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Wake up! It's the SD card dummy.

twistedlim

Android Expert
Jun 9, 2010
804
80
So, for the most part I am pretty impressed with the Charge despite 3 things that have gotten my goat.

1. Slow wake up
2. No led (combined with slow wake up is a pain)
3. Plugging in phone to computer, the phone is recognized, goes blank, recognize, goes blank, etc.

I began to play around a bit and grabbed an old 2gb sandisk class 2 card and installed it. Bammmm, wake up is twice as fast (at least). It does not help with the LED issue but now at least when I check for missed calls, messages, etc it does not come to life like a dinosaur.
Added bonus is now when I plug the phone in the card is immediatly recognized.

I think SAmsung really cheaped out on the 32 gb cards and they are causing a lot of problems. Kind of suprises me because the slow wake up is a big knock on this phone.

Check it out if you have another card laying around or in another phone.

I picked up a 16gb sandisk class 4 and all is working much better.
 
I would get another card. I was fortunate to switch from a Thunderbolt to the Charge. I basically just swapped SD cards so I am using the Thunderbolt's card in my Charge. Wake up is fast with no problems.

Regarding the LED, download a program from the Market called NoLED. It works awesome and solves the problem of not having an LED. It basically will keep your screen off, but it will put a colored square pixel on your sleeping screen to let you know that you have a missed text, call, email, etc.

And it's great because you can customize the colors of each. So for example, if you have a missed text, you can set that to blue. A missed call can be set to red, etc. So if you have multiple notifications that need attention, you can tell exactly what you need to check when you wake up your phone. Awesome app!

As to the plugging the phone into computer part, I haven't tried it yet. So I can't comment on that.
 
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I would get another card. I was fortunate to switch from a Thunderbolt to the Charge. I basically just swapped SD cards so I am using the Thunderbolt's card in my Charge. Wake up is fast with no problems.

Regarding the LED, download a program from the Market called NoLED. It works awesome and solves the problem of not having an LED. It basically will keep your screen off, but it will put a colored square pixel on your sleeping screen to let you know that you have a missed text, call, email, etc.

And it's great because you can customize the colors of each. So for example, if you have a missed text, you can set that to blue. A missed call can be set to red, etc. So if you have multiple notifications that need attention, you can tell exactly what you need to check when you wake up your phone. Awesome app!

As to the plugging the phone into computer part, I haven't tried it yet. So I can't comment on that.

I am all set with a new card (got the sandisk). Up and running good, hardly any hesitation at wake up.
Regarding Noled, have you noticed any extra battery usage with it. I had it installed but then read that folks were calling it a battery drain?
 
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I am all set with a new card (got the sandisk). Up and running good, hardly any hesitation at wake up.
Regarding Noled, have you noticed any extra battery usage with it. I had it installed but then read that folks were calling it a battery drain?

I just got my Charge yesterday and added NoLED later in the evening, so I guess I can't judge any extra battery drain. But I can tell you that I haven't noticed a difference between when I got the phone and installed that app, for what that's worth.

I also can say that the battery life has been great so far, so even if it is using a little bit of battery, I'm still happy. Hope that helps!
 
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So, for the most part I am pretty impressed with the Charge despite 3 things that have gotten my goat.

1. Slow wake up
2. No led (combined with slow wake up is a pain)
3. Plugging in phone to computer, the phone is recognized, goes blank, recognize, goes blank, etc.

I began to play around a bit and grabbed an old 2gb sandisk class 2 card and installed it. Bammmm, wake up is twice as fast (at least). It does not help with the LED issue but now at least when I check for missed calls, messages, etc it does not come to life like a dinosaur.
Added bonus is now when I plug the phone in the card is immediatly recognized.

I think SAmsung really cheaped out on the 32 gb cards and they are causing a lot of problems. Kind of suprises me because the slow wake up is a big knock on this phone.

Check it out if you have another card laying around or in another phone.

I picked up a 16gb sandisk class 4 and all is working much better.

The problem here is if you downloaded a few movies from the Media Hub as I did with my $25 credit, you can't go to a small capacity SD card.

Beyond that I too am not sure by what you mean 'slow wakeup'. Do you mean pressing the side power button when the phone is at idle at not off? Mine only takes a second or so.
 
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Color me skeptical but I am having a difficult time believing the class ratings. I have never had issues with sandisk cards. I picked up a pny class 10 for my DX that was garbage. I had all sorts of issues with it while the class 2 sandisk was flawless. The card that came with my Charge was a class 2 and was half as fast and tons more buggy than the class 2 sandisk I tried. Perhaps there is a reason sandisk does not produce a class 10 card...
 
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