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Samsung's Droid Charge

27.04.2011
The Samsung Droid Charge, Verizon's second 4G LTE phone to hit the market, matches up well against the carrier's first 4G phone--the --and may be a better choice for some users. The phone has a truly impressive AMOLED display and superfast data speeds, but suffers from a short battery life and a large design that will turn some people off.

The Charge, which goes , costs $300 with a 2-year contract--$50 more than the ThunderBolt--but does come with free mobile hotspot capability "for a limited time" (provided you buy a nationwide calling plan and an unlimited data plan (starting at $30). The Charge's mobile hotspot can connect up to 10 devices via Wi-fi or five devices via a 3G CDMA connection.

Key Specs

Like the ThunderBolt, the Charge has a 4.3-inch Super AMOLED screen, runs (Samsung had not comment about why the phone doesn't' run the newer Android 2.3 OS), and includes an HTML5 browser. It sports a rear-facing 8-megapixel camera (with flash) and a front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera for video chatting. A 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor (same as Samsung's ) sits under the hood--not dual-core, but not slow either.

Design

The Charge is a largish phone with an oval shape that comes to a soft point at the bottom. It is 5.1 inches long, 2.6 inches wide and .46 inch thick. The Charge is about the same width and depth as the ThunderBolt, but noticeably longer.