After time with the Droid Charge, the verdict is mixed. The specs weren’t mind-blowing by 2011 standards, roughly on par with phones from the previous year. However, the Charge’s call quality was strong, earphone and speakerphone performance were excellent, and the microphone quality impressed callers on the other end.
Hardware
The Charge featured a beautiful 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, an 8-megapixel camera with 720p HD video, a 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera, and physical hardware keys for the four standard Android buttons (Home, Menu, Back, Search). The phone was very thin with a slight reverse chin. Under the hood: a 1GHz Hummingbird processor, 512MB RAM, and a preinstalled 32GB microSD card. The 1600mAh battery delivered around 14 hours of light use and 8 hours of heavy use.
Software
The Charge ran Samsung’s TouchWiz 3.0 over Android 2.2 Froyo, with a Gingerbread update expected. TouchWiz had a cartoon-like visual style with a slight lag between home screen panels; ADW Launcher addressed this during testing. The default Samsung keyboard had persistent autocorrect issues, regularly misjudging input during heavy use; Smart Keyboard Pro was a practical substitute.
4G Data Speeds
Testing in NYC on 4G LTE averaged around 21 Mb/s down and 5 Mb/s up, faster than the reviewer’s home internet connection. In real-world use, web pages loaded instantly and photo uploads via TwitPic were near-instantaneous.
Camera
The 8-megapixel camera performed well in both indoor and outdoor conditions with the LED flash. Still photo quality was outstanding. The front-facing 1.3-megapixel camera produced acceptable video quality, though nothing close to the rear camera’s HD output.
Overall
The Charge is a great phone that needed some user-side adjustments, particularly around the keyboard and launcher. The 4.3-inch screen took some getting used to. At $299.99 with a two-year contract, it was a strong option for anyone looking for a powerful 4G LTE device with an excellent camera.
