Shortly after I tested the Charge's speed, I tested the speed of its mobile hotspot in the same manner. The connected at an average 14 mpbs for downloads and 8 mbps for uploads. Verizon is apparently allocating more bandwidth to the hotspot because it must allocate one pool of bandwidth to multiple devices. The bandwidth allocated to the phone, meanwhile, need only be enough to connect one device.

For comparison, I also ran the speed test on a laptop connected with Verizon's new Mifi 4G hotspot. The Mifi showed a download speed of 15 mbps and an upload speed of 13.7 mbps. It's possible that the Charge's hotspot isn't quite as fast as Verizon's single-purpose hotspots, but it's still plenty fast. Word of warning: battery life disappears extra fast while the mobile hotspot is on; better to use it when the phone is plugged in, if possible. Which brings us to our next issue.

The Battery Problem

Samsung may have named its phone the "Charge" because that may be the mode the phone spends most of its time in.

The ThunderBolt has already gained a reputation as having a weak battery. The first 4G phone, Sprint's HTC EVO 4G, suffered from the same problem. The 4G radios in these devices demand far more power than those in 3G phones simply because they pull and push so much more data from and to the network.