The original Cosmos had a good run as a messaging phone on Verizon, but what if you want a touchscreen? Well, you're in luck because Verizon and LG have decided to upgrade the Cosmos and add a touchscreen display. I've only had our demo unit for about half-a-day, but I can already tell it's a decent messaging phone. Here are a couple of other things I've noticed:

- It's sort of a chunky device. It measures about 4-inches by 2-inches and is .65-inches thick, so it's kinda short and stubby. That's not necessarily a bad thing. I guess a better way to describe it would be small and cute? Anyway, it's not big and heavy, it's more small and somewhat light.

- The 2.8-inch screen seems big enough. It is a resistive touchscreen, but it seems to be pretty responsive. You are supplied with a physical keyboard so you won't have to worry about using the touchscreen to type on.

- Speaking of the physical keyboard, I'm a little on the fence about it. It's small and possibly a little cramped, depending on how big your hands are, and it doesn't have a dedicated spacebar row, which means the spacebar is in a row of letters. This usually throws me off, but I'm starting to get used it. I still don't like the layout though, so we'll see what my opinion is after testing it out more thoroughly.

- The UI is similar to what we've seen on other LG phones, but there are a few differences. The main screen has a dock at the bottom and a widget drawer, then there is a page for your favorite contacts and a page for messages. Simple and familiar. I like it.

- The 1.3 MP camera is less than unimpressive, but I guess we'll make do with what we're given. I haven't taken many test shots, but I'm guessing camera quality will be pretty sub-par. It would have been in LG's best interest to up the camera to at least 2 megapixels, if not three, just so the Cosmos Touch had more of a fighting chance again Verizon's other messaging phones.

- As far as peripherals go, it's nice to have a microSD card slot on the outside of the device and a dedicated camera key. Not a big deal, but I'm glad they're there. The phone does not ship with a microSD card but it has the slot and supports up to 16 GB of external memory.

- The $79.99 price tag seems pretty fair and standard.

So those are my first impressions. I haven't had a lot of time to test out the phone, but like I said in the introduction, it seems to be a pretty well-designed messaging phone with good features and a good keyboard. Further testing will show exactly how good it is. Check back to PhoneDog.com for the full review.