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
Camera Performance
The Charge includes an 8 MP rear facing camera with single LED flash, and perhaps most notably a front facing 1.3 MP camera. For comparison, the LG Revolution has a 5 MP rear camera and 1.3 MP front, and the Thunderbolt has an 8 MP rear.
The camera on the Charge isn’t overwhelmingly good, just above average. The Charge appears to have a shorter focal length than the Fascinate (and thus Galaxy S), and has slightly better white balance on the rear camera. Autofocus happens with the LED turned on, and in the dark the Charge performs pretty well. The front facing camera looks like a smartphone camera from two years ago, like it probably is. It’s a fixed focus optical system that seems to have a very close hyperfocal length, and thus still works fine for close-up things like a face for video chatting. Front facing camera quality is par for right now.
We’ve done the usual thing and taken comparison photos in the lightbox with a small test scene. Our camera bench is going to change slightly - moving and construction at the test site has made locations 1, 2, and 5 inaccessible, and 6 is next due to some construction that’s just getting started. We’re going to standardize things shortly between the whole team, but just a quick heads up that this is why 1, 2, and 5 are missing for the Droid Charge. The Charge also has the same standard fare camera application as the Galaxy S series, and I don’t think it’s really worth going over again since nothing is changed.
Video on the Droid Charge is recorded in 720P 30fps MPEG-4 baseline with 1 reference frame at 12.0 Mbps, with a single channel 60.9 Kbps AAC audio stream on the rear camera, and at VGA 15fps MPEG-4 with 1 reference frame at 1.5 Mbps with the same audio stream on the front camera.
Video on the Charge is actually pretty good quality wise. There’s continual autofocus going on and doing its job in the video, not too much wind noise, and nice detail in high spatial frequencies. I should note that the Charge actually records 720P at a higher bitrate than some smartphones do 1080P video recording, and as a result things look nice here.
The front facing camera flips things horizontally and looks about as good as you’d expect VGA to look. It isn’t super stellar, but it’s adequate for video chats. As usual we’ve uploaded videos both to YouTube and in their original form to the AT servers for your enjoyment.
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crydee - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Samsung never updates.. I still have the Galaxy first Android on AT&T and still no working GPS.sprockkets - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
I saw the picture and thought this was a review of the new iphone! Oh my! Now I can see why apple is so angry!GFY JOBS!
spctm - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Not sure why it is so but I am running Cyanogenmod 7.1 nightly on a nexus one and I get these scores.SunSpider: 3354.2
BrowserMark: 54697
Linpack: 36.7 (Free Version)
Sunspider and Browsermark are way faster on cm-7.1, which is quite surprising as it is running Android 2.3.4 base. But Linpack is more along the lines with what Brian got. Not sure if the free version's ad streaming would have some impact on floating point operations of Linpack.
Just thought I would post this observations and see if others have similar results.
silverblue - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Looks to be a good phone, though I wonder if it'll be better than the Charge.Omid.M - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
"I have an odd Sensation that the next one will be exciting..."Hah!
Can't wait for the Galaxy S 2 review. Hope it lives up to AT expectations.
@moids
name99 - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
"My only complaint is that every once in a while, the LTE data session sometimes stalls briefly – sometimes for a a few seconds, other times for a few minutes. When that happens, you’ll see the uplink green arrow blink, but no orange downlink arrow. Rebooting the device fixes things.
"
Jesus Christ.
THIS is precisely why Apple has nothing to fear, as long as competitor vendors ship crap like this --- and reviewer web sites are so blinded by Apple hatred that they give them a pass. I mean, WTF --- a phone that you, randomly and frequently, have to reboot, and the reviewer thinks this is just par for the course?
This is 2011, not 1982. Forcing a reboot to fix random problems should be a strange and unusual situation, not a daily occurrence!
ThomasA - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
Long time VZW customer, since GTE. This may change. The future should be interesting with the '4G' push, and now, the 'new' Verizon tiered data plans looming. Having a '4G' device will require either a big wallet or detailed restraint.I suggest using a cheap flip-phone for chit-chat and another device on hotspots (laptop, netbook, iPod touch) for web needs. Unless you enjoy transfusing the telecoms.
sitharien - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
You are both correct, I was way mistaken. I look forward to Anand's review. I am holding off on any upgrade of my EVO 4G until I get a better picture of the Android battery landscape.BGK - Wednesday, June 22, 2011 - link
So what's the verdict on Charge vs Thunderbolt. If battery life is about the same, that leaves the screen as the Charge's major advantage.Also, do you think some of discrepancies in battery life in the reviews had to do with the reviews of the thunderbolt being done on older versions that may have been less efficient?
tdenton1138 - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
Visit XDA or Android Central forums. You can read up about both phone for people who use them every day... I love my Charge (every phone does seem to have its quirks) and don't imagine I'll bother upgrading for quite some time. Great screen, no lag (voodoo lagfix is needed here - why does Samsung use RFS filesystem when EXT4 is so much better?), acceptable battery, hackable. Until someone can demonstrate a real need for dual+ core on a phone (now tablets perhaps...?), I'm happily sitting out of the upgrade race for a while.