Almost everything about the phone's physical design, for one. It may look perfectly fine in the press pics, but the LG DoublePlay is an absolute brick in the hand, well over half-an-inch thick, and weighing nearly half a pound — heavier than even massive slabs like HTC's Evo 4G, Amaze 4G, Titan and Rezound, and even a touch more than the tank-like Droid 3 and HTC Arrive sliders. In recent memory, only the Kyocera Echo, with its twin 3.5-inch screens and hefty folding mechanism, could balance the scales evenly. Here's a handy comparison chart.

To add insult to injury, there doesn't seem to be any perceptible reason for the extra weight here. Unlike any of the devices I refer to above, the DoublePlay has a distinctly cheap feel. While it does have a solid sliding hinge with very little play and I like the gunmetal-gray and silver motif, it feels like a predominately plasticy device and it can creak when held. The phone's ergonomics are pretty terrible, too. Remember how I said the DoublePlay was a brick? It's also easy to drop, with smooth edges and a lack of grippy surfaces to keep it from slipping out of your hands.

At least bricks have edges

Slide open the screen, and and it will be time to come to terms with the cramped, awkward layout of its smaller two-inch counterpart and a split-keyboard backlit by blue LEDs. Obviously some sacrifices had to be made to fit the miniature touchscreen, but the four-row keyboard not only ditches niceties like hardware search buttons for quick multitasking, but also any kind of spacing or staggering between its tiny keys. Their domed caps only served to make my thumbs press two keys at a time by falling into the valleys in-between. I did manage to bang out some email with the hardware keyboard, but I dreaded it every time, and I think this might be the first smartphone with a physical input mechanism where I preferred using Swype on the touchscreen.

Also, as we discussed earlier, you've got to keep a good grip on this phone to keep it from slipping out of your hands, but for whatever reason LG put the power button right along the curved surface you're likely to grip when typing. I often ended up accidentally shutting off the screen when trying to send out texts. There's nothing particularly wrong with the other minimalistic controls, though. The volume rocker has a firm, clicky actuation and a useful notch to tell up and down apart, and the typical four capactive buttons below the screen work well. The Micro USB port is covered by an unobtrusive pull-out shield, and the battery cover's easily removable if you want to swap cells out.

ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEr5yrn5VjsLC5jmtnamlfZn9whY5rbWtpZ26CcLjGZpuorZKhsrG4wLJkq52mnrK4