For Anyone Considering the Charge Over the Bionic

[eygraber]

When I heard that Sanjay Jha announced during the earnings call that the Bionic will not be coming out until September, I had enough. I immediately went to my friend's Verizon retail store and bought the Charge. I am a die-hard Motorola fan, and because I one time owned a Glyde, I am not so happy with Samsung. I am happy to report that I am absolutely blown away. I checked out the qHd screens in the store and was not as impressed as I am with SAMOLED+. The phone is snappy and responsive even with a Samsung processor and single core. Only time will tell if the phone will stay as good as it is now, but there was no way I was sticking with my old broken OG Droid until September (at the earliest). SO anyone who is considering getting the Charge because they can no longer wait for the Bionic, I am happy to tell you that it will more than meet your expectations (if you have the same expectations I do ). On a side note, I am still deeply in love with the Bionic, regardless of the fact that I still have no clue as to what its official specs are. I don't see this as an abandonment of the Bionic; it is merely a placeholder until I can convince my brother to give me his upgrade whenever the Bionic does come out

 

[Tiguere]

i have the POS storm 2 and im gonna wait until august 12 to see if the galaxy s2 will come out with LTE if not then going to droid charge.

its stupid to pay verizon top dollar while owning any of these garbage phones
storm 1
storm 2
droid 1
droid 2
incredible 1
droid x 1
fascinate

 

[rkeller62]

i have the POS storm 2 and im gonna wait until august 12 to see if the galaxy s2 will come out with LTE if not then going to droid charge.

its stupid to pay verizon top dollar while owning any of these garbage phones
storm 1
storm 2
droid 1
droid 2
incredible 1
droid x 1
fasconate

The OG Droid is an awesome phone and still holds its own against a lot of the phones out there.

 

[Tiguere]

The OG Droid is an awesome phone and still holds its own against a lot of the phones out there.

it was close to 2 years ago. ever since LTE the game has changed. its verizon we are talking about. we are paying top dollar for the best network so we have to have the best piece of equipment to take advantage of the network.

 

[rkeller62]

it was close to 2 years ago. ever since LTE the game has changed. its verizon we are talking about. we are paying top dollar for the best network so we have to have the best piece of equipment to take advantage of the network.

One man's opinion. I'm happy to hang with my OG Droid until something comes along that wows me.

 

[ChevyNovaLN]

The OG Droid is an awesome phone and still holds its own against a lot of the phones out there.

Exactly. Dont get me wrong, its a 'little' laggy sometimes but thats due to being low on available memory and aside from it not having HDMI out, i love my OG Droid. I just want to do so much more all at the same time... so i need a phone with more memory and more apps means more cpu power as many things I want require they run in the backround as a service.

I normally dont hold on to a phone very long, but i've had my OG Droid since they were released and even bought one for my wife a year later when we combined accounts (her alltel to my VZW) as it was still as good if not better (in my mind) that some newer phones.

Brian

 

[wseyller]

I have OG droid and yes the memory is the biggest bottleneck on it. Stock firmware is bad. But after trying many roms it runs like a beast. Some of these rom developers have done really good to optimize the firmware and make the most out of the memory. I can smoothly run gingerbread at 1.0 ghz and my battery life is almost double. That said I still want a new phone soon. I envy the large screens. But I can hang on for a little while.

But if I would to choose from the current 4G lineup I have to say that the charge is last on my list. My reason is because of the way the housing looks and I also can't stand the physical buttons and the cost doesn't help. I personally was interested in the LG Revolution. Thunderbolt too but the battery life that people claim scares me a little. One thing I like about the thunderbolt is the ability to talk while using a 3g data connection simultaniously.

 

[eygraber]

I have OG droid and yes the memory is the biggest bottleneck on it. Stock firmware is bad. But after trying many roms it runs like a beast. Some of these rom developers have done really good to optimize the firmware and make the most out of the memory. I can smoothly run gingerbread at 1.0 ghz and my battery life is almost double. That said I still want a new phone soon. I envy the large screens. But I can hang on for a little while.

But if I would to choose from the current 4G lineup I have to say that the charge is last on my list. My reason is because of the way the housing looks and I also can't stand the physical buttons and the cost doesn't help. I personally was interested in the LG Revolution. Thunderbolt too but the battery life that people claim scares me a little. One thing I like about the thunderbolt is the ability to talk while using a 3g data connection simultaniously.

I would never get a phone from LG, and I too was scared about the Thunderbolt's battery life and whatnot. AS for talking while using 3G, it's being tested on the Thunderbolt, and it is a software update away from any other 4G phone (I'm pretty sure that's true; I saw it in an article a while back). As for the Charge, it's not as flimsy as people have been saying, and the buttons aren't that bad. So far my biggest issue is that it doesn't use the stock Android keyboard

 

[tbssawd07]

The Charge is a very nice phone!

 

[Arizone]

I got the Charge in the meantime using Costco's generous policy and because it was on sale. While the battery may be bad at times it holds up well enough for my average usage. There are some slowdowns using the device, however they are usually minor. Every so often stuff freezes up. The screen is fantastic, the only thing I really don't like about the device is the shape.

 

[milkshed27]

Grats on the new phone, it's a very good one and imo, the best LTE phone currently available from Verizon. I had a Charge for 13 days and really enjoyed it. I absolutely love Samsung for continuing to give us unlocked bootloaders, it makes rooting so easy. Unfortunately, once I knew for sure that Verizon would allow me to keep my unlimited data, I decided to return it. It definitely was hard to see it go but I feel that one of the upcoming phones will be a better fit for me. I've had to start playing with all sorts of different ROMs on my OG Droid to keep me distracted while I wait impatiently for the Bionic or the GS2 to drop.

 

[eygraber]

Just a little update - I've now had the Charge for a few days, and while it is a great phone, it pales in comparison to what an equally spec'ed OG Droid would provide. The most glaring issues mostly revolve around the difference between Samsung and Motorola phones (opinion ), which are really just the little things such as build quality, volume, settings, etc... I'm gonna stick with it and hope for some other way to get a subsidized Bionic, but if I had a working OG Droid that was guaranteed to work until the Bionic came out, I might prefer that over the Charge

 

[anon(415574)]

I recently gave up waiting. I made it to the 29th with my Incredible 2. On the 30th I s-off'd , and ROM'd it, so now I'm stuck with it. (my 14 days were up on 8/1 )

But I'm happy with it, and it actually exists!

So, I'm done waiting. Not even on my radar anymore. I'll now wait for the second gen of LTE to come out befoe I think about upgrading.

Besides the Inc2 was $100 after rebate.. 4g wasn't worth another $200 to me.

 

[grrump]

I too got tired of the wait. And while the og Droid I was using ran great the larger screens , 4G and triple the memory is what drew me to the thunderbolt. I originally planned on trying the thunderbolt until the suspected Aug. 4th drop of the bionic but as soon as the 4G kicked in I fell in love. I didn't make it 2 hours before it was rooted and I can tell you with the aosp roms I had it set up exactly like my Droid added the larger screen , neck breaking 4G speeds and bunches more memory. I will not let go of my thunderbolt. As for the battery issue I'm never far from a charger so I couldn't address that but I've already bought 2 extra batteries and external charger for the tb the same way I did for my og Droid. Rooting is a must for my phone and sitting on a stock bionic for six months until someone rooted it was not appealing. Just my 2 cents

Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

 

[Hosehead]

its stupid to pay verizon top dollar while owning any of these garbage phones
droid x 1

Did you ever own an X? If you did, you wouldn't be adding it to the above list. The X is a bad ass device. If it weren't for me wanting a LTE device, I would be just fine staying with mine. Sorry, but you instantly lose credibility with a list like this...

 

[jt_83]

First of all, I bought my wife a Droid Charge at the end of June so that she would be grandfathered into unlimited data. It is a great phone. It does feel a little cheap compared to the OG Droid (but let's face it, it's built like a brick) and I don't like the fact that it doesn't have a notification LED, but the screen and responsiveness both seem to be very good, and as someone else said, it's currently Verizon's best LTE phone.

I, however, am not as enamoured with the OG Droid as most. I've had 4 since March of 2010. With two I had keyboard issues (the qwerty keyboard would double type letters) and one the GPS didn't work at all (it would spend 20+ minutes looking for a GPS signal).

Ever since the most recent OS update, I've just found the phone is slow, as if the hardware is incapable of keeping up with the software. Home screen icons take forever to load, and often apps hang up. I've done a factory reset, and I've overclocked the processor and still have the same issues. It's extremely frustrating, especially seeing how nice and smooth my wife's phone runs.

 

[irl Panda]

First of all, I bought my wife a Droid Charge at the end of June so that she would be grandfathered into unlimited data. It is a great phone. It does feel a little cheap compared to the OG Droid (but let's face it, it's built like a brick) and I don't like the fact that it doesn't have a notification LED, but the screen and responsiveness both seem to be very good, and as someone else said, it's currently Verizon's best LTE phone.

I, however, am not as enamoured with the OG Droid as most. I've had 4 since March of 2010. With two I had keyboard issues (the qwerty keyboard would double type letters) and one the GPS didn't work at all (it would spend 20+ minutes looking for a GPS signal).

Ever since the most recent OS update, I've just found the phone is slow, as if the hardware is incapable of keeping up with the software. Home screen icons take forever to load, and often apps hang up. I've done a factory reset, and I've overclocked the processor and still have the same issues. It's extremely frustrating, especially seeing how nice and smooth my wife's phone runs.

Root it. Aside from my battery life, my OG Droid flies.

 

[mcbrett]

I bought the Charge in May- after spending 5-6 agonizing months looking at this and other boards about when the Bionic would see the light of day. Best decision ever.

I don't understand why so many of you let Motorola waste a good portion of your lives stalking a phone that would have come out in May had they not f'd up, and now they have you checking in for daily updates for a phone that won't come till September??

 

[trailblazen]

I had the Charge for a week back during the unlimited data fiasco and wasn't truely happy with it. Yeah it would have been a good placeholder but it wasn't what I would want for 2 yrs. In contrast to the OP I actually hated how overblown and oversaturated the colors were on the charge and I wasn't a fan of managing 328MB of dynamic RAM (I always found myself pulling up my task manager constantly to free up some space so multitasking was limited in my mind at best). Besides those 2 issues with the phone I had it wasn't too bad.

 

[Asterdroid]

Root it. Aside from my battery life, my OG Droid flies.

Pretty sure he did since he said he overclocked it.