Of course I was very curious about the longevity of the Charge's 1600 maH battery. To test it I streamed a movie in standard definition from a server on the web for four-plus hours, a function that would keep the phone pulling down data from the web continuously, as well as keep the display and speaker operating continuously. I then noted the level of battery depletion, worked out the rate of depletion and finally extrapolated how long the battery would have lasted had the test continued. Since the phone is said to use more juice when the LTE signal is weaker, I tested in place where reception could be called "fair" but not "good."

Samsung says the Charge's battery will last "up to 660 minutes," or 11 hours. (Technically, if the battery lasted only two minutes no one could say that it didn't last "up to 660 minutes"!) At any rate, our battery test found that the Samsung battery life comes up way short of the 660 minute number--after four hours and 8 minute of continuous video streaming the battery had been depleted to 37 percent of capacity. At that rate, the battery would have expired completely in 393 minutes or 6 hours and 33 minutes.

That's assuming the battery expires at the same rate when it begins to run out of charge. In my (anecdotal) experience, however, that rate of depletion accelerates. So the 6 hours 33 minutes of battery life may be a little on the generous side.

Still, six and a half hours of continuous use isn't really too bad. After all, who is going to keep their phone in continuous use for that long during the day? It seems pretty likely that a user could make it through a day without the Charge needed a charge--more than I can say for some 4G phones I've used.

And six and a half hours certainly beats the ThunderBolt's rumored battery life of just 4 hours, if you believe the reports. I ran the same video streaming test on the ThunderBolt. After 4 hours and 3 minutes of streaming, the Thunderbolt still had 40 percent of its battery left. At that rate the battery would have completely expired in 405 minutes or 6 hours and 45 minutes. HTC promises only 6 hours and 18 minutes of usage time for the ThunderBolt.