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
Performance
There’s honestly not too much to say about the Charge from an applications performance perspective. We’ve explored Hummingbird performance comprehensively in a number of other reviews on older and newer versions of Android, and at this point the SoC is fairly well understood. For a quick refresher, the Charge is running a 1.0 GHz Samsung Hummingbird (S5PC110) SoC which includes PowerVR SGX 540 graphics and 512 MB of PoP LPDDR2. The drag with the Charge is that it’s still using the RFS filesystem which is slow, tired, and disappointing. If you can, root the thing, install a custom ROM with another filesystem, and also move past Android 2.2.1 while you’re at it.
We’ve run all the usual benchmarks on the Charge for your viewing pleasure. Things are pretty close between the two 45 nm Snapdragon (MSM8655) phones and the Hummingbird-based Charge with the exception of one or two outliers. At this point there’s not enough of a huge difference to really make either of the two standout dramatically, though the Charge lags in the browser department and leads when it comes to GPU-heavy tests like GLBenchmark.
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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.