Fast fingers could win big money at LG's text messaging championships
Culver City (CA) - The fastest mobile phone texter could win $25,000 in LG's upcoming National Texting Championship. Owners of LG's enV or V handsets can compete in two regional events in Hollywood California or New York for $10,000. The winners of the events will then meet in New York and compete for an additional $15,000 dollars.
Up to 225 people can register for either the March 31st regional at the Paramount Studios in Hollywood or the April 21st New York regional. The winner from both events will meet in the national event that will occur right after the New York regional.
The rules for the event are pretty stringent and will keep most people from participating. First you must own the LG enV or V handset - no other phones are accepted. Second, you need to be subscribed to Verizon's service as of March 7th. Participants are hit with regular text messaging fees during the contest so Verizon and LG could very well make most of the prize money back in service fees.
Participants will be divided into groups and face single elimination rounds. They will have their hands behind their backs and the phones will be closed and on a table in front of them. A 10 second countdown will commence and when the buzzer goes off, they will text a message to the referee's phone. The first correct message with no typos will win that round. LG says the phrases will get more difficult as the contest progresses, meaning evil capital letters and weird punctuation marks will probably be required.
The contest could get heated and LG is making sure no fights break out. In the contest rules LG says, "Participants must refrain from the use of vulgar language or gestures... including harassment and threats." It boggles the mind why a fight would break out at a text messaging contest, but who knows?
LG is offering other nice prizes in addition to the big cash rewards. $50 Best Buy gift cards will be handed out along with free phones. Some lucky contestants will also get 42" or 50" plasma television sets. Not bad for twiddling your thumbs and fingers.
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Humphrey Cheung was a senior editor at Tom's Hardware, covering a range of topics on computing and consumer electronics. You can find more of his work in many major publications, including CNN and FOX, to name a few.