This is the Droid Charge . . . nothing you haven't seen before

[alent1234]

Looks like I was right about Mobile Hotspot being included...for a limited time only...

if you buy this phone you get unlimited tethering included as part of the purchase price and with no $20 a month fees?

 

[anxi80]

Engadget review

When it comes to battery life, there's no competition. The Charge blitzed through a full day of what we'd consider typical use, coming off the charger at about 9am and not getting slotted back in again until 9pm the next night. Yes, you read that right, two working days of what we'd consider average use with GPS and WiFi on, taking pictures and videos, all powered by a single 1,600mAh battery. Granted, we weren't running our performance benchmarks at the time, but we were hammering the LTE antenna to get some speed results.

 

[Red Storm]

I want to get this phone, release it already Verizon!

 

[ponyo]

Quoted battery life in that review sounds too good to be true. I don't believe it.

From the benchmark scores I can tell it's still using RFS file system. Which means in stock form this phone will lag badly once you load with pictures, videos, and apps. Voodoo will solve most of that with its EXT4 conversion but you'll need to root which not everyone is willing to do.

 

[sciwizam]

Quoted battery life in that review sounds too good to be true. I don't believe it.

From the benchmark scores I can tell it's still using RFS file system. Which means in stock form this phone will lag badly once you load with pictures, videos, and apps. Voodoo will solve most of that with its EXT4 conversion but you'll need to root which not everyone is willing to do.

DROID Charge Crushes the Thunderbolt on Battery Life

We’ve been playing around with the DROID Charge for almost 6 days now and had to point out one thing in particular before we jump into our full review: the battery life is ridiculously good. One of the major problems we all had (some still have) with the HTC Thunderbolt, is the pathetic battery life unless of course we tweak 18 sync settings and buy an extended battery. But with the Charge, I haven’t touched one extra setting and as you can see, have cruised through almost 2 days without plugging it back in to give its standard 1600mAh battery any extra juice.

 

[Deeko]

I don't understand why people hate this phone, but not the Thunderbolt. This phone is just as fast if not faster than the Thunderbolt, far superior screen, and, from the sounds of it, far superior battery life. Seems like a no brainer to me.

 

[gsaldivar]

I don't understand why people hate this phone

It's a Samsung. :thumbsdown:

 

[ChronoReverse]

The battery life alone makes me somewhat interested.

 

[Deeko]

It's a Samsung. :thumbsdown:

Blind bias is no reason to dislike a device. There is curious nerd rage towards Samsung on these forums, but on the whole, they make some very solid devices - the Galaxy S was good, and while people attack their update timeline, frankly, as of late they're as good or better than anyone else. The Galaxy S II and Droid Charge appear to be even better in all of the areas the Galaxy S struggled. So, to hate it simply becauses "Its a Samsung" frankly, is stupid.

 

[DivideBYZero]

Blind bias is no reason to dislike a device. There is curious nerd rage towards Samsung on these forums, but on the whole, they make some very solid devices - the Galaxy S was good, and while people attack their update timeline, frankly, as of late they're as good or better than anyone else. The Galaxy S II and Droid Charge appear to be even better in all of the areas the Galaxy S struggled. So, to hate it simply becauses "Its a Samsung" frankly, is stupid.

GG&P is the last basition of blind hate.

 

[Spoooon]

Looks like I was right about Mobile Hotspot being included...for a limited time only...

The main reason I'm semi-tempted. We have free mobile hotspot with my wife's palm pixi. Nice in an emergency, would be better with lte.

 

[_Aurel_]

I had a chance to play with the demo unit we had for the past couple of days and I have some pretty big reservations about owning the device myself. I actually like the form factor and the aesthetics to the device. The screen is brilliant, and I much prefer it over the qHD display on the Atrix.

The software itself is where I ran into a lot of issues. The inclusion of a task manager on the multi-tasking screen is convenient, but I found myself killing apps and clearing memory from it constantly in order to maintain good performance. There's a lot of lock-ups and freezes in certain applications, especially when I try to use the browser to load up full web pages. Websites like Phonearena and Pocketnow would cause the browser to stall for at least 10 seconds if I have at least one other application open on the phone. The amount of memory available to the user is around 300, but it seems like I only had around 100-150 or so with only one or two apps running.

The Incredible 2 we had on display was much more responcive and didn't have any of the stall issues the Droid Charge has. I almost still want to get this phone only because rooted it'll be the closest thing to a Nexus S on a Verizon network, but I think its ridiculous that I should even have to consider rooting a device just to not have it lock up while loading a full web page.

In case anyone was wondering, I also loaded up Dolphin Mini, Firefox and Opera Mobile on the charge. Dolphin Mini performed better but still had hang-ups when loading full web pages, and while those issues weren't present in Firefox and Opera Mobile, I tend to avoid using them because their rendering is ugly and they load up a lot of pages incorrectly.

 

[zerocool84]

Blind bias is no reason to dislike a device. There is curious nerd rage towards Samsung on these forums, but on the whole, they make some very solid devices - the Galaxy S was good, and while people attack their update timeline, frankly, as of late they're as good or better than anyone else. The Galaxy S II and Droid Charge appear to be even better in all of the areas the Galaxy S struggled. So, to hate it simply becauses "Its a Samsung" frankly, is stupid.

GG&P is the last basition of blind hate.

Samsung deserves every bit of hate they get from everywhere. It's more than just OS updates.

 

[Bateluer]

Samsung deserves every bit of hate they get from everywhere. It's more than just OS updates.

True. There's definitely a lot more to despise about Samsung. However, looking at their upcoming lineup, it seems they've made some progress in those shortcomings.

I wouldn't be rushing out to replace any 1Ghz single core phone with a Droid Charge, as its simply a rehash of a Galaxy S with a slightly larger screen and an LTE radio. Not sure if the GPS works or not yet though.

The GS2 looks interesting, from what I've read though. See what it becomes once the US carriers bastardize the hell out of it. I wish Samsung would ditch the cheap ass plastic bodies though, go with an aluminum unibody. Much more sturdy than that plastic crap.

 

[Deeko]

Samsung deserves every bit of hate they get from everywhere. It's more than just OS updates.

If you're making such strong charges, perhaps you should back it up a little?

-People hate Samsung for OS updates - but they're doing as well, if not better, than the competition these days on that front. The Galaxy S is on its way to Gingerbread, which a lot of HTC/Moto phones from 2010 don't have, and the Galaxy SII is coming with it preloaded.
-People hate Samsung for TouchWhiz, but HTC and Motorola both do it too, and frankly, TouchWhiz really isn't that bad. Besides, the people that complain about this the most - tech nerds - are the people that will flash a custom ROM within hours anyway, and Samsung keeps the bootloader open so that's an option.
-People hate Samsung for the GPS issues with the Galaxy S, according to the reviews that's not a problem on the new phones - and even on my Vibrant, while its not the fastest GPS lock I've ever had, it generally still works, even if its a little slow.

What else? The hardware is good, the screens are gorgeous...it seems like people just want something to hate. Maybe you have a different preference - perhaps you like SLCD over SAMOLED, or maybe you prefer a heaver metallic build to a lighter plastic build, but these are just matters of personal preference, not reasons to hate the company.

 

[zerocool84]

If you're making such strong charges, perhaps you should back it up a little?

-People hate Samsung for OS updates - but they're doing as well, if not better, than the competition these days on that front. The Galaxy S is on its way to Gingerbread, which a lot of HTC/Moto phones from 2010 don't have, and the Galaxy SII is coming with it preloaded.
-People hate Samsung for TouchWhiz, but HTC and Motorola both do it too, and frankly, TouchWhiz really isn't that bad. Besides, the people that complain about this the most - tech nerds - are the people that will flash a custom ROM within hours anyway, and Samsung keeps the bootloader open so that's an option.
-People hate Samsung for the GPS issues with the Galaxy S, according to the reviews that's not a problem on the new phones - and even on my Vibrant, while its not the fastest GPS lock I've ever had, it generally still works, even if its a little slow.

What else? The hardware is good, the screens are gorgeous...it seems like people just want something to hate. Maybe you have a different preference - perhaps you like SLCD over SAMOLED, or maybe you prefer a heaver metallic build to a lighter plastic build, but these are just matters of personal preference, not reasons to hate the company.

Back it up? Everyone knows the issues so no need to say anything so I'm not making any charges, we've all talked about it. Every Android phone they've made has had issues of some kind. Their new Galaxy S II are just barely going to come out. To say the issue is resolved before they're widely released is retarded and have proven themselves that they're capable of releasing something that isn't messed up in some way. I have a Samsung Android phone so I know how crappy they are so I can speak from personal experience. A company that has a hard time releasing a phone without big bugs after many new releases has to have something wrong with them.

 

[gsaldivar]

If you're making such strong charges, perhaps you should back it up a little?

I've personally almost lost a client due to my recommendation of Samsung phones that had intermittent GPS problems. Despite several trips to the Verizon store and several replacements, the problems persisted. Samsung was zero help to me, and refused to even acknowledge that a problem existed.

Other Motorola and HTC Android phones held side-by-side had absolutely no problem acquiring and maintaining an immediate and solid GPS lock.

Anecdotes mean nothing statistically. But this is all the evidence I needed for me to avoid Samsung's phones. It's got nothing to do with "hate" - it is purely a business decision from personal experience.

"YMMV" - if you purchase and use Samsung, and have no problems... then more power to you!!

 

[Deeko]

Back it up? Everyone knows the issues so no need to say anything so I'm not making any charges, we've all talked about it. Every Android phone they've made has had issues of some kind. Their new Galaxy S II are just barely going to come out. To say the issue is resolved before they're widely released is retarded and have proven themselves that they're capable of releasing something that isn't messed up in some way. I have a Samsung Android phone so I know how crappy they are so I can speak from personal experience. A company that has a hard time releasing a phone without big bugs after many new releases has to have something wrong with them.

This rant sounds a lot like "you covered everything I don't like about them and I have nothing else to add, I just want to blindly hate them".

Just because you've had issues with a product of theirs in the past doesn't mean everything they make is bad. The Galaxy S having GPS issues is no guarantee that the Galaxy S II will have GPS issues. Every company has products that are better than others - unless you think the Flipout and Backflip are as solid as the Droid X. To automatically discount a product because of the company that made it without giving it a chance is foolish - but hey, its your money.

 

[zerocool84]

This rant sounds a lot like "you covered everything I don't like about them and I have nothing else to add, I just want to blindly hate them".

Just because you've had issues with a product of theirs in the past doesn't mean everything they make is bad. The Galaxy S having GPS issues is no guarantee that the Galaxy S II will have GPS issues. Every company has products that are better than others - unless you think the Flipout and Backflip are as solid as the Droid X. To automatically discount a product because of the company that made it without giving it a chance is foolish - but hey, its your money.

Like I said, it's been most Android phone they've made, NOT only the Galaxy S which for some reason you think is the only phone of theirs that's had problems so make sure to get informed first. Behold I/II, Moment, Galaxy S etc, have all had problems, hardware/software. I don't need to point out every problem all their Android phones have had because we've covered them and since you seem to think you know what problems all their phones have had, you should know it already. If just one person had problems with their phones, no one would care about it but that's not the case. They've shown their unreliable but if you want to give them your money, more power to you. Me personally I don't support companies like that and will not buy a phone from them.

 

[Deeko]

Every phone has issues - every company has phones with big issues - there is no perfect, bug free phone that everyone will love...so I guess you'll have to stick to your landline.

 

[s44]

So to get back on topic, it's still not officially launched yet (thanks, 4g outage), but people have gotten Charges already at Target and Best Buy.