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So, I have a love/hate thing with this phone. I am coming from the first version of the LG Envy so it is quite an upgrade, but it still has it’s VERY annoying drawbacks. The keys on the qwerty are unusually small and make it hard to type quickly and efficiently. The screen shuts off during phone use and when you try to turn it on it doesn’t always come on or stay on long enough to touch what you’re viewing. The default ringtones are baaaad and you can’t use your own. They don’t have a single normal telephone sounding ring, either. It is inconsistent with it’s level of sensitivity, having to press down really hard sometimes or barely touching it at all at others. Viewing photos and videos is frustrating, you can only view it full screen on an angle, so you have to turn your head or bare with the smaller window and sometimes the pictures scroll on their own or exit the photo viewer altogether. I will say that the clarity is beautiful and sharp, but it only allows you to send 30 second videos which is a MAJOR suckfest factor.

Rating: 3 / 5

By Alicia Kozub on Feb 17, 2010

I wanted an iPhone bad, but not bad enough to leave a good carrier (verizon) for a bad one (AT&T). I followed the rumors that Verizon would be getting the iPhone in the near future, but gave up waiting when I read that Verizon had a new partnership with google and would be rolling out several Android phones.

I bought a Rogue after reading good reviews at reputable websites and here. I spent a lot of time getting to know the Rogue and ended up returning it after 10 days.

I mean no disrespect to the many people who love this phone. Their opinions are just as valid as mine. But you should hear different viewpoints before spending your hard-earned money on this phone.

There are definitely good things about this phone. Call quality is good and I get more bars in more places than with my previous phones. Great keyboard, best I’ve used on a phone. Great for texting and email. Display is gorgeous – great color, very high-res. Good camera, very good for a phone.

But, for me, the bad outweighs the good.

Most web pages display poorly in the browser – and yes I am talking about web pages especially formatted for display on mobile phones.

Scrolling by swiping the touch screen is imprecise, whether you’re scrolling around web pages or scrolling the widget bar or whatever.

Streaming videos display more choppy than on other phones, so the gorgeous display’s potential is not realized.

When taking pictures, you have to hold the phone horizontally, i.e. taking pics in “landscape mode.” If you snap a pic while holding the phone vertically (”portrait”), the picture will display sideways when you view it later, regardless of how you hold the phone.

The facebook widget isn’t an app, like on the iphone. It’s merely a link that launches the phone’s browser and goes to the facebook signin page. And yes, you must sign in every time. Very annoying.

Using the browser to check email is annoying. You have to enter your email address and password every time you want to access your email.

There’s a better way to use this phone for email: you can download an email app/client that works with most email services, and works pretty well. And you can put a widget on your desktop that gives you one-touch access to this app.

The iPhone offers a better, faster browser, pages display great on it, and it’s easy to navigate around pages.

The email experience and calendar on the iPhone are great, especially if you use one of the popular software packages or services like outlook or gmail.

The iPhone camera is not outstanding, and not as good as the Rogue’s, it won’t replace your dedicated digital camera, but it’s perfectly acceptable for a cell phone camera.

You can download tons of free and inexpensive apps for the iPhone. Many are crap of course, but many others are really great and highly useful. There’s a very limited range of apps available for the Rogue.

The iPhone is an outstanding media player, for video, audio tracks, and photo viewing. You can certain do these things on the Rogue, but the iPhone is nicer to use, more functional, and offers in my humble view a better experience with media.

Some of you are dead-set against the iPhone, and that’s fine, and others of you – like me – would consider the iPhone if it were available on other networks besides AT&T.

If you’re a verizon customer, I urge you to wait a week until the Motorola Droid hits verizon stores, then go to your local verizon store and compare the Droid and the Rogue – hold them both, try the browsers, try flicking your finger across the screen to scroll and pan. See what you think.

Maybe you’ll still like the Rogue better. Then, you’re making an informed purchase decision.

But I’m guessing that once you spend time with the Rogue, you’ll see as I did that the Rogue leaves much to be desired.
Rating: 3 / 5

By Ron Cronovich on Feb 17, 2010

IM 21 AND A FREQUENT PHONE SWITCHER..THE NEWER..THE BETTER. MY MOM LIKES MY PHONE BUT I TOLD HER NOT TO GET IT BECAUSE THE OLDER YOU GET..AND THE NEWER THE TECHNOLOGY..THE HARDER IT IS FOR YOU TO USE..I LOVE THIS PHONE..THE SCREEN IS BEAUTIFUL..I USE MYXER.COM TO UPLOAD MY MP3′S AND MAKE MY OWN RINGTONES FOR FREE WHICH I SEND TO THE PHONE AND SAVE WITH NO PROBLEM..FOR THE REVIEWER WHO SAID IT GOES DEAD EASILY..I GOT IT TODAY @ 4PM..CHARGED IT FOR 10 MINS AND USED IT DOING A VARIETY OF THINGS FOR 5 STRAIGHT HOURS..IF YOU’RE USING IT FOR 10 HRS TEXTING AND BROWSING OF COURSE IT’LL GO DEAD(HOPE U HAVE A DATA PLAN)..SO FAR I HAVE PUT ON THIS PHONE MY OWN RINGTONES THAT I MADE AND PERSONAL PICTURES FROM MY PC..THE 2 PROBLEMS I HAVE ARE BASICALLY SMALL..1)NO MELODY SHUFFLE LIKE MY SAMSUNG DELVE SO I CAN’T HAVE A DIFFERENT RING EVERY CALL W/O GIVING MY CONTACTS THEIR OWN RINGERS..2)WHEN I TRIED TO SEND A FILE VIA BLUETOOTH XFER I GOT AN ERROR..BUT IT WASN’T A BIG DEAL..IT WAS A TONE SO I WENT ONLINE AND MADE ANOTHER ONE..OVERALL THIS PHONE IS PERFECT AND THE BEST I’VE EVER HAD!!
Rating: 5 / 5

By A. N. Powell on Feb 17, 2010

READ THIS BEFORE YOU BUY.

I got this phone yesterday. The touch screen makes you frustrated because it is very unresponsive. (it sucks)

It is very hard to scroll when looking through your contacts and it sometimes dials when you’re just trying to scroll down.

When web browsing it is hard to navigate they have a zoom in button on the lower left corner that gets in the way of the webpage buttons like “login” which are critical. You have to try to trick the phone so it lets you login.

Copy and Paste sucks, it won’t highlight the first letter because the edge of the screen is not sensitive enough.

Facebook and twitter are not streamlined apps they are just shortcuts to the mobile pages.

Youtube is slow as hell if you can even get it to load we tried 3 phones including the reps own phone and it wouldn’t load several videos. Also be prepared to pay 19.99 for the 75 mb dataplan if you plan to use youtube. 9.99 gets you only 25mb of bandwith.

On the plus side the screen is beautiful looking although you can’t see it very well outdoors.

Call quality was loud, I thought I had the speakerphone on.

Texting was good I can’t complain there the keyboard was nice.

In short if you plan on using the web on a phone like this which requires a data plan get something else like a black berry. Hey you get what you pay for.

If you want to text it’s ok but what’s the point of paying for the data plan then? Might as well get a texting phone like the Samsung intensity that does not require a data plan.
Rating: 3 / 5

By E. Cortes on Feb 17, 2010

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.
Rating: 2 / 5

By goillini on Feb 17, 2010