Verizon gave me a Samsung Rogue to play with and I love it. However, it’s not the right phone for me. It is, however, the right phone for my slightly tech-challenged younger sibling. It’s also a great gadget to just fiddle with.
If you’re looking for a Verizon phone that handles heavy loads of email, this isn’t it. Run off and get yourself a Blackberry Tour. But if you are more focused on messaging, photos, and calls, the Rogue isn’t a bad choice. It’s part of Verizon’s new phone category of Multi-Media Enhanced Phones. Think of these as sort of a step below a full smartphone, but a step above a standard-issue mobile device meant primarily for conversation. (Conversation? Who talks on mobile phones these days?)
The form factor is nice. It’s a little chunky, but it considering the slideout keyboard, that doesn’t bother me. It still slid into my front pocket. The keyboard was nice, although it has a bit of a rubbery feel to it. I don’t like the location of the FN key. Pressing FN lets you access symbols such as @ and #, which I use all the time. However, they shoved FN into the upper left corner. If your fingers are a bit large, the bottom of the screen bumps your hand and it’s hard to always hit FN. Minor inconvenience in the scheme of things, though.
The 3.1 inch display, Samsung’s highest resolution AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) display, is simply gorgeous. Colors absolutely pop. It supports 262,000 colors and sports a 480×800 pixel resolution screen. I had a little trouble with the screen in direct sunlight, however. Colors may pop, but the sun really fades it all out. It’s a touchscreen, although it does not have a touchscreen keyboard option (that I could find). I took to the touchscreen really quickly, using it almost exclusively until I realized I needed to type something. The device offers Samsung’s TouchWiz interface, that includes an expandable toolbar filled with shortcut widgets. This comes pre-set with shortcuts to the mobile versions of Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and MySpace.
The Rogue has all the standard Verizon features, such as access to the app store, access to VZNavigator (extra charge), Mobile Email (extra charge), and more. I was seriously unimpressed with the Mobile Email app. I found it to be cumbersome with a lack of options. But this isn’t supposed to be an email phone and Mobile Email is an additional download. I really liked the browser on the Rogue. It’s quick and simple, and had no problem loading my test site (my wine blog). The amazing display on this phone makes browsing the web quite pleasant.
What doesn’t seem to be available for the Rogue (yet) is a Twitter application. Sure, the main screen offers a shortcut to the mobile version of Twitter, but if you’ve used that, you know it’s lacking (Twitter’s fault though, not Verizon’s). Considering that Verizon launched a nifty Twitter app of their own, Tweet Tweet, the same day they launched the Rogue, well, it’s sort of a #fail on their part. This is such a great messaging phone, so they missed a golden opportunity. Not having a direct Twitter app seriously cut into my own ability to use the Rogue, as I’m accustomed to managing multiple Twitter accounts from any location.
The camera on the Rogue is pretty amazing. You can adjust the ISO, fiddle with the flash, change the resolution, and choose from shooting modes including Panorama, Frame shot, and Mosaic shot. I consistently got good photos, whether at a dark concert or in my own home. You can also change the setting to video and take fairly decent mini-movies.
Perhaps my favorite feature of this phone is the excellent voice recognition. You can train the phone to your voice, which is an accomplishment in my case. For some reason, most phones do not recognize a word I say, no matter how much I enunciate. I was able to train the Rogue by running through a several minute vocal setup. Now that it’s trained, I can pretty much voice command everything from calling or texting a contact, checking phone and battery status, checking voice mail, or opening any tool in the menu. In essence, this makes the Rogue a viable hands-free alternative, meaning I can drive and call someone without running off the road.
If a smartphone and always having your POP/IMAP/Enterprise email at hand is overkill for your needs, the Rogue is a pretty kick-ass phone. It certainly attracted a lot of attention when I was using it and I enjoyed it from a purely gadget perspective. It’s not a smartphone, though, which is a distinction I hope is made in the Verizon stores. However, it’s still a rather smart phone for the right person.
The Rogue is currently $99.99 from Verizon with a 2-year activation and the enhanced multimedia plan.
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