Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 – Great messaging phone
For:
Gorgeous display, 3.5 mm headphones jack, good keyboard, impressive feature array which includes three megapixel camera, GPS, EV-DO Rev. A, and HTML browser along with Flash Lite. Call quality is pretty good.
Against:
Bulky, streamed video quality is quite poor
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 is 2.2 inches wide, 0.7 inch deep, 4.3 inches high and weighs around 4.3 oz. The phone is based on CDMA 2000 1X technology. Other features on the phone include vibrating alert, polyphonic ringer, call timer, conference call capability, voice recorder, and speakerphone. For wireless interface there is Bluetooth. The phone book can take in 1000 names and numbers. There is 90 entry memory for missed, dialed and received calls. For data/messaging, there are features like Microsoft PowerPoint support, Microsoft Excel support, Microsoft Word support, and PDF support.
Supported video formats are H.263, MPEG-4, H.264. The phone has a three megapixel camera. Organizer features include alarm clock, reminder, calendar, calculator, and stopwatch. The OLED display is 3.1 inches big and has a resolution of 800×480 pixels with support for 262k colors. Supported audio formats are eAAC+, AAC+, WMA, MP3 and AAC. The handset has 3.5 mm headphones jack. The lithium ion battery has a rated talk time of 282 minutes and standby time is 300 hours.
Razzle Dazzle:
Rogue and Impression phones by Samsung have lots of similarities in terms of design but if you look closely, you will find subtleties. This handset is 0.65 inch thick, 2.17 inches wide, 4.29 inches long and looks thicker and boxier on the edges. The handset weighs 4.94 pounds which is not that heavy. The battery cover is textured and because of this, the phone has a good grip. Further, the phone get a sophisticated look due to the silver and bronze color scheme.
Inside Dope:
Samsung has made lots of touch screen phones featuring full sized QWERTY keyboards and not all of them have been successful in the market. Before this, we got the Samsung Glyde (also by Verizon) and it came with lots of drawbacks. We also got the Samsung Impression from AT&T in our labs for review and that phone was a bit better. Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 is better than the two aforementioned devices. It has a touch screen along with QWERTY keyboard but apart from that, you will love the gorgeous AMOLED touch screen. There are other goodies in the phone like voice dialing and 3.5 mm headphones jack. It also has lots of high end features like EV-DO Rev. A, full HTML browser along with Flash Lite support, GPS, etc. This phone costs $99.99 and you have to sign a two year contract after $100 mail in rebate. This means the phone is quite affordable. But this phone needs a data plan and you need to play separately for that, 75MB/month plan costs $19.99 and 25 MB/month plan costs $9.99.
Display
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960’s 3.1 inch AMOLED display is the most attractive part of the phone. It is really gorgeous but suffers a bit in bright sunlight. You get a resolution of 480×800 pixels along with support for 262k colors. The colors are very much vibrant, images look bright and text too is sharp. You can adjust the dial font size, backlight, menu font style, home screen’s clock format, and effect of transition between the menus. On the bottom of the screen, there are four shortcut buttons for main menu, messaging menu, contacts menu and phone dialer.
Navigation array and keyboard
Below the screen, there four shortcut buttons for Send, End/Power and Clear buttons. The phone dialer’s virtual keypad is quite big and below the dialer, you get shortcut buttons for favorites, groups and contacts menu. Through this keypad, you can either type text messages or select new message option. Sliding the phone to the right will reveal a four row QWERTY keyboard. It is quite spacious with big buttons which are adequately raised above the surface for easy typing. The number and letter buttons are separated which is really cool. You also have the typical function and shift buttons along with navigation arrows and OK button for landscape mode navigation.
Phone book and PIM features
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 has a 1000 entry limit for the phone book and a single entry can take multiple phone numbers, IM handle, two e-mail addresses, street address, notes and birthday. You can make groups of your contacts and add a photo for Caller ID. There are 22 ringtones to choose from. PIM features include timer, notepad, world clock, stop watch, alarm clock, calendar, calculator, speakerphone, and vibrate mode. Few advanced features on the phone include USB mass storage, voice commands, file viewer for reading Microsoft Office documents along with PDF files.
Music player
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 has a user friendly music player interface. Music tracks are automatically segregated by genres, artists and albums. You can set the tracks to repeat or shuffle and the phone also lets you edit and create playlist on the move. The interface is quite simple, you have the album art in the middle and playback controls below the picture. The search tool lets you find your songs. The video player can play H.264 encoded video clips.
Camera
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 has a three megapixel camera which has really good photo quality. There are eight options for resolutions, the highest being 2,048×1,536 pixels and lowest being 320×240 pixels. Apart from that, there are three settings for quality, auto focus plus macro focus, self timer, autoshot mode, adjustable ISO up to ISO 400, three options for metering, and settings for sharpness, saturation, contrast and brightness. The camera also lets you record videos.
Call quality
Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 has excellent call quality. Our friends’ voice was really clear and there was no interference or static. Volume too was loud enough. On their side, our friends too said that we were clear. There wasn’t much noise in background.
Verdict:
This is an excellent messaging phone along with great multimedia features.
