T-Mobile myTouch Q Android Phone, Violet (T-Mobile)

Too many issues April 30, 2012

Reviewer:  Serenity  (Northeast USA) -

This is my first Android phone, so I was excited to have all these new features. My last phone was a Samsung Impression, which I really liked except for one or two quirks. But most people who like their phones seem to have a couple things they don't like about the phone, so those minor probs weren't a big deal.

Note that since it's my first smart phone, I don't have much to compare it to as far as day-to-day use... though I have used my kids' and husband's smart phones on occasion.

Pros:
1. The plugs are all standard, yay! Micro usb for battery charger and standard headset plug for headphones. About time.
2. Battery cover easy to remove. I had to really fight to remove the cover on my old phone.
3. Camera takes nice pics. Didn't think of how handy it would be to have a nice camera on a phone.
4. Call quality is usually quite good, speaker works well, and everything else seems pretty standard & intuitive.

Cons:

1. Response time is slow. After pressing a button on the touch screen, it takes a full second or two to react. Seems like no big deal, right? Well, when you are used to getting an immediate response you think "must not have pressed hard enough" so then you press again, and the cycle starts... by the time your finger actually hits the screen to press again, the screen has just switched so you've pressed something else. Then you try to press again, and here you are 3, 4, 5 touches later and you finally get to the screen or function you wanted to be at in the first place.

2. Video camera. The quality is xlnt, but you can NOT zoom DURING recording! That is so strange. Even my old non-smart phone allowed me to zoom while recording. If you want to zoom in, you have to exit the recording, set the zoom where you want it, then begin again. The quality when zooming in is not so great, anyway. Since I can't use zoom, I use my husband's phone and record from that instead.

3. The touch buttons on bottom (details, home, back, Genius) are ultra sensitive. I am constantly pressing the Genius button by accident. I don't like that button, don't use it, and wish there was a way to deactivate it, but from what I've researched you can't.

4. This could be a defect in my particular phone: Sometimes, esp during a call or while dialing, the screen goes black (times out). I try to turn it back on, eg to end the call, and the instant my finger touches the screen it goes black again. I can do this repeatedly, say several times over about a 20 second period, and I cannot use the touch screen to hang up or do what I want. Eventually the screen stays lit and I can finally hang up the call. This has been frustrating, esp when I have accidentally pressed the button to call someone late at night when I was just trying to view their contact info, and I just can't end the call fast enough to not wake them up.

5. As far as I know, you can't answer the phone any way except by sliding the screensaver via the touch screen. If your fingers have a little water on them (I'm talking just a little damp - I wouldn't use my phone with wet hands!), the touch screen won't respond. I've missed some important calls when my hands were not completely dry and I kept trying to slide the screen to answer. I like that with my old phone I could open the keyboard to turn off the screensaver/answer the phone.

6. No arrow button on the keyboard so you can move your cursor around.I found this VERY helpful on my last phone & had noticed other phones (like my husband's old iPhone) didn't have that feature. When editing a text message it can be challenging to get your cursor in the right spot so you can make corrections; having arrow buttons would help a lot! When I can't get the cursor exactly where I want by tapping the screen several times, I end up just using the backspace button & clearing a lot to start over. I use my phone for texting more than anything else - lots of texts! - so this is a problem for me.

We all got the new phones recently, and all of us have issues (the other phones with probs are LG Double Play and Samsung Galaxy S). The only one I like is my daughter's T-Mobile (HTC) MyTouch. I would have purchased that instead except I wanted a slide out keyboard for texting instead of just touch screen. The best part about her phone is the main buttons at bottom of screen (eg home, details, back) are not "touch screen" but actual buttons. Makes it hard to "press" by accident since you have to push down (lightly) rather than your finger just barely making contact with the screen, and the response to pressing those buttons on her phone is immediate.

** UPDATE October 4, 2012: Problems with my phone have gotten worse; like I stated above, it may be a defective one. The delay after pressing buttons can be really long - up to a full minute sometimes. Then the cycle happens where you cant tell if it accepted your touch or not, so you keep pressing, then have to start all over when you end up in the wrong place. oy vey!

The bigger issue, now, is when my screensaver is on. The way this phone is set up, there is a 911 emergency call button on the screen, allowing anyone to make an emergency call without having to enter the code to remove the screensaver. The problem is that the button gets easily pressed when it's in my purse or sitting next to someone or whatever. **What's the point in having a screensaver feature that doesn't LOCK the keypad? ** And since there is even more delay when pressing any button, I cannot end the 911 call before it goes through; I've had to apologize to the 911 operators numerous times in the past couple months. Last night another 911 call was about to go through (it shows the 911 numbers there, ready to "send") and I pressed the "back" button numerous times to try to stop the call, but it went through anyway. Weird.

The phone has also started turning off for no reason, with full battery, when it's just sitting on the table next to me.

Took one more star off my rating. Time for a new phone.

My Touch (Q) Don't touch November 11, 2012

Reviewer:  Scamper 

I have not written a review before, but felt the need to let people know the LG My Touch Q is misnamed and so misleading. It is not a touch screen smart phone. It should be called My Can't Touch Q stupid phone because a person can touch the screen all they want and it just sits there blacked out. If the screen does come on, good luck indicating a choice on it before it blacks out again. Touching the screen actually causes it to respond with blacking out meaning one can't hang up to end a call, can't make a choice on the numeric pad when necessary (as in cases of running through a menu "press one" for...") can't delete or save voice mail, etc. Don't even think of ways to make the screen come back on...nothing worked; not even sliding the key board out or bumping the power button. To end a call, litterally had to remove battery. The final blow was when I was dealing with customer service and could not make the choice to accept the "fix" being offered, the CS employee had to do it for me because I could not use the key pad on my "Can't Touch" phone. One tragic comedy was when it accidentally dialed 911 (which occurred frequently) and the response person called back wanting me to assure her I could "talk freely and wasn't a captive". I had to laugh, I told her I could talk freely, just don't ask me to touch any kind of choices on my "touch screen" phone.

Why did I choose this phone to begin with? I had a 4 year old HTC My Touch slide and loved it. but it wasn't working as well as it should. Unfortunately I upgraded to the My Touch Q for the slide out key board thinking it would be the same experience not realizing the mess LG made of the new model. Now I think I got this phone to promote business for anger management counselors. My Touch....whatever, I wanted to touch the phone alright, touch it right off a 20 story building.

One thing that kept me from blowing this phone up was the thought of the song line: "Can't Touch This" and I would laugh thinking about that song and Will Farrell: "no, you can't touch this". Dropped calls are easily blamed on a service carrier. I think we get bad phones and don't realize it is the phone. This phone did not get service even in my own home. What is the use of having a phone if you can't use it? I could go on and on about the problems with this phone, but to spare readers, let me end by saying T-mobile did take care of me, got me a great deal on a Samsung Relay and they gave me a new My Touch Q (had insurance). MMMM, NOT ANOTHER ONE, NOOOOOO. Had the same problems with the new My Can't Touch Q, I did give it a try, just to make sure. Same problems, so went with the Relay, sooo glad I did. WOW, nice phone, has it's own quirks but mostly like personality flaws, still does a great job and I have not had ONE dropped call, not ONE screen problem, and so far 911 has not had to worry about accidental calls from me. Such a NICE PHONE, but any phone that actually worked would have been better than MTQ by LG.

Please take heed: Don't get the My Touch Q unless you just don't have enough frustration and stress in your day and don't really want to use a phone except maybe for a hockey puck. Then this phone is sure to deliver.

issues.. January 15, 2013

Reviewer:  not impressed 

I must say, that I thought it was just ME. All these problems others are talking about happen to me as well. Since this was my first android.touch screen phone I thought that I was the problem. The worst is making calls and you cant keep the numbers on the screen with out it turning black and not coming back on. For some reason I do have a hard time getting good pictures from the camera. So it looks like I will have to deal with these issues until I can afford a new phone. But then what do I get?