Samsung Rogue SCH-U960 Phone, Black (Verizon Wireless)

I am very disappointed in this phone. Part of the problem may be my own expectations -- many, including some Verizon sales associates, have billed the Rogue as the next best thing to a smartphone. Maybe it is, but I found myself very frustrated with it.PROS:* the screen is beautiful, bright and vibrant.* the slide-out keyboard was nice, and easy to type on.CONS:* I read quite a few reviews here and elsewhere and didn't see anyone mention that this phone does not use a standard mini-USB port. Most phones, like the Blackberry and Motorola phones, have moved to a standard mini-USB port on the phone, which provides cross-compatibility with other mini-USB chargers. I was extremely disappointed to open the box and find out that the Rogue has its own oddball charger, which then necessitates shelling out extra money for a new car charger, new charger for the office, etc.* Touchscreen scrolling was cumbersome. I had a hard time navigating using the touchscreen scrolling -- either it would not scroll, or would scroll past where I was trying to go.* The web browser stinks. Even on WAP pages, instead of fitting the page to the screen so that you only have to scroll up & down, the browser displays pages wider than the screen width, so you have to scroll both right-left and up-down to read a page. And did I mention the touchscreen scrolling doesn't work well?It also took numerous clicks to highlight an entry field so that I could enter text. And I frequently got "400 - Bad Request" errors when trying to use non-mobile web pages.* the camera has really long shutter lag. I'm not looking for a pro camera on a cell phone, but it takes so long between when you click the button and when the phone snaps the picture as to make the camera nearly useless.* no built-in calendar sync option... i knew this before i bought it. i'd read that there were some workarounds like Verizon's corporate-level mobile email service ($10/mo.). If I liked the phone better, it would have been more tempting to use one of those workarounds, but I really disliked this phone from the get-go.* the phone is just bulky and not comfortable to hold onto or talk on for any significant length of time.Bottom line: I'm biting the $30/mo bullet, returning the Rogue and getting a Blackberry.

Not good, it came without charger.

Four months ago I replaced my simple cheap Nokia phone with a Samsung Rogue. Over all it's pretty nice, although it seems to sit in a strange market niche below "real" smartphones. It has an HTML browser, and most of the user interface is pretty slick (anything non-Verizon), but it doesn't seem like there will be many (if any) applications available. A few specific thoughts:* The screen is beautiful.* The camera seems to be pretty good. The flash is blindingly bright.* The browser is decent. It renders pages well; it's not as snappy as my iPod Touch (1st gen), but this phone doesn't seem to be targeted at smartphone users anyway. I haven't figured out how to remove the Verizon bookmark or lower it in the list, so there's one fewer bookmark I can reach without scrolling. It's got some sort of "lite" Flash plugin, but I can't use Hulu or Pandora so I'm not sure what value it's adding. I haven't tried Flash games. One annoying thing is that Google seems to provide a "mobile-friendly" translations of pages when you click on a search result, while the Rogue can often handle unmodified websites. I haven't found a way to turn the Google feature off and keep it off.* While I'm not a fan of resistive touch screens, I got used to the Rogue's screen quickly. I still don't understand why Nokia's N900 uses a resistive screen, but on a lower-end phone like the Rogue it's a reasonable cost tradeoff. As long as you understand the limitations of a resistive screen, you won't be frustrated.* It seems like it's impossible to require a passcode every time the phone is unlocked. I hate phones that butt-dial, and the Samsung Rogue appears to be fully capable of not just butt-dialing but also (if you're unlucky) butt-subscribing-to-expensive-features-like-VZ-Navigator. I honestly wonder what was going through the heads of the people designing the phone lock feature. That said, I haven't had any trouble with butt-dialing so far, so maybe my previous phones were just extra-bad in that respect.* It's nice how the phone explains some of its features the first time you use them (including Mobile Email, voice commands, the overpriced VZ Navigator, etc), although I found it strange that features tell you what company provided them. Apple's products seem to aim for a relatively seamless experience, but for whatever reason, Samsung or Verizon want me to know that the phone's wireless chipset is made by Qualcomm, the Exchange email client comes from "RemoSync", the voice command support comes from "Nuance", etc. This isn't a problem... I think it's just related to my next thought:* While most of the built-in stuff is pretty slick, the Mobile E-mail application looks horribly out of place with the rest of the phone. It uses a very different interface with different navigation, and an impressively ugly font. It also makes (loud) beeps even when the phone's "master" volume is set to vibrate-only. That's extremely irritating. The application works, but it doesn't fit at all with the rest of the phone. Pretty much anything Verizon did stands out in a bad way. They have something that resembles Apple's app store, but don't get your hopes up. It's got almost no apps, and they're ridiculously overpriced (many are monthly $$). It's not as ugly as the email app, but the usability is about as bad.* It seems like the backlight will not turn off for a very long time (ever?) if you are using the web browser and you don't quit (e.g. if you are looking at something on Google maps every few minutes and don't want to waste your battery or navigate back to the map over and over). Pressing the lock button doesn't seem to help. If there's a way to turn the screen off quickly without exiting the browser, I haven't found it. I assume this is the case for other features like Mobile Email, but I haven't had the same desire to keep them open.* I've noticed a few times that I don't get enough warning when the battery is low. I've woken up to a dead phone on multiple occasions even though it wasn't beeping on the previous night.* Since Verizon charges $240 to access Microsoft Exchange emails ($10/month * 2 year contract), I still end up carrying my iPod Touch (the Mail app can access Exchange servers). The iPod's browser is better, its mail client is better, and I also have a free shopping list app called "ShopShop" that I really like. If the Rogue had a decent email client without ridiculous Verizon fees, had a decent free shopping list application, and could stream Pandora radio, I could replace my iPod... but for the forseeable future, I'll still carry two devices. Fortunately the iPod takes up very little pocket space. I got the phone fully expecting that I would continue to carry my iPod, so I'm not dissatisfied... but the engineer in me is slightly disappointed that such obviously-capable hardware is being so underutilized.Three stars, because with just a little more effort they could've made this phone so much better.