When the Samsung Droid Charge 4G Android handset was released in mid May of 2011, Verizon’s tagline called it “the fastest and most powerful Droid ever created”, and it arrived as the first ever Droid on the 4G LTE Verizon wireless mobile broadband platform.
The Motorola Droid Bionic has since joined the Droid Charge as the second Droid handset to access the first 4G network in North America. Actually, the Motorola Droid Bionic was slated to arrive before the Charge, but delays set it back, so the Samsung Droid Charge charged forward to take the first ever “4G LTE Droid” crown.
The Samsung Droid Charge arrives in familiar 4G smartphone form, using the black, rectangular slab or candy bar form factor. The handset is average in size compared to all other 3G and 4G smartphones, and just a little over the average weight, measuring 5.11 x 2.66 x 0.46 inches (130 x 68 x 12 mm) and weighing 5.04 oz (143 g). Physically, Samsung does attempt to differentiate their handset from all the other similar 4G big screen smartphones out there by stretching the top and bottom of the handset, and rounding the four corners more than other manufacturers.
The display is 4.3 inches, and supports capacitive multitouch gestures, with a light sensor and a proximity sensor built into the display. Samsung has used their own technology, Super AMOLED Plus, to deliver 480 x 800 pixel resolution. A 1600 mAh battery is on board and provides 11 hours of talk time and 12 days of standby time. Out-of-the-box, the Samsung Droid Charge 4G handset employees Google’s Android 2.2 operating system, however, a recent update to Android’s 2.3.4 Gingerbread OS is available, though it is unofficial. Currently you can purchase the Samsung Droid Charge starting at only one penny at select Verizon authorized retailers.
Video chat, video call and 1280 x 720 pixel (720p HD) resolution video recording are available via the rear facing eight megapixel and forward facing 1.3 megapixel camcorders. A single core 1.0 GHz Hummingbird processing chip set runs the show. Music and video players support all major file formats, a YouTube player is present for those proprietary videos, MySpace, Twitter, Picasa and Facebook applications are preloaded, and HTML and HTML 5 web browsing are supported, as is the Adobe Flash media player.
The Samsung Droid Charge also offers a microUSB slot for charging the handset and connecting to other devices, microSD slot for memory and storage expansion up to 32 GB, Wi-Fi 802.11b / 802.11g / 802.11n and Bluetooth 3.0 wireless connectivity, and DLNA and HDMI video mirroring. Get more information in our detailed Samsung Droid Charge 4G review.
