Samsung and Verizon today announced the Rogue and Intensity, two full-QWERTY messaging phones available today in Verizon stores and online. Rogue will also "serve as the flagship phone for [Verizon's] new data pricing option," which frankly I'm still trying to wrap my head around. I'm always a little slow just after a three-day weekend.
Rogue is the headliner here and basically replaces the much-troubled Glyde at the top of VZW's featurephone line up. Well, I'd say it's vying for that top spot with LG's enV Touch, but you know how I feel about the LG. Mmm, sexy LG.
Kinda like a next-Gen Samsung Impression, Rogue features a 3.1" AMOLED resistive touch display, horizontal-slider QWERTY board, 3MP camera with flash, 3.5mm headphone jack, and Touch Wiz-ardry including lots of widgets, a few Verizon-specific apps, and a full HTML browser. Rogue can also serve as a bare bones mobile office with its support for corporate Email and MS Office/Adobe PDF document viewing. The price is pretty nice, too, at $99.99 after rebate with a two-year contract including one of those new data pricing options, whatever they are.
Should Rogue prove too intense for you, you can pick up Intensity instead. Sorry, I can never resist the chance to poke fun at silly phone names. A mere $29.99 after rebate (though as I write this it's showing up as Free a/r on VZW's site) will get you this smaller, less fully featured, non-touchscreen QWERTY slider in your choice of Charcoal Grey or ... wait for it ... "Flamingo" Red, the latter being an online-only colorway. Intensity has a dialing pad and D-Pad on its front side, below that 2.1" non-touch display, and also packs a modest 1.3MP camera and Mobile Web and Email functionality.
Nice to see Verizon beefing up its messaging phone lineup just in time for Fall. Fingers crossed that Rogue fufills the promise that Glyde could never quite make good on, no matter how cute it was.
We'll get you some hands-on video and impressions of both devices just as soon as the UPS dude knocks on our door, phones in hand.