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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tdenton1138 - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
Edit:strike: both phone for people
insert: both phones from people
NAblue - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
i don't like hard keys anymoreworldbfree4me - Thursday, June 23, 2011 - link
I'm happy to see that the NEXUS line particularly the NEXUS S can hang with the latest and greatest, while running a non-skinned OS and a single core chip. That formula seems to be the winner IMO. I only wish that future phones from any manufacturer would began life like the new Samsung Galaxy Tab, no skin from the factory, but add-on skins available via the market or the individual manufactures web store. This would enable Goog to keep the latest OS on more handsets from beginning and give end users even more options without having to root or hack the phone risking BSOD or worse voiding the factory warranty. Having said that, NEXUS 3G will certainly be a beast if NEXUS S is the ground floor! Thanks for another superb analysis ANANDTECH!!Nexus S 4G stock
jamdev12 - Friday, June 24, 2011 - link
Hi Brian,Thanks again for the great article. I've had an OG Droid since it came out November 2009 and lately, I've been looking for a phone to go to. I want to get into the unlimited plan which I've had since I bought that device and don't want to loose the privilege, even though I don't use 3G that often. I was seriously thinking of getting the Charge because of some of the reviews I had read on other sites, but was eagerly waiting on your recommendation. I now come to the conclusion that buying this phone is not in my best interest. I would love some 4G love, but the fact that battery life is outrageously in comparison to the LG and HTC LTE phones, I will have to see what the Bionic will bring. Like you stated in the previous article about the LG, battery life will likely not increased until the LTE radio is embedded in the phone CPU, which Qualcomm is working on right now. I guess I will try to grandfather my plan and see if Verizon will let me replace my phone when the Galaxy II S comes to the states.
Thanks again for the great article. I love Anantech for the indepth coverage you guys provide to all products. Informed consumers is what we need.
Jamdev12
360fish - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
all existing unlimited data plan customers are grandfathered in until ... further notice. I have this info from a leaked verizon document but ... sorry too lazy to find link right now. July 7 is the deadline to get grandfathered in, as I recall.Belard - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
Overall, the new data plans are a rip-off and hurt the abilities of these new phones.$25 for 10GB a month should be the min. One one company will drop to 2G when you hit the limit (rather than send you a $2000~4000 bill).
But when the caps are so low at 2~5GB, whats the point of having a 4G high performance internet phone when you can make out your data plan in 1-3 weeks?
They are promoting video and music downloads, streaming - that'll kill you. And google maps / GPS... that'll eat data as well.
Belard - Saturday, June 25, 2011 - link
It really shouldn't be this hard.- Thin doesn't always mean better. Strike a balance.
- Light-weight, if its feather-weight or poorly made, it may break easily.
- SIZE, sure its nice that phones come in various sizes... but as they get bigger, they become harder to get out of our POCKETS.
I have a Samsung Galaxy S Captivate (at&t)... the screen is great, the metal back looks nice.
But its design is flawed like all Galaxy S phones.
A) - Power button on the side, hard to feel (only on Captive)
B) - speaker on back = BAD BAD, I prop my phone a bit to hear the weak alarm.
C) - TOP and BOTTOM look exactly the same... HELLO? The Charge is better because YOU know instantly which side is up.
D) - my previous SONY phone, which I used for 2+ years still looks as new as my Captive (6 months old)... the whole bottom isn't flat and is not cheap plastic.
E) - REAL BUTTONS!! I like the charge already. Having a REAL HOME button is nice. Its location is STUPID as its the most use button on the phone but its NOT on the edge, nope... its in the middle? Should be: HOME / BACK / Menu / Search (Search can go away thou)
F - if using physical buttons, make the search a SHUTTER button when phone is in camera mode.
The Android interface FROYO fixed most of the GPS issues, but is somewhat DUMBER than 2.1.
- They removed NON-REPEAT function from the Alarm? STUPID!
- The Alarm profiles move around!! WTF?!
Heres a REALLY STUPID ONE...
The PHONE LOGS are defaulted to ALL, including MESSAGING?! The 2.1 had ALL or Phone Only... in 2.2 Froyo, they added some more, but TOOK OFF PHONE ONLY?! What idiot did this? Who the hell wants to SEE their TEXTING LOGS with their PHONE LOGS?! So I have to use SHOW only MISSED or SHOW ONLY incoming, etc... not just ALL phones. Again, STUPID.
Home button issues... Using an Ipad has shown how a HOME button is supposed to work. With my Android phone with its hard to find power button, I'm constantly turning the phone ON again, even in a phone call so I can see the screen. A Physical home button should always bring back the screen (if blank) rather than the power button. I hate getting a TEXT notification, and I could be in the middle of a swipe to unlock the phone to go to the text, and the PHONE shuts off.... gotta press the power, do the swipe all over again.
I like the flexibility I get from Android - but the User Experience is still crap . Having a WindowsPhone7 style launcher makes the phone much more usable.
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prakashpk - Sunday, July 31, 2011 - link
The article says that the phone has 512 MB RAM and 2 GB internal storage. However, my phone's task manger displays only 328 MB RAM and about 1.17 GB internal storage. Are there different versions of the phone?nitink - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link
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