The HTC Thunderbolt has some 4G superphone company on Verizon, and it's the Droid Charge by Samsung. The Droid Charge has impressive specs; the most exciting being the 4.3" Super AMOLED Plus display and 4G LTE. It runs on Samsung's speedy single core Hummingbird CPU with graphics acceleration, has an 8 megapixel rear and front 1.3 megapixel camera, HDMI out, Mobile Hotspot for sharing that fast data connection with notebooks and other WiFi clients, and the usual trio of WiFi 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth and GPS. The phone runs Android OS 2.2 Froyo with Samsung's TouchWiz software and user interface overlay. The phone is priced higher than other Verizon smartphones at $299 with contract vs. $249 for the direct competitor HTC Thunderbolt and $199 for other high end 3G Verizon smartphones.
As you'd expect from Samsung, the 800 x 480 pixel display is wondrous and almost unnaturally color saturated with inky blacks. The new Super AMOLED Plus display does away with the PenTile matrix and that means sharper text with less apparent color bloom. It blows away the Thunderbolt's more pedestrian 4.3" standard LCD. Beyond looking better than an HD plasma TV, it's extremely responsive to touch (you barely need to make contact with the glass).
On the software front, both the HTC and Samsung run Froyo, as do most all Android phones sold these days. The difference lies in the software customizations with the Thunderbolt running the generally well-liked HTC Sense software and the Charge running Samsung's TouchWiz software. While Motorola's Motoblur software for Android is nearly universally disparaged, TouchWiz falls somewhere in between Motoblur and Sense. It's pretty but it tends to place a heavier load on the phone (Samsung has tweaked TouchWiz over time and it no longer makes the phone sluggish). TouchWiz also seems to touch more core OS functions, which in the past caused some bugs with third party apps and customizations. While developers have worked to make their apps TouchWiz friendly (a good idea given the millions of Galaxy S family phones in users' hands), we're still more careful when tweaking a TouchWiz phone.
Design and Ergonomics
The Droid Charge is a large phone, after all it has a 4.3" display. Despite the 5.1 x 2.6 x 0.46 inch dimensions, it's relatively light at 5.04 ounces because Samsung is a master of plastics. Those plastics don't lend a chic or swanky feel to the phone, and it has the usual Samsung gloss plastic "mirror gray" back that adores fingerprints and is slippery. The phone is fairly thick towards the bottom where a hump protrudes, but that hump does provide a grip point to keep the phone in hand.
The front buttons are mechanical ones that move and click, unlike most Android phones that have capacitive touch sensitive buttons (the HTC Incredible 2's even rotate when you turn the phone since that's merely a matter of employing alternate backlights). We have nothing against mechanical buttons: they do take a bit more effort to press but are harder to accidentally actuate. They're large and that's a good thing since they're pushed to the very bottom edge of the front bezel.
The power button is on the upper right side, as per usual for Samsung (we tend to press it accidentally when pulling the phone out of a case or purse), and the micro USB charging port is on the left side (much better than up top as with some older Samsung Android phones). The 3.5mm stereo jack is up top where it belongs and the volume controls are on the upper left edge. The LTE SIM card slot and microSD card slot are under the back cover.
On the software front, both the HTC and Samsung run Froyo, as do most all Android phones sold these days. The difference lies in the software customizations with the Thunderbolt running the generally well-liked HTC Sense software and the Charge running Samsung's TouchWiz software. While Motorola's Motoblur software for Android is nearly universally disparaged, TouchWiz falls somewhere in between Motoblur and Sense. It's pretty but it tends to place a heavier load on the phone (Samsung has tweaked TouchWiz over time and it no longer makes the phone sluggish). TouchWiz also seems to touch more core OS functions, which in the past caused some bugs with third party apps and customizations. While developers have worked to make their apps TouchWiz friendly (a good idea given the millions of Galaxy S family phones in users' hands), we're still more careful when tweaking a TouchWiz phone.
Design and Ergonomics
The Droid Charge is a large phone, after all it has a 4.3" display. Despite the 5.1 x 2.6 x 0.46 inch dimensions, it's relatively light at 5.04 ounces because Samsung is a master of plastics. Those plastics don't lend a chic or swanky feel to the phone, and it has the usual Samsung gloss plastic "mirror gray" back that adores fingerprints and is slippery. The phone is fairly thick towards the bottom where a hump protrudes, but that hump does provide a grip point to keep the phone in hand.
The front buttons are mechanical ones that move and click, unlike most Android phones that have capacitive touch sensitive buttons (the HTC Incredible 2's even rotate when you turn the phone since that's merely a matter of employing alternate backlights). We have nothing against mechanical buttons: they do take a bit more effort to press but are harder to accidentally actuate. They're large and that's a good thing since they're pushed to the very bottom edge of the front bezel.
The power button is on the upper right side, as per usual for Samsung (we tend to press it accidentally when pulling the phone out of a case or purse), and the micro USB charging port is on the left side (much better than up top as with some older Samsung Android phones). The 3.5mm stereo jack is up top where it belongs and the volume controls are on the upper left edge. The LTE SIM card slot and microSD card slot are under the back cover.
