In our Samsung Rugby review, we roll over AT&T's one and only rugged phone and get very hands-on in our extreme testing.
Review summary of the Samsung Rugby:
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 The Samsung Rugby occupies a prime spot in AT&T's Push-to-Talk lineup. Unlike every other major PTT provider (Sprint, of course, and also Verizon Wireless), AT&T has focused primarily on smartphones for walkie-talkie use, including the Palm Centro, the AT&T Tilt and every model of BlackBerry device. The Samsung Rugby is the carrier's only real rugged phone, and this phone is indeed quite rugged. We washed the Samsung Rugby under a faucet, hit it with a motorcycle (check out our video of the incident, filmed up close and in slow motion with the Casio Exilim EX-FH20), and obnoxiously abused it, and the phone held on like a champ, though our small bike did dent and scratch it a bit. We were surprised to find the phone runs nearly the same multimedia interface as the Samsung Propel we recently reviewed, and we think it could use more of a corporate or workforce update to focus on features that walkie-talkie users prefer, like contact list with synchronization and corporate e-mail support. Instead, the phone has AT&T Music and a few e-mail presets, and even these are buried under the aging menus. It's a fine phone for calling and walkie-talkie use, but we think its time for AT&T to re-imagine their interface as they branch out into new phone categories. Release: October 2008. Price: $130.
Pros: Very rugged. PTT offers unique calling features. Good GPS service, surprisingly adequate Web browser.
Cons: We'd like to see more corporate and on-site features, like corporate e-mail and contacts sync. Multimedia features so buried, why bother?
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Full review of the Samsung Rugby:
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Design - Very good
The Samsung Rugby is rugged, built to resist shock, vibration, rain, etc. We didn't freeze it or fully submerge it (though we've seen it dunked, it isn't recommended), but we otherwise beat it up pretty badly, including running it over with a small Kawasaki motorcycle. Considering the pounding it took from us, the phone is in great shape. There are a couple dents and scratches, but it's an admirably resilient piece of hardware. The external screen, especially, shows no damage at all.
Otherwise, it's a big and solid Samsung clamshell that doesn't try to hard to look cool or futuristic, and in that way it succeeds in being a phone that nobody would be embarrassed to carry. It's a nice looking device, with large comfortable keys on the keypad and a fine looking, tough-as-nails set of screens. We wish there were more shortcut buttons on the phone. We'd like to see a dedicated key for the camera, and a much larger PTT key. This is a button that we might be pressing for a long time, so a large, cozy key would be a plus.
We also think road warriors would appreciate a standard USB port on this device, since it would make for much easier charging on the road. Then, throw in tethered modem service and you've got a real road-warrior device. Maybe next time (the Samsung "American Football?"). In any case, the phone is solid and tightly constructed. The battery cover has a coin-screw latch, but even once it's been screwed into place, it still requires a snug push to seal the hatch.
Calling - Very good
Calls on the Samsung Rugby did sound very good. Callers reported clear voices. Perhaps we sounded a little tinny in some of the playback we heard, but there was no static or volume issues. In fact, we wish volume were more of an issue on this phone, as the speaker didn't seem to get very loud to us. Certainly, many of the Sprint iDen phones we've tried would best the Rugby in a loudness duel. The Samsung Rugby got great reception, and was always the strongest AT&T phone in the room. For battery life, we managed to get about 5 1/4 hours out of the device in a mix of speakerphone and earpiece calling. That's not bad for a multimedia phone on AT&T's HSDPA network, and comes in just above AT&T's estimate.
We'd like to see a more robust address book on the Samsung Rugby. We think a workforce in the field would appreciate some easy synchronization options and more robust address book features, like a street address field, for one thing, and then tie that address field to the AT&T Navigator program, for another. Some more corporate contact list options would make this phone a more valuable device for the PTT crowd.
Messaging - Good
The Samsung Rugby, strangely enough, gets the exact same messaging suite as the Samsung Propel. This is really a critique of both phones, to lay it on thick. The Samsung Rugby should have a messaging deck focused on the business-oriented, in-the-field nature of the PTT service's audience. It should have messaging for the rugged set. That means corporate e-mail as well as some flexibility with POP and IMAP accounts. Instead, there's neither of these features, and no support for Gmail, our outdoors-y e-mail service of choice. The phone gets Instant Messaging for MSN, Yahoo and AOL, and that's fine, but we'd still like to see Google Talk become a standard for phones.
The keyboard on the Samsung Rugby is actually quite comfortable, despite it's rugged design. The keys are wide and soft, with a nice bit of travel and click to them. The only flaw is that the bottom of the 4-way button is dangerously flush with the Clear key, so we sometimes quit services and deleted letters when we didn't mean to. Even so, once we got back into the rhythm of T9 input, typing on the Samsung Rugby was a breeze.
Multimedia - Good
The multimedia apps on the Samsung Rugby are so buried in the phone that it feels like AT&T might be embarrassed of them. To find the Music Player you have to dig through the "My Stuff" menu, through "Entertainment" (not "Audio," that's another folder), through "AT&T Music" and then select the player app. Once there, our songs played just fine, and some of the cover artwork was visible as tiny postage stamp-sized icons above the song on the player screen. We even appreciate that the player keeps playing in the background, and the 4-way switch controls playback from the standby screen. The player even has a few equalizer settings attached.
Still, the music features were difficult to use, and not only because the player was so buried (we recommend creating a shortcut "Option"). The phone doesn't have a headphone jack of any sort, so you'll have to buy an adapter to fit the proprietary Samsung connector. The phone takes microSDHC cards, but you'd better buy a large-capacity card, because it was very difficult to get them out from under the secure, shock- and rain-proof battery cover. Funny enough, the best part of the music experience was the external screen. The small color screen on the exterior lacked any playback buttons, but it did have an interesting music visualizer and showed the track info while music was playing. Even with the phone closed, though, we expected more from the built-in speaker. This is a walkie-talkie phone, after all.
Web browsing - Good
The Access Netfront browser on the Samsung Rugby chugged through our image-rich homepage with little trouble. It took its own sweet time, but eventually what it spat out was complete and thorough. Not pretty, mind you, as our masthead was jagged and pixilated, and navigating pages should be quicker with the phone's 4-way button. But in a pinch, we were happy to have a browser that could handle any mobile site and a few real sites to boot.
GPS navigation - Very good
The Samsung Rugby uses AT&T Navigator for turn-by-turn directions. In our tests, we were pleased to find a strong sensor on the Rugby. Rather, we were pleased that it found us quickly, even in our cubicle office with hardly any view of the satellites in the sky. The app itself was quite slow, and it always seemed to be loading something from the server or pausing to recapture the satellites, but it never quit, and it didn't freak out if we changed our route mid-trip. Traffic options were a nice bonus, and we liked being able to avoid traffic ahead, though really there is no way to avoid the traffic heading into New York City.
Camera - Mediocre
The Samsung Rugby's 1.3-megapixel camera completely exaggerated colors into balloons of over-saturation. Even under friendly lighting circumstances, indoors and out, the camera couldn't keep up with the details in our pics, and our subjects were rendered blurry.
Foliage
More foliage
In these fall foliage pics, the reds and oranges are brilliantly oversaturated. It might have been a nice effect, if the camera had rendered any detail in the leaves.
Night scene
For a cameraphone, this camera didn't completely choke on the darkness in this night scene. We stabilized the camera for this shot, but noise wasn't terrible, even though the street lamps are blown out.
Self portrait
The camera would have been easier to aim if that external screen would also act as a digital viewfinder. Nevertheless, even once we had take a centered shot, the camera rendered us blurry enough that we wouldn't save these pictures for long, anyway.
Value - Good
The Samsung Rugby falls between the Sanyo Pro 700 on Sprint, a comparable, though not as water-resistant, rugged phone, and the Casio G'zOne Boulder on Verizon Wireless, a phone so rugged you can take it snorkeling in a hurricane. While Sprint's plans are more expensive, starting at $50 for a PTT plan with unlimited walkie-talkie and 450 anytime minutes, both AT&T and Verizon Wireless offer unlimited PTT service as a $5 add-on to their standard $40 450 minute plan. Of course, these PTT services don't work across carrier networks, so your choice might already be made. But if you're just starting out, Verizon and AT&T are close enough in price that it might come down to which device you prefer. Go with the Samsung Rugby and a bunch of smartphones on AT&T, or go windsurfing with the Boulder on Verizon.
Price and availability
The Samsung Rugby is available now from AT&T for $130 with online deals, contract agreements and rebates.
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