New charge v Revolution (my take)

[twistedlim]

Picked up the Charge Sunday after having the Revolution for 3 or 4 days. I could not stand the battery life of the Revo so I am hoping for better, and from what I have read it should be.

Pros:
-Lighter, more user friendly profile. Does not feel like a brick in my pocket.

-Nice display, vibrant colorful albeit at the expense of having my whites a pale shade of blue.

-so far good 4g connection where it should be.

-Love being able to switch from 4g to 3g without rebooting the phone, what was Lg thinking?

- On off button on the side of the phone where it is convenient to use. Who would of thought of putting a oft used button in a place where it is easy to find?

-Pretty zippy phone using LPP (my default launcher anyway) despite quadrant scores (another reason to not believe quadrant benchmarks)

Cons:

-who stole my notification LEDs?

-Quadrant scores abismal, but I fixed that by uninstalling quadrand benchmark, now I don't care.

-Goofy unlock, either fit the puzzle or swype a glass whatever that is, guess I can get used to it.

-Just a tad of a hesitation when I click the "on" button until the screen appears.

-no working netflix app, hacked or in the market. Just when I was starting to like seeing little people on my screen.

 

[Rominucka]

Most people who know a thing or two about a thing or two will say that benchmarks are pretty meaningless. It is interesting though to see this underperform by over 200 compared to the Indulge. It suffers in the frame-rate department and that has to do with the gigantic screen. Though it did run through the test much much faster. It took forever for the Indulge to run through the 3rd part.
I really don't care much about the notification LED but I do understand it's necessity.
The glorious screen, built in screen-cap function, built in audio adjustments, and the 2 mic noise reduction feature, alone make this a perfect mobile device for me.
Oh and that whole incredibly lightning fast 4G speed thing is pretty cool too.

 

[jinwons]

You returned Revo in just 3~4 days? How bad was battery life when returning it? Usually it takes almost a week for new battery to be conditioned properly. Most of them seem to be able to get 10~16 out of Revo under 4G and nearly twice of that under 3G.

 

[GunnerJim]

Twistedlim, I did the same thing, I took the LG Revo back for the Droid Charge, same reasons, the battery life was my biggest concern too. The Revo had better battery life than the HTC TB, but I am getting twice the life with the Charge. I boils down to preference.

I really wish the Samsung Galaxy S II (SGSII) was 4G LTE, then we would all be happy. But until then, I will stick with the Galaxy line, Samsung is putting out good phones with low radiation SAR levels too, for what it's worth. The Charge can experience faster Quadrant scores 1400-1500 with Voodoo, RFS conversion to EXT. Nothing like the 3400 scores of the SGSII, which I believe everyone would have to say is the best 3G Smartphone on the market right now, IMO.

 

[twistedlim]

You returned Revo in just 3~4 days? How bad was battery life when returning it? Usually it takes almost a week for new battery to be conditioned properly. Most of them seem to be able to get 10~16 out of Revo under 4G and nearly twice of that under 3G.

Lithium ion batteries do not need to be "conditioned or refreshed" contrary to popular belief. I had the Revo long enough to watch the battery run out like sand in an hourglass. I really did not like the fact that you had to reboot the revo to switch it to 3g. I had it long enough to know I could not make it thought the day with a charge, I refuse to have a phone that I have to recharge once or twice a day.

I think the battery is better in the Charge because the processor is just slower and requires less juice. I can live with that. With LPP I really don't notice any annoying slowness.

And yes I find bench marks meaningless. I must add the caveat that I don't game so the video rate is not a concern to me. I went from 1300 on my DX to 2300 with rooted/overclocked gingerbread and really noticed no differnce other than the battery was not lasting as long.

 

[doctorido]

-Nice display, vibrant colorful albeit at the expense of having my whites a pale shade of blue.

Have you tried Voodoo Color? The blue shade is what's really holding me back on getting this phone. I know people are loving the screen, but next to the Revo white background on the Charge screen is noticeably paler/dimmer because of the blue shade no matter how much the brightness is turned up. I can't seem to white whites on the Charge screen.

 

[twistedlim]

Have you tried Voodoo Color? The blue shade is what's really holding me back on getting this phone. I know people are loving the screen, but next to the Revo white background on the Charge screen is noticeably paler/dimmer because of the blue shade no matter how much the brightness is turned up. I can't seem to white whites on the Charge screen.

don't you have to be rooted for voodoo?

 

[doctorido]

don't you have to be rooted for voodoo?

The Voodoo website says that you don't have to be rooted. The problem is that just looking now I don't see a separate download for the Voodoo color and there's no version for the Charge .

For me that blue tint really detracts from the screen compared to the Revo and the Inc. 2 next to it.

 

[Zohar127]

Most people who know a thing or two about a thing or two will say that benchmarks are pretty meaningless. It is interesting though to see this underperform by over 200 compared to the Indulge. It suffers in the frame-rate department and that has to do with the gigantic screen. Though it did run through the test much much faster. It took forever for the Indulge to run through the 3rd part.
I really don't care much about the notification LED but I do understand it's necessity.
The glorious screen, built in screen-cap function, built in audio adjustments, and the 2 mic noise reduction feature, alone make this a perfect mobile device for me.
Oh and that whole incredibly lightning fast 4G speed thing is pretty cool too.

I come from the land of computer enthusiasts, so I can concur with you 100%. Synthetic benchmarks are useless for determining the day to day performance of your device/computer. Basing a buying decision on a benchmark is never a good idea. As far as I can tell, most Android games are designed to run on the lowest common denominator. Most synthetic benchmarks are designed to extend the users' e-peen.

As for browser performance and UI performance, my experience with the Charge was that the browser was a bit choppy when loading a page, and with plug-ins set to on-demand, was indistinguishable from the Droid X-2.

As far as the interface choppiness goes, just wait for Gingerbread or root and fix the problems yourself. Isn't that like half the reason anyone buys an Android in the first place?

BTW, my charge will get here on Wednesday! Can't wait!!

 

[Zohar127]

Have you tried Voodoo Color? The blue shade is what's really holding me back on getting this phone. I know people are loving the screen, but next to the Revo white background on the Charge screen is noticeably paler/dimmer because of the blue shade no matter how much the brightness is turned up. I can't seem to white whites on the Charge screen.

This is the problem with all LED and OLED screens. White LEDs are actually just blue LEDs with a yellow phosphor added in to make it look whiter. As far as I know, there's no such thing as a purely white LED in any LED screen in any technology.

OLED LED Lighting Blog

The trade-off is that other than the barely bluish whites, the OLED screen blows other screen technologies away in every measurable capacity.

 

[sean76]

My take....The Revolution is not on the same playing field as the other 2 4G devices on vzw...That being the Charge or the Thunderbolt. I played with it for all of 5 minutes and put it down saying...what was LG thinking? The G2x on Tmobile is light years ahead of the Revolution, especially with stock Android on Board. I honestly came away just shaking my head...Vzw should have said build us a G2x with LTE onboard, or nothing at all.

 

[Rominucka]

There's a good reason why there's barely any marketing for it.
I personally like the weight of it, the screen is decent enough and the one at corporate I played with for a few seconds had a pretty smooth ui while scrolling through the homescreen which was surprising.

I know what they were going for with the app drawer organization but it's just a little weird. Don't try to reinvent the wheel. The inability to turn 4g off w/o rebooting is the classic definition of ******ed.

Overall it's a shittier version of the TB and the TB is a shittier LTE phone than the mighty Charge.
What the Charge offers is well worth the extra $50.

 

[jinwons]

Revolution is shittier version of Tbolt? How so? I think it's the opposite. Revolution has brighter screen than Tbolt, has HDMI out/mirror that's not in Tbolt. It's the only phone that will do VoLTE when Verizon turns it on. It's got better battery life than Tbolt, can switch to 3G. Though it requires reboot, Tbolt didn't even have that setting when it launched. I don't see any edge that Tbolt has over Revolution.

The only thing wrong in Revo is Bing. LG UI skin is just light skin unlike heavy TouchWiz, Sense, Blur and it's nearly stock android. Optimus 2X also has the same LG skin and it performs identically as stock android in G2x.

 

[GunnerJim]

jinwons, the RAM on the HTC TB is 768MB confirmed... I guess you could say that is an advantage, even though the Revo outperforms the TB in benchmarks with "only" 512MB RAM. For what it is worth...

 

[jinwons]

jinwons, the RAM on the HTC TB is 768MB confirmed... I guess you could say that is an advantage, even though the Revo outperforms the TB in benchmarks with "only" 512MB RAM. For what it is worth...

So is Revo confirmed to have only 512Mb RAM? Not that it matters much when it performs fine. And I forgot to mention 16Gb internal storage in Revo vs 8Gb in Tbolt with only 2.5Gb usable space.

 

[GunnerJim]

jinwons, True, I forgot about that too... I had several Droid Forum members say they confirmed with LG that it has only 512MB, even though VZW says different. I wish we had an official source to quote definitively. The Revo is hands down better than the HTC TB, UNLOCKED Bootloader out of the box.