Hi everyone! First post here after doing a lot of research on android devices. I'm completely new to the smartphone world and have been on the hunt for what device I will upgrade to. After a lot of digging, reading reviews, browsing forums, and watching youtube videos, I think I've come to a conclusion.
At first I was a dead ringer for the Droid X2. That is, until the Droid Charge caught my eye. Like many people I found myself torn between the two similar devices. I decided that the only way I could make an informed choice between the two devices was to learn as much about them as I could and come up with a quantitative analysis between the two. That is exactly what I did.
You can view this analysis two ways:
1.) Because I've never owned a smartphone or an Android device before you can consider my opinion completely unbiased.
2.) Because I've never owned a smartphone or Android device before you can consider my opinion completely uninformed and useless.
Hopefully the hours of research I've done on each device have made option number 2 less of a worry.
My ultimate goal is to hopefully help some of the people who are in the same boat as I am in. I've seen several posts on this forum comparing the two phones, so hopefully the information I provide here, even without the scores, will solve problems for people.
My scoring scale: I used a 5 point system that is designed to represent my own personal research of the given category. The information I based these scores on comes from a myriad of reviews and forum posts and youtube videos I found over the last couple of days on both devices. My hands-on time of each device winds down to a few minutes of screwing around in the local VZW store, so I had to rely mostly on the information I could glean from sites such as this, infosyncworld and Engadget. I tried to get as much varying opinion as possible, as to not end up with a slanted score. I hope I've come up with a fair set of numbers. I don't see anything in my research that stands out as being overtly wrong, but feel free to point it out for me if you see anything!
So... uh... here it is!
At the end of the day, I feel like the DX2 is a solid, time-tested device that leaves out just a little bit too much in order to hit that price point and still fit the nifty new Tegra2. Overheating issues and the RAM issue are a little off-putting to me. I don't want to end up being an early adopter of all the problems Motorola hasn't ironed out yet.
The Droid Charge is probably overpriced, but the inclusion of 4G and a pre-installed 32GB microSD card are big pluses. Combined with a top-of-the-line camera and screen the Charge almost justifies it's price tag. If I didn't have a $50 upgrade discount and couldn't get another $50 knocked off by Amazon I would probably go for the X2. Unfortunately, any phone with the letters "4G" attached to it is going to run the consumer a price premium. Normally, I'd shy away from a product like this, but what the phone lacks in horsepower it makes up for in other areas.
That said, at a final price to me of $199 and the knowledge that the 4G network will be enabled in my area next month, the Charge is probably going to be the one I get. If software updates solve the performance issues, this phone will be a very solid device for the price I'm getting it for.
At first I was a dead ringer for the Droid X2. That is, until the Droid Charge caught my eye. Like many people I found myself torn between the two similar devices. I decided that the only way I could make an informed choice between the two devices was to learn as much about them as I could and come up with a quantitative analysis between the two. That is exactly what I did.
You can view this analysis two ways:
1.) Because I've never owned a smartphone or an Android device before you can consider my opinion completely unbiased.
2.) Because I've never owned a smartphone or Android device before you can consider my opinion completely uninformed and useless.
Hopefully the hours of research I've done on each device have made option number 2 less of a worry.
My ultimate goal is to hopefully help some of the people who are in the same boat as I am in. I've seen several posts on this forum comparing the two phones, so hopefully the information I provide here, even without the scores, will solve problems for people.
My scoring scale: I used a 5 point system that is designed to represent my own personal research of the given category. The information I based these scores on comes from a myriad of reviews and forum posts and youtube videos I found over the last couple of days on both devices. My hands-on time of each device winds down to a few minutes of screwing around in the local VZW store, so I had to rely mostly on the information I could glean from sites such as this, infosyncworld and Engadget. I tried to get as much varying opinion as possible, as to not end up with a slanted score. I hope I've come up with a fair set of numbers. I don't see anything in my research that stands out as being overtly wrong, but feel free to point it out for me if you see anything!
So... uh... here it is!
At the end of the day, I feel like the DX2 is a solid, time-tested device that leaves out just a little bit too much in order to hit that price point and still fit the nifty new Tegra2. Overheating issues and the RAM issue are a little off-putting to me. I don't want to end up being an early adopter of all the problems Motorola hasn't ironed out yet.
The Droid Charge is probably overpriced, but the inclusion of 4G and a pre-installed 32GB microSD card are big pluses. Combined with a top-of-the-line camera and screen the Charge almost justifies it's price tag. If I didn't have a $50 upgrade discount and couldn't get another $50 knocked off by Amazon I would probably go for the X2. Unfortunately, any phone with the letters "4G" attached to it is going to run the consumer a price premium. Normally, I'd shy away from a product like this, but what the phone lacks in horsepower it makes up for in other areas.
That said, at a final price to me of $199 and the knowledge that the 4G network will be enabled in my area next month, the Charge is probably going to be the one I get. If software updates solve the performance issues, this phone will be a very solid device for the price I'm getting it for.