Motorola Renegade V950 Review

Introduction:

Sprint’s QChat rollout has been fairly successful thus far, but the initial lineup was a bit, well, bland.  And rightfully so, as they were trying to reach a market of mostly bland users who cared more about how their phone took a beating rather than if it could watch TV.  But every lineup needs a headliner, and the Motorola Renegade is here to take that position.  Cousin of the iDEN i880 and Hybrid ic902, the Renegade v950 is a high end phone that can both withstand a fall and tune into the latest episode of The Office.  Passing military specs for dust, shock, vibration and blowing rain the Renegade also features EVDO Rev. A and all the multimedia goodies that go with it.  In the box you’ll simply find a Li-ion battery, AC adapter and a 256MB microSD card.



Design:

We’ll be blunt, the Renegade is a rugged RAZR.  It features the same basic design: thin profile (relatively,) ugly chin hump, camera atop the external display and battery at the top on the back blocking the microSD slot.  It’s an old and tired design, but we have to admit that we like this rugged variant more than any others in the past.



You can compare the Motorola Renegade V950 with many other phones using our Size Visualization Tool.

The outer display is a generous 120x160 pixels, and sits below a 2 megapixel camera and LED flash.  Below it are flush but mechanical media control keys, and it is all set in a gray inlay.  The main body of the phone is black and covered in soft touch paint, making for a very reassuring rubbery feel.  The battery door has a dull silver insert with the Motorola and Nextel logos.

On the left side is a volume rocker at the top with the PTT button below.  Rather than being separate from the housing, they are actually molded into it so there is a seamless transition from button to edge.  On the bottom of the right side is a covered microUSB charging/data port and 2.5mm headset jack which has the outer ring supporting PTT compatible wired headsets.  The top has a multifunction and speakerphone button, just like iDEN phones.  The bottom is a silver grill covering the speaker, with an embossed “Motorola.”



Opening the flip presents a 2.2” 262K color QVGA display.  We’ve been impressed with Motorola’s displays lately, and the Renegade is no different.  It is large, crisp and colors are vibrant.  We had no problems reading it even in the brightest sunlight.  It, as well as the keypad below, is set in a silver plastic housing.  It feels awfully cheap, but it’s also not something that the average user would be touching so we’ll give them a pass on that.  The keypad itself is coated in the same soft touch rubber as most of the phone, with a silver metallic d-pad.  They have a good feel with a solid click when pressed.  Beyond the traditional keys there is one for back and camera on either side of the d-pad.

This rugged frame is water tight, and allows the Renegade to meet Mil Spec 810F specifications for dust, shock, vibration, temperature, pressure, sun, salt fog, humidity, blowing rain.  They don’t go as far as to call it waterproof, however, so we didn’t put it through our fishbowl test.  It’s one tough son of a gun though, and it passed our throw-it-out-of-a-second-story-window (into a light rain, nonetheless) and run-over-it-with-a-car tests just fine.

The Renegade has an unbelievably solid feel in your hand, as you might expect from such a rugged phone.  Maybe it’s just the grippy rubbery coating, but it has perhaps the most reassuring feel we’ve encountered thus far, and is in a totally different class than phones like Verizon’s Adventure and Boulder.   If your primary objective is to punish your phone, the Renegade should be at the top of your list.

Software:

The Renegade runs the exact same interface we saw in the VE20, so we won’t rehash it here.  The single difference is the Direct Connect options, which themselves are the same as we saw in our Sanyo PRO series reviews.  The Sprint Ahead theme is active by default, but the standard Motorola theme is available as well.  Like the VE20, the interface lag options seem to have been fixed and we never had problems with lockup.


The phonebook has more features than most, allowing for not only standards like numbers, emails and the like, but also personal information such as addresses, birthdays and others.  Like we saw on the Instinct and the other QChat phones, Mobile Sync allows the user to back up their phonebook to their online account.  There is a desktop program that will sync the web with Outlook, and the phone with the web, so indirectly users can have a nearly real-time sync with Outlook.

PIM functionality is basic.  The user has a simple calendar, a standard, advanced and tip calculator, notepad and a unit and currency converted.

Incoming texts are displayed on the outer screen, but unlike the VE20 there is no quick menu to access the messaging menu or anything else.  Beyond that messaging is standard, and users can send pictures, text and video.  Sprint Mobile Email is included and allows the user to check both personal and Exchange mail.

Like Sprint phones have done for years, the Renegade runs Java applications, meaning the user can add applications such as NFL Mobile and third party offerings like Gmail and Opera Mini.  Sprint’s new web interface is nice, but Opera Mini is still our dumbphone browser of choice. 

The Renegade is an EVDO Rev. A phone, and runs Sprint TV, Radio and the Music Store.  Everything is as we’ve seen before, there is nothing new to mention.  It accepts microSD cards up to 8GB in size.  It has built-in GPS as well, and Sprint Navigation is preloaded and as great as ever.

The camera on the Renegade wasn’t too bad, and definitely a step up from the disappointing VE20.  Lines were for the most part crisp, though colors had a tendency to wash out.  We noticed graining for low-light indoor shots, but in bright sunlight pictures turned out well enough for a cell phone camera.  Options are plentiful; the user can adjust the Brightness, White Balance, Resolution, Quality, Color Tone set the Sound and a Self Timer, apply Fun Frames or take Multiple Shots. There are five resolution steps from 120x160 to 1200x1600. Video quality was so-so, just as we’d expect.

Performance:

Callers were impressed with how we sounded on the Renegade, rating us at a 9/10.  While they noted it wasn’t quite excellent, we sounded very good and they had no complaints.  We were pleased with sound quality on our end as well; callers sounded plenty loud and were very clear.  Their voice sounded natural and overall we would agree with their 9/10 rating.  PTT walked just as well as it did when we reviewed the PRO series, and Sprint is continuing to expand their QChat markets.

The battery life is rated at four hours of talk time, and we were able to come within a few minutes of it.  Standby, however, was a different story.  Motorola doesn’t list a standby time, but perhaps it’s because they are embarrassed.  We fully charged the phone and let it sit, untouched and inactive.  When we came back 22 hours later it was dead as a doornail.  The email app is not set up, there were no missed events in that time and the reception is above average.  We’ve seen many users complaining of terrible battery life and would have to agree with their assessment.

Conclusion:

The Renegade is one tough phone.   It is designed to withstand just about anything you throw at it, and we threw a lot at it.  It’s not a small phone, but by iDEN standards it’s downright tiny.  It has a wonderful in-hand feel and the grippy soft-touch coating is very reassuring.  As far as features go the Renegade has just about anything you want, making it a true feature phone for the QChat lineup.  Unfortunately the battery life is downright miserable, and Motorola needs to get a software update out immediately to address this.  Then again, just about every CDMA Motorola we’ve seen in the past few years has been plagued by this, so perhaps we shouldn’t expect any less.  If you need a rugged PTT phone and want all the modern conveniences the Renegade delivers, just make sure you have plenty chargers on hand.