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- Motorola Renegade V950 Reviews
Motorola Renegade V950 Reviews
15 Oct 2008
Motorola Renegade V950 Review
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...
- Good
- out of 10
1. GREAT PHONE LOAD OF FEATURES
12 Nov 2008 by TOM ANDREJKO
90%9out of 10
ok let me start off by saing i been with nextel since 2001, i wasnt happy with the merger i didnt like what sprint was doing at first with wanting to shut down the nextel network, i have a special place for nextel. but i also wa getting tired of there old phones, i had a i880 which was allright but had none of the features i really wanted. the only thing good about the iden network was that it was bulit from the ground up for ptt. but i dont need that anymore, so i wanted more coverage, better phone features. and ptt just to have incase i wanted to use it. the hybrids are garbage i mean come on no roaming??? great if your in a market for it, but if you move outside of one you either have no : "walk talk" or no pcs. sprint piggybacks off verizon for roaming. then this phone came along ha everything i could want, rugged, evdo, great display, sprint interface, roaming, sprint tv, plus ptt. and for all the guys and gals blaming sprint for the ptt problems maybe if you did a little research before you buy a phone you would know it does not work off of iden it is a cdma phone. they are just keeping the ptt name as nextel dc instead of q-chat, which is good. go on there website and look at the coverage for there dc and it will show you.i was well aware of the coverage area before i bought this phone. if you just need ptt stick with nextel they are the best for that i dont think any one is ever going to replace that and have it work like it did, but if your like me that wanted better coverage more features and a better phone, and ptt on the side, this is your phone!! hopefully a software update will fix the battery life, i found a quick fix thou, just turn off data when your not using it, lasts for 3 days with that off.
CDMA, QVGA DISPLAY, SPRINT INTERFACE, SPRINT TV, GPS, STEREO BT,LOUD SPEAKERS,GOOD CAMERA,EVDO REVA,PTT,MILITARY SPECBATTERY LIFE WITH DATA ON, BUGGY SOFTWARE, NEED TO EXPAND MORE DC COVERAGE
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2. nice phone, and total crap at the same time
11 Nov 2008 by justin brown
50%5out of 10
i bought this phone about 7weeks ago. at first my only complaint was how the text predictor worked. i had a sanyo phone before this one, and the text worked awesome. if you sent a certain text regularly ie. "snowboarding tomorrow?" or "on way home" etc. the phone would take the first 3 or so letters and auto phrase it out for you. not so with this phone. it also doesnt have a dictionary that you can place words that wouldnt normally be found in a dictionary, such as a friends name or a resturant name etc.
moving on, soon i found out that the alarm function only worked about 50% of the time. then, as i used it more, calls started not connecting and the phone would "lock up" like a computer that is virus infected. the only way to get it to respond after this was to turn it off and back on. NOT what i expect from a "high end phone".
also as i have read on a few posts, and can attest to myself, the battery life sucks. it says this is a military shock spec phone, but i hope no military personel try to rely on it in the field, it will die on them and hopefully that is the only casualty on their mission.
i took it in to replace it today. it took about 45 min to an hour at a "flagship" sprint store and they just gave me a new one. which is ok, but any ringers you purchase go by by with the old phone, and make sure you get your original sd card if you have pics or vids you dont want to lose.
looks rugged (if only all the internal functions were).
screens are big.
camera takes good pics.
flash is bright.no missed call alert light.
text format sucks.
battery life.
is it really rugged if it breaks within days of you buying it?
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3. GREAT PHONE
3 Nov 2008 by FireMedic
100%10out of 10
Sprint and nextel by far has great customer service in store where i am from. That is why i left that piece of shit company verizon wireless. Anywho, I traded in my old I930 towards this phone. I love this phone, Everything works on it great. This has to be the best cell phone I have ever had.
EverythingNothing
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4. FedEx Driver
24 Oct 2008 by DONALD DUCK
100%10out of 10
Needed a phone for work, something a little durable than my blackberry 8330 so i got this phone . Works great no problem what so ever. Q-chat works great and has all the bells and whistle.
everthing!!!battery!!!!!
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5. Renegade Garbage
6 Oct 2008 by Bryan swiss
10%1out of 10
Two phones two weeks! FIRST PHONE would not provision waited over a week they replaced ..it with a new phone. Phone finaly provisioned. Not off to a good start! I also have problems roaming THIS PHONE IS TOTAL JUNK!!!!
nothinggarbage
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6. Sprint . . . LETS WORK THE BUGS OUT!
23 Sep 2008 by Woodrow
56.7%5.7out of 10
I picked up the phone last Wednesday, it is Tuesday of the following week and my direct connect still is not working. They say it is a problem with their system and keep promising me that it will be fixed. The first time they told me it would take no longer then 51 hours ( just 51 hours . . . lol) for them to correct their system.The phone did not work after the 51 hours. They said to bring it back to the store and I did. Now they said it would take 24 hours. Guess What? I still have no direct connect.
The phone is very cool looking and I have to say the navigation works real well but boy does it eat the battery up! Big time! If you want to conserve power by trying to turn the bluetooth on and off, thats a bit of a task, going through several steps. Bring your charger with you.
I'll be back with an update on my phone when my phone is finally up and working.
The big screens is nice if you wear glasses. Navigation works real well.The battery life is terrible. If you cannot plug the phone, into the charger a couple of times a day . . . this is not the phone for you. I'm sure the battery will last all day if you make one or two calls a day. That's not the norm these days.
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7. decade old nexteler
18 Sep 2008 by mike jedware
63.3%6.3out of 10
this phone has many handy features, BUT the ones you need as a nextel user DONT WORK REAL GOOD, its no secret that nextels signal frequencies carry better than any other cell carrier in tower stength, but this unit is too wimpy to get the signal out there (im basing this on the sprint network vs. nextel) i have tried 3 differnt models of the hybrid phones that were offered and send them all back and returned to strictley nextel units. When will sprint engineers get it right and design hybrid phones that use NEXTEL frequencies for talk and direct connect,and use sprint for web,text,and other features. If you cant get the basics to work right, what good are the accessories ?
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8. Garbage you all the way around
17 Sep 2008 by Frusted with Sprint
20%2out of 10
First of all the only reason why I had this piece of crap phone was because my IC902 had been discontinued. When I took it for service they told me that the phone was discontinued nationwide and that this was a comparable replacement/upgrade. Reluctantly I agreed to trade in my IC902. Now yet another problem. Most of the stores were completely out of stock and I had to drive about 60-70 out of Cleveland, Ohio to find one. I was told that they had great success with these phone and that they were selling like hot cakes. Blah, blah, blah. After I got the phone on my way home I realized that the Nextel Direct Connect didn't work. So I called customer service when I got home and sat on the phone with them for about 1 1/2 hours while they were trying to figure out why it didn't work. Finally I was told that they were having an outage with the high speed side of the Sprint network and it was finally explained to me that the phone's direct connect is strictly based on the internet signal. So basically if there is no strong internet signal, then my Direct Connect doesn't work. Well I argued with the Sprint represantative on the phone, why the on the back of this paper weight it actually said that it had the Nextel Direct Connect. The answer I got was that it is just like the Nextel Direct Connect but on the web. I was told to call back in the morning and that the issues that I was having would be resolved once the account was fully established for this model phone. Lies, lies and more lies. The next morning the nightmare continued. The phone not only did not work on direct connect but now it had problems dialing out a number. It keept getting network failures. Oh yeah I almost forgot to mention that I run my own business, that I highly depend on the service including the direct connnect to get in touch with people in the field and that it is Monday morning and I'm stuch with a piece of junk paper weight that the only thing it does at this point is suck the battery from a full charge down to nothing in about 2 hours and that when I got the phone the store had no car chargers to sell since the phone had only been out for a week. But the story getts even better. Later that day, I went back to the store after spending off and on about another 4 hours on the phone with Sprint's tech support. I had the tech guy at the store physically look at it and see if anything could be done. Now the truth comes out. It has a hard time direct connecting to a power source phone such as the IC402, 502, 602, and 902 series as well the Iden Nextel phones. The great news is that it does occasionally work with the new so called direct connect phones that Sprint has to offer. I also found out that if the first number of the last four numbers of your current phone number starts with a zero, that this new phones can't direct connect in or out with any other phone. Now at this time, I'm using a refirbished IC602 until I find a deal on a IC902 on ebay and buy it. In conclusion here is the breakdown on this unit: the battery life sucks big time, the displays on the phone are great and you can customize them, the web when it wants to work is fast, the call quality is ok most of the time, the finally the direct connect sucks so bad that it has no comparison. If you are a contractor or anyone who likes the Nextel TRUE Direct Connect, then this phone is definately not for you. They took out the Direct Talk feature which enable users to communicate with the walkie talkie of the network and also talk to the standard walkie talkie units. If you plan on using the direct connect inside of buildings or in a car/truck going down the road, once again good luck. Bottom line is that in my opinion they should have stuck with the Power Source phones and improve those than build this hunk of junk that is more like a kind's toy. I'm always on job sites and in and out of buildings and for the 24 hours that I had this phone, I had to leave it mostly on charge and if I took it even into my house I would loose the high speed internet that it requires to run the NEW direct talk. It is false advertising in my opinion to label it as Nextel Direct Connect. If you need a phone that works and performs well than stay as far away from the new so called direct connect phones as possible. THEY ARE GARGAGE.
Shock and dust proof.Everything else.
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9.
16 Sep 2008 by Anonymous
93.3%9.3out of 10
Love this phone. No problems as of yet! Only thing I would change is the life span of the battery! Carry a charger with you if you're going to be gone all day!
many features, eay to use, durable..BATTERY!
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10. Qchat aka direct connect not up & working in all areas!!!!
12 Sep 2008 by North Carolina
73.3%7.3out of 10
This is a great phone but the Sprint network does not have the direct connect working in all locations. After spending countless hours on the phone with Sprint, I was told that Sprint does not offer this kind of Direct Connect feature that this phone utilizes in my area...which is really stupid because I live in a large city.
The direct connect that this phone has is Qchat, and it does not work in my big city. It is not an Iden network that the old nextel phones use. And there is no telling if these 2 will really ever connect. They are trying to get these all to connect together but it is not happening. I'm very dissapointed that I was sold this phone without having any knowledgable staff tell me that this feature would not work. When it will?...hmmm, I was only told 'soon". Could be years, months or never! As was the case with the last phone I got when they told me I could push to talk to my husband's nextel 3 years ago. Never happened.
Besides the bad sides of Sprint as a carrier and tooting it's horn that it will connect to nextel before they even have the system in place, the phone itself is very nice. Ringers are loud if you want them to be. The larger screen on the outside & inside is super. I can finally read the time & incoming calls without putting on my glasses! Very easy navigating different areas of the phone. I haven't tested the GPS navigation part in my car yet, but it was easy to put in an address by voice and have it give you directions. Seems as if it will work. Really nice to quickly look up movies, restaurants or gas stations when traveling-nice maps. Nice weather radar also. The TV part is kind of fun to if you find yourself stuck at a airport or something. But you have to subscribe to the everything package to get these features, which isn't to unreasonable compared to others. I'm not a texter or an e-mailer on a phone, so I can't comment on that. Has a camera/video that is so-so as is such with most phones. Wish that you could put your own music on this without having to buy it, but I hear there are ways of getting around that for the more savey music buffs out there. Voice calls are good, no static or echoes even on speaker. Web connects acceptably quick if you are into that for browsing. Battery life sucks. I haven't looked into getting a more powerful battery yet.
The phone is really nice --- BUT be sure to call Sprint MANY TIMES as alot of the Reps do not know a thing about this phone to see if you can direct connect. You will get many different answers. YES NO YES NO!!!! I bought 2 of these phones & they won't even connect between themselves in my area, so I have no idea that if they ever do get the Qchat to work here, that they really will ever be able to connect to an Nextel on the Iden network. False advertising once again. So buyer beware if you want that feature.
Others in different areas may have better luck, but still....I feel a bit duped. I think that they put this on the market before it is set up and tested in all markets, just to keep up with their competitors.
I wonder if that is why they offer it at a semi-low price..kind of feel as if they want folks to buy so they can lab test this new Qchat integration at our expense.
Big screen, ease of use, no echoes or delay of speech in calls.Direct Connect does not work in all locations & unsure if it will truly connect to Iden/Nextel network if & when they figure it out.
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Average User Rating
Based on 13 opinions