Samsung Droid Charge To Debut from Verizon Next Week

Verizon Wireless has just announced that it's going to introduce its next 4G-enabled smartphone, the Samsung Droid Charge, near the end of this month. This model is also going to sport a large display and Google's Android OS.

This high-end handset was unveiled back at CES in January, when Verizon was first showing off its lineup of upcoming devices with support for its 4G LTE network. At that time, most of the specifications were revealed, but not the official name, release date, or price.

That has now changed: the Droid Charge is going to launch on Thursday, April 28. It will be available both online and in Verizon stores on that date.

It is going to sell for $300 with a two-year service contract. This price is likely to raise a few eyebrows, as it is considerably higher than many of its competitors sell for.

An Overview of the Samsung Droid Charge
One of this model's more notable features will be a 4.3-inch WVGA (800 x 480) Super AMOLED Plus touchscreen. This is a new type of display, and it's been designed to be easier to see out of doors than previous Super AMOLED screens.

The Droid Charge will debut with Google Android OS 2.2 (Froyo) running on a 1 GHz Samsung Hummingbird processor, with Samsung's TouchWiz user interface layered on top. An upgrade to OS 2.3 or beyond is already in development.

Like all smartphones running Google's operating system, this device is going to have a powerful web browser and come with a full suite of applications, such as Google Maps and Gmail. It will be bundled with Adobe Flash Player 10.1 and the Samsung Media Hub.

Because it will support Verizon's LTE network, the Droid Charge will offer data transfer speeds of 5 to 12 Mbps for downloads and 2 to 5 Mbps upload speeds under real world conditions. In addition, this handset is going to include Wi-Fi b/g/n, Bluetooth, and a GPS, plus it will be able to act as a mobile Wi-Fi hotspot.

The Droid Charge will include a rear-facing 8 megapixel auto-focus camera with flash, and a front-facing 1.3 megapixel camera for video conferencing.

This Samsung smartphone will also include an HDMA (720p) video-out port and a 1500 mAh battery. It won't have a significant amount of internal storage, but will instead depend on a microSD memory card slot. Whether Verizon will bundle this device with a high-capacity card is not yet known.