Samsung Droid Charge Review - Droid Goes LTE
by Brian Klug on June 22, 2011 7:47 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- LTE
- 4G
- Droid Charge
- Mobile
Display
Of course one of the most compelling features of the Charge is the 4.3” Super AMOLED Plus display. We’ve talked about Super AMOLED before - for a quick refresher, SAMOLED is simply an AMOLED panel with the display, digitizer, and top glass bonded using optical adhesive. Every time light encounters an air-glass interface, a certain amount of light is reflected, usually around 4%. That adds up fast when you consider that each contributes to glare, less light making it out, and additional thickness, with each incurring a transmission loss and back reflection. Optically bond the entire thing together, and the stack behaves like one continual piece of glass instead of three separate pieces. That’s the “Super” in Super AMOLED.
Left: Samsung Galaxy S with RG-BG PenTile subpixel layout (Super AMOLED), Right: Droid Charge with RGB stripe subpixel layout (Super AMOLED Plus)
The next part is Plus. Both Super AMOLED and the original AMOLED use a PenTile subpixel rendering layout. Instead of 3 subpixels per pixel (RGB), AMOLED uses sets of 2 subpixels per pixel (RG-BG) to create the perception of the same effective resolution of an RGB stripe. The result is better informational efficiency - fewer subpixels to convey the perception of the same image. RG-BG PenTile is great in practice for things with organic structure, and not good for one pixel thick graphics, lines, or UI elements. Unfortunately, that includes text. Note that RGBW PenTile for LCD displays actually renders text brilliantly, but that’s a discussion for the Droid X2 review.
Left: 100% zoom of Super AMOLED, Right: 100% zoom of Super AMOLED Plus (note that the color banding is aliasing from the camera sensor sampling)
As a result, Samsung has moved on from PenTile and introduced Super AMOLED Plus which brings all the benefits of an AMOLED display (blacks that are completely off, power savings on black, effectively infinite contrast, e.t.c.) with a full 3 subpixel per pixel RGB stripe that renders text and one pixel thick UI elements without any loss of resolution.
Subpixel layouts aren’t of course all there are to talk about with Super AMOLED Plus. One of the things original AMOLED was often criticized for having was saturated colors, and rendering white with a definite blue cast. Moreover, one of my chief complaints has been that it used to seem like white point wasn’t stable across the brightness scale on older panels. We’re going to do display brightness reporting a bit differently from now on. Instead of just measuring at the maximum brightness, we will measure white point, white, and black at 100%, 75%, 50%, 25%, and 0% brightness on the device and report those, so we can track how linear the scale is, and white point. Inside the graph we will still report maximum brightness data.
The display brightness scale on the Charge is nice and linear, almost perfectly so. Unfortunately it appears that Super AMOLED Plus still retains a slightly blueish cast as evidenced by color temperature above and around 8500K. Contrast still is as impressive as we’re used to seeing for AMOLED though, with essentially no reading on blacks due to the pixels being essentially off.
The Charge’s display is exactly the same as what’s being used in the Galaxy S 2 - both are 4.3” WVGA 800x480 SAMOLED+. I feel like 4.3” is as big as one really should go with WVGA, and having seen qHD screens that are the same size, I find myself wishing that Samsung somehow had been able to make a qHD SAMOLED+ display. Alas, one can’t have one’s cake and eat it too, at least not yet.
Viewing angles on the Charge’s SAMOLED+ display are also stellar, there’s virtually no color distortion as you move to extreme angles horizontally or vertically. It simply falls off to zero as you exceed some critical angle at the most extreme of angles, and that’s a good thing.
That said, I do have a problem with SAMOLED+ right now, one that I didn’t notice ever with any other SAMOLED or AMOLED display. The problem is especially severe in my climate, where at the time of this writing it’s literally 110 F (43 C) outside - overheating.
I’ve carried the Charge around for some time now, and noticed that when I spend lots of time outside using it in the sun, or leave it on my dashboard for navigation, the device will overheat and restrict maximum brightness to a little over half. As a result, display brightness is restricted right when you need it the most. If you let things get out of hand more, the Charge will disable battery charging to prevent the battery from exceeding safe operating temperatures in addition to keeping the display brightness low.
I’ve had phones on my dashboard, in my pocket, and outdoors in the 110+ F climate here all the time, and never have I experienced this much overheating. I stood outside with the Charge and an IR thermometer and saw this behavior take place when the front glass hit 105 F consistently, which seems a bit low for restricting things, although inside it’s probably substantially warmer. I suspect I’ll see the same SAMOLED+ overheat brightness restrictions kick in with the Galaxy S 2 as well. If you’re in a cool climate, you essentially can ignore this, or if you’re in a warm climate but not going to use the device for Google navigation on your dashboard, this isn’t a huge concern either. However, in climates like mine, it’s a day to day annoyance if you’re outside with the phone in hand for any amount of time. I’m not even an outdoors person (by any stretch of the imagination), and even then I’ve seen the Charge do this little overheat dance a few times already.
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GrizzledYoungMan - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Howdy!I could use some wisdom from the thoughtful nerds at Anandtech here. I'm a Verizon subscriber (who won't be switching networks, on account of the fact that I like getting reception), and I've been holding onto my Blackberry Pearl for last three odd years.
Seriously. Don't laugh. The reason being that I haven't been so impressed with any Android phone that has come out in recent memory. I really like having a hardware keyboard, and I've found that for the stuff I need to do most - messaging, calling, mapping - the Pearl was as good as the first and second generation Android phones, except not fat.
Now, it's come time for me to move on. To what? The iPhone is out, since I'm not an asshole. And I would really prefer to get something with an LTE radio. So I'm left with the prospect of the Thunderbolt, which sucks juice like a fat baby, or the Droid Charge, which is just straight up ugly. And, in my experience, has a maddening color cast to the screen.
In my mind, it's worth it to wait a few more months, after years of avoiding upgrades, for the Droid 3, Bionic, GS2, etc. Any thoughts on the following?
I like the look of the Droid 3, and my hunch is that battery life would be at least reasonable without an LTE radio on-board. But would I miss that connectivity? Overall, I prefer faster connectivity to a dual core proc. The hardware keyboard on the Droid 3 would seem to be a big draw, but the keyboard on the Droid 2 is so awful that I feel like I'm taking crazy pills every time people rave about it.
The Droid Bionic sounds like an awesome beast - and like something that could also replace my kindle, my ipod and my netbook to a limited degree - but I have an ugly hunch it's months and months away. And that when it does arrive, it's gonna be gigantic and require a portable nuclear reactor to run for more than a few hours.
I hear that the Samsung GS2 is coming to Verizon, but is that likely to happen in my natural lifetime? And if it does, what are the odds that it also has an LTE radio without the accompanying diabetic-5-year-old appetite?
Alright, this has degenerated into a semi-rant, but thoughts from others in the same situation are appreciated! Thanks!
Pessimism - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
You're right that the QWERTY market for Android is sadly lacking. Motorola seems to be the only vendor even taking a decent crack at it. Downside is they refuse to open their handsets to the community (bootloader/system is locked down and encrypted up the wazoo) and they have already orphaned many of their earlier, otherwise capable droid phones on obsolete releases.GrizzledYoungMan - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Yeah, the locked bootloader thing also bugs me. It really wouldn't if handsets shipped with stock Android, and some measure of confidence that the OS would be updated in a timely fashion. But given that handsets ship with absurd bloatware and crappy UI overlays - I guess that's what we need these dual core procs for, to get all that crap working? - and heinously slow update cycles, I want control of my own ROM.Sigh. I gotta say, this is all really frustrating. Relative to the choices I had back when RIM was king, the smartphone market seems to have gotten crappier. Reviewers get very excited about big screens and kickstands and video streaming (I mean, jebus, who gives a crap about video streaming? I need to live, people), without noticing that phones have gotten obese and slow and half-assed.
PeteH - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
"The iPhone is out, since I'm not an asshole."C'mon dude, don't be that guy. Just say you don't want an iPhone.
GrizzledYoungMan - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Yeah, you're right. Maybe I am an asshole.I thought long and hard about the iphone. Unlike other Apple products which fall mind-blowingly short of the hype - I'm looking at you, OS X, you fat, slow, stupid bastard - It's clearly the best hardware package out there as far as size/performance/battery life, and iOS has definite advantages over Android (although neither is a clear winner in my mind, given the applications I have for a smartphone).
But, I mean, man. I just can't do it. I can't be part of the whole Apple "thing" - the implied smugness, ignorance, the submission to an authority that clearly has contempt for me.
Just can't do it.
Omid.M - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Yeah, seriously! I will admit when a product is well executed. I'm not the " I hate brand X" guy. I like BMW, I like the Hyundai Tiburon V6. The Nissan 370z...etc. If it's well-done, it's well-done.Apple makes a great product. It's just a different philosophy in terms of design and UX. They use high quality parts and their testing is good and pretty thorough. If there isn't a good Android phone out by the time there's an iPhone with a 4" screen and LTE on Verizon, I may go with iPhone. But, I do love the kind of apps that are available for Android, in terms of monitoring system resources, etc. Some cool stuff is available that you can't get on iOS unless you jailbreak.
robco - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
"The iPhone is out, since I'm not an asshole."Actually with that comment, you proved that you in fact are...
piroroadkill - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
You probably own an iPhone though, right?robco - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
I do, and I like it. But there are things about it I don't like. There are Android handsets that look good. I'm even open to WP7. I use a Mac, but it's a laptop. Say what you want, but Apple makes great notebooks. If I were in the market for a desktop, it would likely be a Windows box.I'm an asshole, but not because I own an iPhone. I was an asshole long before I got one. Assholes use all different kinds of technologies, drive different types of cars (not everyone who drives a BMW is a douchebag for example), live in all types of places. Being an asshole and owning an iPhone are mutually exclusive.
name99 - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
"Being an asshole and owning an iPhone are mutually exclusive."You mean they are ORTHOGONAL.