Samsung U960 Rogue
| Compatible networks | CDMA |
|---|---|
| Dimensions | 4.29"(H) x 2.17"(W) x 0.65"(D) |
| Weight | 4.94 ounce |
| Memory | 200 MB, 28 MB RAM |
| Display | 3.1" AMOLED Touch Screen |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth / USB Cable |
The SCH U960 (or "Samsung Rogue") is a CDMA touchscreen side-slider cell phone made by Samsung. The phone features a QWERTY keyboard, Bluetooth, MP3 Player, GPS, and a 3MP camera with Geo Tagging. It will also use Verizon's EVDO Rev A data network. The Rogue runs Samsung’s TouchWiz UI with widget bar on the side (or the bottom when the phone is in landscape mode). The widget bar is heavily populated with social networking widgets including Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, Twitter and Photobucket. The Rogue also has widgets for most commonly used applications like calendar, favorite contacts and tools such as Bluetooth and settings. Like other TouchWiz phones, you can drag a widget to the phone’s today screen and you can choose which widgets populate the widget bar. This isn’t however TouchWiz 2.0 which means you can’t download additional widgets.
In the U.S., the Rogue was released on September 8, 2009.
Display and menus
The 3.1-inch AMOLED display support 262,000 colors and offers 480 x 800 pixels. The Rogue ships with a resistive touchscreen. Besides the brighter and sharper picture quality, AMOLED screen sucks less battery juice of the cell phone and is slimmer than LCD screen.
The Rogue runs on Samsung's TouchWiz user interface for "drag and drop" controls.
Connectivity and power
The Samsung Rogue has average battery life compared to 3” and above Verizon touch screen phones. The rechargeable 960 mAh battery has a claimed usage time of 4.7 hours and claimed standby of 12.5 days. In our tests, the phone lasted for about 4 hours in a mix of talking, accessing V CAST Music and V CAST Video, sending messages and surfing the web. The standby in tests was about 9-10 days. If you use the phone as a GPS navigation device, watch on-demand videos on V CAST Video and check your email constantly, expect to charge the phone every other day or every 1.5 days.
Phone calls and phone book
The Rogue can also store up to 1,000 contact names with a photo ID, email, address, work and mobile phone numbers, fax numbers, an IM screen name, and birthday. The Rogue has Nuance voice command and voice dialing software.
The Samsung Rogue has decent reception, getting full bars on 1X and 3 out of 4 bars on EV-DO when in very strong coverage areas, and 2 bars of 1X and EV-DO in most areas with good coverage. Bad weather and spotty coverage prove challenging for the phone and we noted it dropping the EV-DO connection under those circumstances. The Samsung did fine holding onto 1X and did not drop a call. The Rogue has very good voice quality via both the earpiece and the built-in speakerphone.
Camera
The Samsung Rogue U960 has an integrated 3-megapixel camera with flash, self-portrait mirror, camcorder and digital zoom. There is a dedicated camera and video key on the Samsung Rogue handset for quick access to camera features. The handset comes with numerous "pre-shot" options include single, multi-shot, panorama, mosaic or frame shooting; flash; brightness adjustment; timer; auto-focus; auto-shot; fine, normal or economy photo quality; white balance; metering and ISO; contrast; saturation; sharpness; normal, black and white, antique, aqua or negative color effects; and several resolution options from 2048 x 1536 px down to 320 x 240 px.
Once a photo is taken, users can add an effect (grayscale, sepia, green, blue, sketch, emboss, soft-glamorous, soft-elegant, soft-charismatic, spring sun, dawn, fright, cinema-normal, cinema-black and white, cinema-old), merge, rotate or flip, resize, adjust for weather or lighting conditions, copy and paste, save or trash the photo, or view it in a slide show.
They can also draw on the photo with a "pen," and select the color, thickness and shape of the item they want to place on the photo.
As a camcorder, consumers can turn the flash on or off for recording, adjust brightness, record in storage or sending size, have a timer, white balance, color effects, adjust quality, and record in 176 x 144 px resolution.
To edit videos, a "Video Wizard" splices and merges files into one video, adjusts volume, edits sound, trims, splits or copies video, inserts text, or adds an effect (black and white, sepia, posterise, solarize, blur, sharpen, noise, emboss).
Videos can be sent, saved, erased, viewed in a slide show or saved as a project.
The Rogue's camera has the advantage of 3.0-megapixel. And while its video quality is mediocre and photo quality is good but not amazing, what really makes it a great device for shooting stills and video is the editing functions -- the ability to adjust, change and create new projects directly on the phone.
Web Browsing and Text Input
The Samsung Rogue has a full QWERTY keyboard and support for POP email, corporate email via Verizon’s services and mobile IM. The Samsung Rogue has a full HTML browser (Polaris v6.1) that can display full HTML pages in desktop style. Full HTML pages don’t load very fast if you don’t have a strong EV-DO signal, but page rendering is very good. You can use fingers to drag the page and move around; page scrolling is very smooth and responsive via finger touch. There is a zoom tool that allows you to zoom in and out of a page, and the web browser offers most common settings for history, cache, cookies and other security settings.
Ringtones and Audio Playback
The music player is currently not able to multi-task. The Samsung Rogue is a very capable music player thanks to the high quality built-in speakerphone, a 3.5mm stereo audio jack, Bluetooth A2DP and V CAST Music services. The phone also has plenty of space internally to store music and its microSD card slot supports high capacity storage cards. The built-in media player can play music in MP3, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+ as well as WMA formats. If you have tunes ripped in iTunes or Windows Media Player, you can play them on the Samsung Rogue. The loudspeaker, though mono, is loud and sounds very good. Audio via wired headset and Bluetooth stereo headset sounds even better. You can also buy tunes from V CAST music over the air or via PC if you have a subscription to Rhapsody.
The phone uses MP3 polyphonic and truetone ringtones and has vibrate options.
Specs
Samsung Rogue specifications
| Category | Sub-Category | Info | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Network | Type | CDMA | |
| Data | CDMA/PCS/1x, EV–DO, Rev A | ||
| 3G Capable | Yes | ||
| Size | Dimensions | 4.29"h x 2.17"w x 0.65"d | |
| Weight | 4.94 oz | ||
| Design | Form | Side Slider | |
| Antenna | Internal | ||
| Battery | Type | Li - Ion | |
| Talk | Up to 282 minutes (4.7 hours) with standard battery. | ||
| Standby | Up to 300 hours (12.5 days) with standard battery. | ||
| Main Display | Resolution | 480x800 pixels | |
| Features | Light and Proximity Sensors | ||
| Touch Screen | Resistive | ||
| Camera | Resolution | 3.0 megapixels Resolution | |
| Video | VGA (640x480) | ||
| Features | Flash: Yes, Digital zoom | ||
| Notifications | Polyphonic Ringtones | Yes, MP3 | |
| Vibration Alert | Yes | ||
| Messaging | Text Send/Receive | Yes | |
| EMS | Yes | ||
| MMS | Yes | ||
| Instant Messaging | Yes | ||
| Multimedia | Video Playback | Video player for WMV, MP4, 3GP, 3G2 Formats | |
| Music Player | CMX.2.5.0, EVRC, QCELP, I-Melody, MP3, M4A, AAC, AAC+, WMA | ||
| Memory | Memory Slot | microSD/microSDHC (up to at least 16 GB), 512mb internal memory | |
| Connectivity | Internet | Full HTML browser | 3g2/AAC Audio/Video web browser player |
| USB | microUSB | ||
| Bluetooth | Stereo 2.1, yes (also works with movies and GPS) | ||
| Connectors | HeadPhone Jack (3.5mm) | ||
| Other Features | PhoneBook | 1000 contacts, Caller groups supported, Multiple Numbers Per Contact, Picture ID, Ring ID | |
| PIM | Alarm, Calendar, Calculator, TO-DO, Stopwatch, World Clock, Notepad & Drawing Pad | ||
| Voice | Recording, Speaker Phone | ||
| BREW | Yes | ||
| Yes | |||
| GPS | Yes | ||
| FCC Approved | Yes |
References
 | This article includes a list of references, related reading, or external links, but its sources remain unclear because it lacks inline citations. (November 2009) |
