The Samsung Droid Charge is known for its fast networking speed at 4G. Going neck in neck with HTC Thunderbolt that been released on March. Performance is better with 1GHz processor and touch off with Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touch screen, even more clarity and brightness from the previous AMOLED screens. You will feel amazed what this phone can do.
Design
Like any touch screen phones. The Samsung Droid Charge comes in the shape of a candy bar. It has a plastic cover and chrome at the sides. At the front is the 4.3 inch screen, a 1.3 megapixel secondary camera, light sensor, accelerometer and also four solid buttons (menu, home, return and search). These buttons is built solid as to prevent from being pressed accidentally by touch while using the phone. At the left side of the phone there is the volume rocker and a micro-USB port. The right side of the phone is the power/lock button and a HDMI video port. There is an 8 megapixel camera and flash at the back of the phone. The speaker is located at the back of the phone while the 3.5mm audio jack is on top. Memory card is supported up to 32GB and it can be accessed after opening the back cover of the phone. A total measuring of 130 x 68 x 12 mm is to say that this phone is quite large weighting at 143g.
The phone does not have much of a solid feel as it’s because the back cover is made from plastic and does not have any lock for the back cover so better be careful in case of accidental phone dropping.
There are a bunch of interesting features about this phone and connection speed is important regarding to web browsing or surfing. Download speed can get max up to 15Mbps and upload speed is 5Mbps. For websites that contains flash, the phone will take much longer time to fully load at an average speed of 30 seconds. Features like AllShare shall enable the phone to act as a Wi-Fi router enabling up to 5 phones at the same time but of course this feature does uses up a significant amount of battery so keep that in mind.
The phone runs on Android 2.2 and the Touchwiz 3.0 interface can look much like Iphone’s UI with the apps appeared in squares. The icons of applications and also the pages for seven home screens available can be manually placed in the options menu. A great feature about this phone is that it can take a screen capture. Simply hold down the return button and press the home button to capture a screen. Built in internal memory is around 2GB. The phone uses 1GHz Hummingbird processor running on a single core. Applications will work wonders on the phone plus making the interface of the phone look more fluid and deep in color contras at the same time.
When carrying a mobile phone, certainly we will often be going outdoors and what we hate is the glare from sun causes difficulty to use the phone like usual. This phone however, had the impressive Super AMOLED Plus screen and the color is just simply beautiful and its works great even during outdoor times. The Super AMOLED Plus screen is far more superior to previous AMOLED screens. Videos with high clarity and brightness ensure the user to have an enjoyable time watch by using the Samsung Droid Charge plus with a big screen at 4.3 inch. This is the key advantage over HTC Thunderbolt.
Camera
Picture taking and video capturing with this device is average level. This phone comes with an 8 megapixel camera with blink detection, anti shake and flash. Pictures taken are sharper and colors are accurate. They can be edited and uploaded to Facebook on the spot too. Video capture is at 30fps only. The quality can be somewhat disappointing as it can be sometimes blurred or not focusing and washed out. Also there is a standard 1.3 megapixel camera at the front of the phone for video or conference calling. The calling quality is good. Enjoy clear audio and minimum background noise when calling and no distortion is detected.
Basic preloaded apps like contacts can be imported from Facebook and be organized manually. Importing contacts from SIM and editing is also available. Standard Bluetooth, calendar, GPS and SMS functions is preloaded in the phone. Swype comes with the standard android keyboard and the touch button does not seem to be too squeezed to touching to compose message is not a hassle. The music player comes with some equalizer and affects to choose from and if you tilt over the phone you can browse through your collection by artist, album or your own playlist. Sound quality is great and is also have the 5.1 channel sound effect.
Battery
Battery life is can be said to be on adequate level but a little bit better than HTC Thunderbolt. Samsung Droid Charge uses 1600 mAh battery while HTC Thunderbolt uses 1400 mAh battery. After a normal daily usage of the phone like SMS or calling, the phone needs to be charged again. We all know that Samsung phones are known for slow charging phones so this can be a little bit on the down side but given the bright Super AMOLED Plus screen and 4G connections, it’s no wonder the battery life would not last that long so can’t blame them for it. Standby time of the phone is up to 280 hours and standard talk time is about 11 hours. For continuous usage of the phone like watching videos or surfing the internet is about 6.5 hour so that’s not bad for such a rich color displayed phone.
On the strong side is that this phone comes with a beautiful Super AMOLED Plus screen. Call quality is good. Video play back is impressive. The connection of the 4G speed makes web browsing a great experience. Camera quality is good.
The down side is that the phone does not operate on dual core. Video recording is not so impressive. Lastly the matter of does the price fits the product comes into question.
Conclusion
If you are looking for an average android phone that has a good display, good camera and always looking up on the internet like Facebook or so on then this is the phone for you.
