an area and want to fix it because when you backspace - the entire message erases and you have to start over.

Screen:

When I first opened my LG Scoop's box, the screen was the first thing I noticed. I was very large for the body (2-in display), and I liked it. The colors were very vivid and bright. The screen was very responsive when I would slide out the keyboard, and flip side-ways to adjust.

Now, LG was having a problem with the Scoop and Rumor (Both the same phone, but different providers: Alltel Scoop and Sprint Rumor). The screen would go white until you slide out the keyboard, and then the display would return. But there would be no display when the keyboard was in. I have not personally had this problem with my Scoop, but it seems other people have. It's a good thing to know before you buy the phone, though.

Body:

The body dimensions are 4.35-in x 2.02-in x .71-in. Like I stated before, the Scoop feels comfortable in my hand and it is just the right size, but it seems to be uncomfortable in larger hands.

The body has rounded off edges, a 2-in display, then a normal phone keypad. Turn the phone side-ways (so the screen is to the left) and slide out the QWERTY. The QWERTY slides out with ease and you could slide it out with one hand. Some phones with slide out keyboards take two hands because they are tougher to slide.

The camera lens is located on the back of the phone. The Scoop has a speaker, with very nice sound quality, located on the back of the phone as well.

Camera:

Does the Scoop have the best camera? No. But it does have a decent 1.3 MegaPixel digital. The phone allows you to zoom in on items with a 2x zoom. You can also use the camera to record video. There is no flash on the camera, so indoor photo quality is rather low. But photos taken outside have very nice color and quality. I do not like using the zoom when taking a photo, because most of the pictures come out very, very poor quality.

Additional Features:
As for games on the phone, it doesn't come with any. You can play music on your phone, but you need a Micro SD card to hold the music or go to the music store online using your phone. Change your wallpapers up using one of the many wallpapers provided or personalize your ringer or message alerts using the wide range of sounds provided. You can customize your phones display by changing the color from Ocean (blue) to Black. You can also change up the menu style from banner to icon and feel free to change your font with one of the three available.

All-in-all, the Scoop is a nice phone. It has some down sides but all items do. If you are getting the phone just for its QWERTY, make sure you read about the keyboard before you buy the phone.