Sprint and LG announced the availability of a new firmware update for the popular LG Rumor, bringing enhancements to the user interface as well as to the text messaging application.

Sprint, which has exclusivity for LG Rumor in the US, officially stated: "While we have confidence in the quality of this device, we do encourage Rumor users to take advantage of this simple over-the-air upgrade," so it's obvious that all LG Rumor owners should get the firmware upgrade. This can be done either by visiting a Sprint retail store or, more convenient, as an over-the-air (OTA) download directly to the phone, after accessing Menu > Settings > Tools > Update Firmware.

LG Rumor is considered a great phone for text messaging, due to its full QWERTY sliding keyboard, often mentioned as one of the best of this kind. And since for more and more users texting is one of the most important features in a mobile phone, it's obvious why Rumor has become such a popular device since its 2007 release.

Aside from being good for texting, LG Rumor doesn't excel in any other way, as it's an affordable and pretty basic CDMA handset that works on the 800 and 1900 MHz frequencies. The phone measures 109 x 51 x 18 millimeters, weighs 117 grams and offers a 176 x 220 pixels, 262K color TFT display. Also, LG Rumor packs a 1.3 Megapixel camera, but because it lacks Flash and Auto focus, it is only good to take snapshots when there's no better device around. Other specs include GPS (via Sprint Navigation), Bluetooth 2.0, Instant messaging (Yahoo!, AOL and MSN), voice recording, speaker phone and only 16MB of internal memory, but fortunately that can be expanded with a microSD card.

Since the firmware update is already available, happy text-sending owners of LG's Rumor should get it as soon as possible (if they haven't done it until now, of course).