I just switched from Sprint to Cingular this weekend and we talked to the salesman for quitet a while about what phones to buy and he recommended motorola and nokia for their quality.
In regard to this specific phone, it's given me more headaches then any phone I've ever owned. In the beginning it was a pretty neat phone, slides out, etc. but within 2 months it stopped getting signal (and this went off and on until I finally changed plans - I'd have signal for a few days, lose it for a few weeks, get it again, etc.) and then finally in the last month before changing plans my 0 and up button stopped working and then a few days before my 7 button died on me. I would NOT recommend this phone or any LG phones. It's like buying buggy software the day it comes out.
The salesman recommended staying away from the sliding phones for a while because they have a lot of problems and they've yet to be worked out yet.
Personally when I switched to Cingular I bought the 2125 smart phone that runs on Windows Mobile. I do a ton of texting and you can save all of your texts up to how large of memory you have in there, it has really great predicitive texting. With the blue phone above you can't add words, and if your 0 goes out you're screwed since you can't cycle through words (i.e. of and me). Also, it has a lot of little perks like being able to watch movies on it, a good game supply, being able to store and view windows office files (word, excel, etc.) and being able to sync with outlook on your computer to have a roving calendar. It was expensive, but so far it seems to have been worth the money.