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Should i trade My Captivate for Desire Z?

As the title says it, should i trade it for desire z? ive read some stuff online, like i know captivate has an amazing screen, looks good, bigger screen , samoled, but the thing is it sells for less like 350$ if your lucky.. should i do it?

Should i wear the Blue Shirt or the Green Shirt?

green btw b honest lol .

I, personally, would take the trade. I prefer the look and feel of the Desire Z (though the keys are a bit small), and being an HTC device, it tends to have a much larger community following/support (like cyanogenmod and the like)... but that's just my opinion on it

inital rooting and stuff is a bit more in-depth than captivate but it is totally doable and had many of the same options. i originally was going to get the Z because it has keyboard too. after looking into the extra crap i was kind of releaved. check out the XDA wiki on that phone for more info

I like the desire z, I'm partial to HTC products and the use of adb tools mainly because I have zero formal training in any computer training. Using adb to root has a certain wow factor for me. However I had the inspire for a week and returned it after bringing it back to stock form. I just couldn't justify paying the full retail price for it. So, now I'm back to the captivate using cog 4 and have a new renowned love for this phone. Ultimately its up to you. I personally think the captivate is a great device especially with a base froyo and GPS being fixed. Build quality would go to HTC though. I hope this helped as its a long rant.

I was really not impressed with the inspire, or sense for that matter.
After messing around with the inspire for two days and seeing how much stuff sense adds in it actually makes me feel less bad about t-wiz. With touch wiz after you delete the launcher and some samsung apk's, alls that's left is twframework which besides adding some small cosmetic stuff adds the shortcuts to the pull down menu, which I like. The inspire had more htc apks than almost the total amount of apks in my rom. There was almost 60 framework files before deodexing the inspire. The inspire is generally quick as far as cpu stuff, like app to qr. I use this app sometimes for a real life cpu task tests when testing kernels and whatnot. The inspire will generate the apps 2-3 times faster than the captivate. Despite this, the captivate just feels waaaaaay smoother and LESS laggy mostly I guess because the GPU is so much better.

i have been using my HTC Vision (Tmob G2) unlocked with my ATT card (most of my time is spent on wifi anyway) and while i absolutely love the battery life i get with the DesireZ rom on it, i hate the keyboard. i have been trying to force myself to use it more and more, but i keep wanting to go back to one of my captivates and swype....i feel the trial period wont last long now...my cappies are calling my name

Dilli, my exact feeling. That's why when I had ilthe inspire I removed sense completely. Its a beautiful fast phone with launcherpro minus the tiny battery but I could not justify the full retail price.

davwman said:
Dilli, my exact feeling. That's why when I had ilthe inspire I removed sense completely. Its a beautiful fast phone with launcherpro minus the tiny battery but I could not justify the full retail price.
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Click to collapse
Yup I did the same thing. Instead of wasting my early upgrade on a phone that's hardware is gonna be outdated very(if not already) soon when it seems like this year is gonna bring some crazy phones and cpus and whatnot. I paid the full 450 for it, returned it about a week later and bought the atrix for 400. Despite the whole bootloader issue, the atrix IS without a doubt the fastest phone I've ever used, even if the system is not fully utilizing its dual core yet, which I kinda hope its not cause when it does, its gonna be insane. And running app to qr on the atrix is even almost twice as fast as the inspire, probably 4 times faster than the captivate, plus so far is buttery smooth. The inspire was almost a tradeoff for a little bit of speed but greatly reduced smoothness. Atrix so far has both, plus I actually like the screen a lot.

wow damn, but if anything i can always sell it for more, in canada desire z sells for 400$ plus, captivate.. barley sells and its furstrating since captivate is better in aspects of screen weight and stuff and battery is better!! Inspire is the Desire HD in canada? seriously you guys didnt like that/ that looks like a sick device, anyways might go for a red torch xD sell it and add about 100$ and buy a new iphone4 front facing camera <3

I would take a captivate or an inspire for that matter any day of the week over an iphone 4. Had one of those too, along with every other iphone and was very involved in the jailbreak scene, up until I tried android. There's no way ill EVER go back to ios. This is my opinion, but ios completely sucks compared to android. You'll be bored with it in a week, even if you jailbreak. I would literally rather have a captivate on stock 2.1 than a jailbroken iphone 4

really? dont get me wrong android is nice, but i like to have that GPS option working on an iphone than not workin on a captivate + i personally dont like the touch buttons prefer the one form i9000

I'm slightly disappointed in the Thunderbolt

I had a Droid Incredible before my Thunderbolt. My girl now has my Incredible and, when she has any problems with it, I really enjoy picking up that phone to help, fix, or change some things for her. I miss my Incredible.
Sure, the Thunderbolt's larger screen is nicer and easier to look at in many respects, but the Incredible fits nicely in my hands. I never use protective covers, cases, or films... and I never will. That's just how I roll. I was able to flip the Incredible around and maneuver it in my hand like Tom Cruise handles liqueur bottles in 'Cocktail.' Sorry for the cheesy movie analogy. I feel clumsy with the Thunderbolt and I find myself grasping it tighter out of fear of it jumping out of my hands.
The power button and volume rocker is on the opposite side which is tough to get accustomed to. I understand that's because of the kickstand and maybe it's more ergonomically correct for right handed people. I don't know if the old way caters to us left-handed, left-eared people better or not, but that's what I was used to.
I really miss the AMOLED screen of the Incredible. When it's sunny out, I find it just as difficult to see the Thunderbolt's display, so that's a non-issue for me. I just REALLY miss the contrast, pop, and vibrant colors of the AMOLED. AMOLED's refresh rate doesn't leave fading gray trails when scrolling fine black lines or text like LCDs do. If I didn't love HTC and Sense so much, I would opt for a Samsung, but I'm too stubborn and I have succumbed to brand loyalty.
I see hints of the performance gain in the MSM8655 of the Thunderbolt vs the QSD8650 in the Incredible, especially with the newer Adreno graphics... but I'm not impressed at all. Honestly, I can't stand how choppy some of the Sense graphics are; for example, text message and email scrolling, and the notoriously clunky app drawer for Sense hurt my eyes sometimes. I have the Warm Z TwoPointTwo ROM on the Incredible and it seems to perform better, especially in those respects, than the Thunderbolt. And that's with the stock HTC kernel on the Incredible. Of course, actual benchmarks would beg to differ.
The Thunderbolt has 4g... and that's why I won't trade with my girlfriend. So far, my best upload and download speeds have been 44Mb/s and 19Mb/s respectively. I even get better overall reception (including LTE) at home with the Thunderbolt than the Incredible or any other Verizon phone, which would often drop calls unless we stood next to a window when I'm at home. I also think, as time goes on, the ROMs will get better, smoother, faster, and more stable for the Thunderbolt. I'm having trouble finding just the right skin, theme, and ROM for the Thunderbolt. I've tried BAMF Remixed, Thunder, and now I'm on VirusROM. I just need to learn some patience. Maybe Warm Z TwoPointTwo will come to Thunderbolt. I love that ROM.
Until then, I'll just continue to find reasons to spend some quality time with my old pal, Incredible. I know I just need to quit cold-turkey... rip it off like a band-aid... but it's so difficult when I still share the same home with that phone.

No choppiness here.
None. Not overclocked either.

I hate that the placement of the volume rocker. I feel the same way you do about your incredible as I did about my G2. I had the G2 for a month before I sold it. I miss the G2, but really do like the Thunderbolt.

adrynalyne said:
No choppiness here.
None. Not overclocked either.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I do and have had for a while. Email scrolling, web surfing and XDA App. Doesn't matter what kernel whether it is normal, under volted etc... I also have short freezing while typing on both text and email. Two full wipes and no change. The freezing kinda reminds me of the way my Facinate acted on stock 2.1
I wish I knew why this is happening. : (
Sent from my BAMF ADR6400L using XDA Premium App

I've never experienced the issues you outlined about the screen. Perhaps yours is defective?

Maybe the incredible 2 would have been a better choice for you?

I also came from an incredible to the tbolt because i had dropped my Dinc and the screen was shattered 60 feet to the concrete will so do that...lol and the insurance no longer has the inc. So they offered me a droid x and i fought with him to get the tbolt and i miss my old inc:.. lolI hope myn warm comes to the tbolt
sent from my rooted das-bamf tbolt

nerozehl said:
I've never experienced the issues you outlined about the screen. Perhaps yours is defective?
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Click to collapse
Are you talking about the gray fade on scrolling? It's barely noticeable. I'm a perfectionist. Because I liked my Incredible so much, I'm likely blowing any flaws out of proportion.
dirtyfingers said:
Maybe the incredible 2 would have been a better choice for you?
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Click to collapse
I was thinking about it... but since I was using up an upgrade discount, I wanted to make sure the phone was drastically different. Bigger screen and, of course, 4g. The Incredible 2 would have only been an upgrade in the chipset... and maybe a couple other things I don't really care about. As far as I know, it doesn't have AMOLED, either.
Don't get me wrong, though. I do love the Thunderbolt. I just wanted to rant about the little nuances after having the Incredible for a year.
The four capacitive back-lit buttons on the Thunderbolt are dimmer and have spotty hotspots compared to the Incredible, too. Just thought I'd throw that in there.

I got all those issues he mentioned. I believe that htc will release a fw upgrade to ease some of those issues. There's more issues on top of those too like not being able to talk when plugged into a stereo with audio Jack. Something that is possible on the dinc. Sometimes when exiting apps it takes me to app drawer instead of default home screen. And the most annoying work the stock sms app not giving me the option to send without saving as a draft first. Htc can't allow that to linger. Ill be damned if I'm the only one having those issues. But I'm still in love with the phone. The button orientation takes some getting used to but ill get over it. And the lag with the sense widgets are tolerable. I've weaned away from launcherpro for a while but with those issues, I'm thinking about reusing it again. Its way faster than sense. I'm sure there can bea home replacement app that can satisfy us more than launcherpro go launcher & adw. One that will replicate some of sense 2.0 or even 3.0 features. I've been convinced so after trying out Regina launcher.
Sent from my ADR6400L using Tapatalk

My only complaint is the power button. I seem to have a hard time hitting it.

Well, there are other phones out there
Me:
No lag.
No performance hitches.
No battery issues.
No oversaturated all to hell amoled screen.

adrynalyne said:
Well, there are other phones out there
Me:
No lag.
No performance hitches.
No battery issues.
No oversaturated all to hell amoled screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Battery is definitely better in the Thunderbolt. I use my old TP2 battery (1500mA) in the Incredible and battery life is tolerable. The AMOLED screen could be to blame for some battery issues.
I use your your kernel with the Thunderbolt and battery life is quite good so far even though it's stock battery is 1400mA.
One thing I can say I'm looking forward to with the LCD screen vs AMOLED: I don't have to worry about burn-in (or burn-out, so to speak). I haven't had that problem on the Incredible but, eventually, it would happen.

I've been surprised with the Thunderbolt. I came from a Droid and then a Droid X and only bought the Thunderbolt because I wanted an upgrade to play with until the dual-core qHD's show up in the summer.
I still consider it to be a "hold-me-over" phone, and I expect the Bionic is going to be the likely replacement, but Thunderbolt has been very pleasing. The HTC build quality is good, and Sense is less maddening than Blur was, but in truth, we really aren't stuck with the junk the manufacturer puts on the phone so they don't really matter very much.
I didn't expect the Thunderbolt to be faster than the X. I expected the battery life to suck. I expected LTE to be marginal for me.
Well it is faster than the X--a lot faster. Perhaps it's RAM or perhaps the processor is just more advanced, but the difference is quite noticeable.
I also haven't had any problems with the battery, although I'm not a heavy user or a heavy talker. Battery life was acceptable before I started rooting and ROM'ing, and has been quite good since then
I don't get LTE at my home and I work from here, so I only see it once a week when I go down to Orlando to see my bro's, so it's still not a big deal to me now. But a year from now it will. Of course I'll be on the big powerhouse phone then, but whoever on my account gets the phone from me will appreciate it (probably my daughter).
Btw, does anyone realize how expensive a five-phone plan is with 2000 minutes and five smart phones? Yikes. I could cause Verizon to have a bad quarter by switching to AT&T with all the money I'm paying them. If I didn't care about my phone doing things like making calls and sending/receiving data, I might consider it.
I've looked at all those sexy phones coming in for T-Mo and AT&T and even Sprint, but I've been with Big Red for a lot of years now and I have faith they will bring the hardware this summer. They may never have the dominance they had last year, but they will be a player.
As for the Thunderbolt, it is an evolutionary phone, pushing yesterday's technology into a fully satisfactory form for today and doing a superb job of it. I'm glad I pulled the trigger on it, rather than waiting for the Charge or DInc2.

adrynalyne said:
Well, there are other phones out there
Me:
No lag.
No performance hitches.
No battery issues.
No oversaturated all to hell amoled screen.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I second this. This phone is great. Sure I miss some of the things about my "adrynalyned" fascinate, but still I wouldn't trade back.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA App

Volume buttons on the right are driving me mad.
Sent from my ADR6400L using XDA Premium App

Immolate said:
I've been surprised with the Thunderbolt. I came from a Droid and then a Droid X and only bought the Thunderbolt because I wanted an upgrade to play with until the dual-core qHD's show up in the summer.
I didn't expect the Thunderbolt to be faster than the X. I expected the battery life to suck. I expected LTE to be marginal for me.
Well it is faster than the X--a lot faster. Perhaps it's RAM or perhaps the processor is just more advanced, but the difference is quite noticeable
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
With the X you have to use Autokiller if your rooted so it doesn't lag, at least I did, and with autokiller the X was a hell of a phone. I finally found a rom (was released yesterday) for the TB that makes my TB run Better than my X.

Immolate said:
Btw, does anyone realize how expensive a five-phone plan is with 2000 minutes and five smart phones? Yikes. I could cause Verizon to have a bad quarter by switching to AT&T with all the money I'm paying them. If I didn't care about my phone doing things like making calls and sending/receiving data, I might consider it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This made me laugh so hard
I do not think I will go back, I just miss my Incredible's trackpad... I hate these damn arrows

gbmitchell said:
My only complaint is the power button. I seem to have a hard time hitting it.
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Click to collapse
Yea that's my only complaint as well. Then again the incredible's wasn't that great either my fav power buttons were droid and droid x.

The stock sms on the tbolt is horrible. It lags bad. It will gray out the send button mid text. Every other text is failed and have to resend. The word suggestion covers up the message text. The whole design is not very user friendly in my own opinion. But...other than the sms my tbolt is great. And handcent took care of the crappy messaging.

Immolate said:
Btw, does anyone realize how expensive a five-phone plan is with 2000 minutes and five smart phones? Yikes. I could cause Verizon to have a bad quarter by switching to AT&T with all the money I'm paying them. If I didn't care about my phone doing things like making calls and sending/receiving data, I might consider it.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yes, I know exactly how expensive this is!!! Me, wife, son, 2 x step kids, every one has a smart phone. And the cable company wants me to pay for a home phone???
I came from an Incredible also. I don't miss it. Once I saw the size of the TBolt screen I was sold.

[Q] did you get a droid charge? what was your device

basically two simple questions: what phone did you have before, and what made you decide for the droid charge?
My answer is I had the samsung fascinate, I was pretty mad with samsung, because of the slowness of updates, specially froyo, but the developers made it happened.
I got the charge because I love the Amoled Screen, and the specs are pretty good, in my opinion, better than the thunderbolt, Im not sure if developement on this phone will be as good as the thunderbolt, but as it is right now, I love it, why brake what is not broken?

In the last year or so I've gone through the following to get to my charge:
Blackberry 9630 -> HTC Incredible -> Samsung Fascinate, then got a Samsung Epic 4G to carry alongside -> Samsung Droid Charge
During that time, I've also had lengthy personal experience using a HTC Thunderbolt (two friends have them), a Motorola Droid X (two friends have them), Motorola Droid 2 (three friends have them), Samsung Galaxy Tab 7" (owned), and Motorola Xoom Tablet (owned).
I love my Charge. I'd say the specs are on-par with the Thunderbolt, and while I'd take HTC Sense UI or TouchWiz 4.0 -- I can't stand the washed out look of even the best LCD's on phones on the market right now.
I loved my AMOLED Inc, I really loved my S-AMOLED Fascinate and Epic, and now I really love my S-AMOLED+ Charge.

I had a defective droid x out of the box and replaced it with a Fascinate. I upgraded to the Thunderbolt and it had really bad build quality issues so I ported to att and got an Atrix. The Atrix was awesome but att was the complete opposite. I was lucky to have my phone ring half of the time and ended up having to return it and port back into Verizon. I went to best buy and they said they had the Charge instock and sold it to me 11 days early. This phone has the best screen I have ever seen and amazing battery life. Gps performance is not perfect but overall this is the 4g device to have.

Went from a BB Storm 9530 to the Droid Charge. I have a Galaxy Tab so I knew what I was getting from the droid charge, but the screen is just fantastic! When I saw it in person I knew that was the phone I was going to upgrade to. 4G is great and I just prefer it over the thunderbolt for not only the screen but I have had good expierences with Samsung in the past, and I really didnt like the kick stand on the TB. Just picked it up less than 1 hour ago

burningembers said:
I love my Charge. I'd say the specs are on-par with the Thunderbolt, and while I'd take HTC Sense UI or TouchWiz 4.0 -- I can't stand the washed out look of even the best LCD's on phones on the market right now.
I loved my AMOLED Inc, I really loved my S-AMOLED Fascinate and Epic, and now I really love my S-AMOLED+ Charge.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Went from a Galaxy S i9000 to a Nexus S to a Thunderbolt, and I agree, other than the iPhone 4 (which I also have) the LCD screens just pale in comparison to SAMOLED. The Thunderbolt does just look "washed out" as you put it.
Still, I'm having a tough time making the leap to a Charge. Not sure why, there's a lot of good about it that calls to me, but a lot of stuff I wish Samsung hadn't done to the phone. That SAMOLED PLUS screen may be the trump card, though...I'm afraid to go actually look at one in person because I know I won't be able to resist.

distortedloop said:
That SAMOLED PLUS screen may be the trump card, though...I'm afraid to go actually look at one in person because I know I won't be able to resist.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Yeah I went in to look at it and walked out 300 dollars poorer

Went from verizon iphone, to the bolt, then to the incredible 2, and got the droid charge the day of release. Gotta love the screen and the battery life is Outstanding!!!!!
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA App

I went from the Samsung Omnia to the Charge, and given the option I would do it over again. I have a friend with the bolt, and the only reason that he doesn't complain about battery life is because he leaves his phone plugged in at work all day
I went with the Charge because I wanted a 4G phone for a wifi hotspot (two laptops and soon to have two tablets), and once I saw the screen on the Charge I couldn't go back.

I had a Samsung Nexus S on T-mobile. I have been wanting to get off of t-mobile for a while since their service is pretty worthless when I am most of the time. I wanted to get back on verizon, but needed a solid phone to replace my beloved Nexus S. The Charge was pretty close so I pulled the trigger. Very happy so far.

I began my Android experience on an HTC Eris and kept it until I got the Charge last Saturday. Although it was rooted running Froyo and overclocked, the Eris was such a piece of $!&#! I cracked the glass on it in January before CES and wanted to wait to see what the manufactures had in store for 2011. Nothing impressed me except the Atrix which obviously is on ATT. Well, I was being stubborn and waiting for the Atrix twin (dual-core, 1GB RAM, etc) to come to Verizon and...well, nothing yet. (You watch, the holy grail of Android phones exceeding the Atrix will be announced next month on Verizon, *rolls eyes*)
The night before the Charge was officially on sale at Verizon, I was flashing a ROM on the Eris when it began to loop. I knew it was probably going to happen, and the trackball didn't fully work which made navigating recovery all but impossible. I'm not skilled on the SDK or ADB so I said forget it and resolved to get the Charge the next morning.
Although I really wanted a more future proof dual-core processor, I am extremely satisfied with what Samsung has come up with here. I mean, this SAMOLED Plus display is AMAZING! Performance has been fine, GPS locks in a semi-quick fashion, camera pictures and video look great, and the physical buttons are a awesome, and battery life has been pretty good.
I don't live in a 4G area (yet) but right after I purchased the phone, I left for Nashville. Once there, the 4G symbol light up (didn't change my plan, just $30 unlimited 3G) and man oh man! Reached speeds up to 23 Mbps down! On a good night, my Comcast dedicated line doesn't get that (pathetic). God bless LTE.
Complaints (#opinion):
Brown and orange color scheme? Seriously, Samsung?
3G seems to be faulty, cuts out often for about 2 mins at a time unless I toggle the data switch off/on. Never had a 3G problem in my area with the Eris.
Verizon's seemingly infinite amount of bloatware.
Power button location.
No LED notification light.
Obviously, no dual-core.
Samsung and their plastic, ugh. It's a little cheap feeling and slippery ($300 phone here and we get slippery plastic?)
--------------
Overall, I'm extremely happy with this device. And once it's rooted, some of those complaints will evaporate.
Moral of the story: it's a great looking, capable phone and if you're due for an upgrade, I would definitely consider it.
Sent from my DROID CHARGE using XDA App

Had every iPhone made before getting the Atrix... coupled with moving to the Bay area I realized how bad AT&T sucks overall. Switched to the G2x from Tmobile and LOVED it, but I had no signal at home which sucked. Now i am sitting pretty with the charge. Ironically I have LTE service at home with it, but no 3G service.

I guess i have a problem that is the first step, admitting it ...
anyway here are the phones i have owned in the last year..
Droid original, iphone 4 on verizon, ported to tmo galaxy S 4g, back to verizon with a droidx, tbolt, back to droidx, back to tbolt, now charge...
so the original droid was awesome except I learned I did not want a keyboard anymore. and the screen size was a bit small.
everyone talked about how great the iphone was so i had to try it to make sure I was not missing out on something great. although my 8 yo daughter has an ipod touch that I can't stand i figured I would keep an open mind. it was good I found that i really enjoyed the front facing camera after spending several months telling people that it was useless. The iphone was a decent phone, however I still can't stand the proprietary connections and software requirements.
galaxy s 4g, what a great phone... the only things i didn't like about this phone was gsm, compared to cdma in the DC area was appauling, no indicator light, no indicator light,
DroidX bought on ebay for $200 a great phone I rooted and had a rom on it before I activated it. great phone i still kep it as my backup.,.. no front facing camera, display is washed out, no 4 g speeds .,.. i find that the 4.3 screen was not too big for me.
Thunderbolt, battery life was horrible on stock.. took it back before root...
droid x again for a month or two untll I read how great the new roms were.
so i bought a used tbolt on ebay for $400. rooted and rom'd it. liked the roms but could not get the battery to last longer than about 4 hours. I decided to remove many apps and turn on the radios and was able to extend the battery life at the expense of usefullness of the phone.
then the charge... this is the phone I think i will be able to keep for a while. I only wish it had the msg indicater light... otherwise I am liking it very much.

Had a Droid Incredible before my Charge. So far I am really missing it aside from when 4G is behaving on my Charge.

Please convince me/unconvince me lol

I have a thunderbolt right now... Im going to get getting rid of my girlfriends iphone so we can lock her in the 4g unlimited plan. She likes my thunderbolt so thats what she will probably get. Now i'm thinking about switching over to the charge but i'm having a hard time. I hate sense but I hate touch wiz even more. I like the fact that the thunderbolt has 2 aosp roms to choose from but the gummy rom I just saw for the charge looks pretty good. Help me decide please!

My contract has been up for a few weeks, I've been researching phones vigorously to find the best one and so far my conclusion is
#1: Samsung Galaxy S2
#2: HTC EVO 4G/3D
#3: Droid Charge
#4: HTC Thunderbolt
Galaxy S2 is a BEAST of a phone, only problem is there is no US release date as of yet, and even worse there is no US Verizon/Sprint/T-Mobile/ATT release date as of yet...
HTC EVO 4G/3D are great phones, I personally didn't look too far into them since they aren't on Verizon but you can look up their specs to see if they are in your ballpark
Droid Charge is my personal phone of choice, i WOULD get the GalaxyS2 but we aren't seeing a release date(it's expected in July-September but I can't wait)
HTC Thunderbolt was an obvious contender if the Charge was on the list but I've heard of a lot of problems with this phone such as rebooting issues, battery issues etc.
so the verdict? Droid Charge if you need/want a phone now, Galaxy S2 if you can wait(I'm not psychic but it's pretty obvious that phone is going to be HUGE, which in turn means great support from the developers & tons of easy root methods)

There's several threads along these lines that you should check out, so skim through the section and read them, even the one about "learning to hate the Charge" or something like that...you'll get plenty of pros and cons and TB vs Charge comments in those, but since I feel like whining about my Charge I'll jump in here. IF you don't read my whole post, at least check out the last paragraph, you might like the idea.
IF, and that's a big IF, the Galaxy S II ever comes to Verizon or ATT with an LTE radio, I'll be all over it once it's rootable, but since you're up against the expiring unlimited data offer, there's just the two to choose from (Charge, Thunderbolt).
I have both, and it's still a tough call for me on which I prefer. So many pluses, and so many minuses on both.
If I had to choose one right this minute to toss away, I think it would be the Charge, though. The Charge has got about the best damn display I've ever seen on a phone. iPhone 4 is sharper, but smaller, and the Charge blows away the iP4 in the contrast and inky blacks department.
The Charge is lighter than the TB, by a very noticeable amount. It's arguably got better battery life, but seriously, you won't be happy with it either. If you're in a spotty 3G area, the Charge seems to have exponentially better battery life than the TB, but in a solid 4G area, they both suck. I haven't spent enough time with both in a solid 3G area to compare yet.
The Charge's screen seems scratch proof without protection. Mine rides naked and has no mars. It fell out of my pocket on the leg press machine the other day and the front hit the metal bar on its way down. No damage to the screen but a small nick in the bezel (which is soft plastic). The Thunderbolt is a scratch magnet- treated mine with kid gloves, but no protection, and it's still somehow managed to get two nasty gouges in the screen.
The Sammies are pretty good at playing any media you throw at them, not so sure about the HTCs.
The Charge's hardware buttons at the bottom are pretty nice; I didn't think I'd like them, but once you get past the cheap plasticky feel, they're a solid competitor to the capacitive ones.
Those are about the only major plusses on the Charge for my usage.
Major minuses include a laggy as heck phone unless you do the voodoo ext4 conversion AND install the Gummy ROM. VooDoo alone, debloating, using different launchers, etc, did not fix the lag on the Charge for me. Gummy seems to have for the most part, but there's still an occasional sluggishness on waking the phone or switching some apps.
The plastic is cheap feeling compared to TB. It's a big issue for some.
There's no kickstand on the Charge. I know I'm not alone in thinking this is one of the coolest, most obvious enhancements to a phone to have. One of the big Android blogs, Android Central I think, made a blog post along those lines just recently.
There's no Gingerbread yet for the Charge, but there is (unofficially, anyways) for the TB.
You mentioned you hate Sense, but with the BAMF Sense 3 ROM I am in love with Sense. It's the slickest thing I've seen on a phone for a launcher and some cool widgets. I've been a CM7 and Launcher Pro guy for all my Androids since the N1 once CM7 became available, but for the TB, I think it will stay Sense on mine for quite a while.
We might see more activity with the Charge development-wise, it's still fairly new, but I believe that by the this time in the phone's life on the TB we had a lot more activity. We don't even have a full and proper ClockWork or Amon Ra recovery for the Charge yet. Imnuts has given us a pretty decent one, but you'll soft-brick (or worse) your Charge if you try to do a Nandroid restore with it, and unless I missed an update, you have to do a battery pull to reboot if you try a factory restore/wipe on it.
All that said, and my overall preference for the TB...why not grab a Charge and play with it for a while in daily use. GET IT AT COSTCO. You'll get locked in with the unlimited data plan, but unlike VZW purchased phones, you get 90 days to test drive the phone itself. 14-day right to cancel on cell plan still applies though. If you just hate the thing, you can go back and get the Thunderbolt, or better yet, by August or end of September when your 90 days is up we'll have some more choices (like maybe that oh-so-sweet Galaxy S II).

Thank you. I just got back home with a new Charge. Gave my girlfriend my thunderbolt. Now im trying to figure out how I root this on a mac?

You're gonna want gummy...the phone's a laggy turd with any variant of stock for me...YMMV.
Use Odin in a VMWare Windows box to flash the Imnuts Clockwork, then use Clockwork to flash the Gummy rom, which is pre-rooted.
There are plenty of tutorials around here on using Odin, so I won't bother explaining, but a good tip get the phone recognized in the Windows box while in download mode is to plug it in in regular mode first, wait for the virtual cd-rom that will open, then run the driver installer (all in the Windows box). Make sure USB debugging is off, or the virtual cd won't open.
You can try flashing Clockwork with Heimdall, but many of us can't get it to work on the Mac with the Charge.

My wife and I just got one. I rooted mine and I don't plan on rooting hers. When I try to go back from Gummy to the last touchwiz crap I want to smash the damn thing. This phone files once you get a good rom on it @ use the voodoo lagfix. My quadrant (doesn't really mean much, but FWIW) was around 800 before and 1700 after. The rom is still not perfect but it is miles ahead of stock.
Ohhh... do you self an favor and use a windows machine to root the thing. It takes half an hour if you know what you are doing.

Thank you. Yes I rooted and flashed gummy already. Huge difference!

It is amazing how much I hated this phone when I got it vs how much I love it after a Voodoo kernel and Gummy

It took me a while to figure it out, but once I got the voodoo kernel on my Charge, I tried the ROMs out and while Gummy is fast, I still think AC's Altered Beast ROM is the best. It might still be in its Alpha stage, but its crazy fast and looks very sexy. Gummy is definitely great right now, but I think once the Altered Beast is finished that will be the ROM to go to. If your looking for speed and looks, Altered Beast is a good way to go.
Also, where as the phone does seem to be made out of a cheaper material, I have also noticed that my screen seems nearly invincible. Plus it looks amazing.

Altered beast looks awesome but I love soap look I don't know if I can leave yummy... haha

cacash89 said:
Also, where as the phone does seem to be made out of a cheaper material, I have also noticed that my screen seems nearly invincible. Plus it looks amazing.
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Click to collapse
Samsung definitely makes a damn good display, both in appearance and durability. I've never scratched a Galaxy S based phone... and I've had four of them.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using Tapatalk
edit: edited ***** to both and been to never...sheesh the autocorrect on the phone is bad sometimes.

Went From TB to Charge
After having to many issues with the TB (4 of them) Verizon got me the Charge.
The Development for the TB is awesome and a ton of roms and kernels and themes to keep you busy for months, but I had quite a few reboots and cell issues and was about the same on all models. The Charge has excellent battery life on 3g sense 4g won't be on till July 21st for me. The Thunderbolt was good to with the right rom/kernel combo, but the Charge wins and also wins in the display department. Like another poster said the TB seemed to get dirty/scratched easy don't know why I had cases and screen protectors and never could manage to keep it looking good the Charge has yet to get any marks/ other then a cheap back that will proly wear fast, but then again can be replaced for $10. All in all I love both phones, but when it comes down to it I more then anything want a working phone which thus far seems to be the Charge.

If you're looking for a Verizon LTE phone now, the main thing is to not wait. Get a TB or Charge now and sell it later if you hate it. Its worth locking in the unlimited data before it goes away. I was wavering between all 3 LTE phones, as what I'm really waiting for is a Droid Bionic (in whatever form it finally comes in...) but at this point the unlimited data is more important to me than an extra core and some more memory. SAMOLED and battery life is what swung me from the TB to the Charge, but the TB seems to have a more lively dev community, not to mention much better dev support from HTC than what Samsung provides. Its all a tradeoff...

Any1 upgrade from Incredible?

Hey guys,
Currently have the incredible and love it but I need a bigger screen. Im due for an upgrade and like the charge. Would Anyone who upgraded to it from an incredible be down to post their experiences?
Thanks,
Sent from my 2.3.5 Incredible Obsession

bigsapz said:
Hey guys,
Currently have the incredible and love it but I need a bigger screen. Im due for an upgrade and like the charge. Would Anyone who upgraded to it from an incredible be down to post their experiences?
Thanks,
Sent from my 2.3.5 Incredible Obsession
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It depends on you want. There is not nearly the amount of roms to choose from as there is for the DInc, but the ones we do have are great. If I had an upgrade, and was in your situation, I'd wait for the SGS2 or HTC Vigor. The Charge is a great phone but I wouldn't use an upgrade on it considering what is coming in the near future. Just my opinion though.

I did this in a roundabout way in that I used the Incredible for a year before getting my Charge, but I didn't use an upgrade (one of my kids had the Fascinate, but since he doesn't live in a 4G coverage area, I replaced his Fascinate with my Incredible and appropriated the Charge). I can say that I'm much happier with the phone having gotten it for free than I would be if I had paid for it, but overall quite pleased.
The Charge has has better:
-Battery life (by around 40%)
-Screen (I had both the SLCD and OLED DIncs- SAMOLED+ blows both away)
-Usability (screen size is much better for typing accuracy)
-Multimedia experience- SGX540 trounces the rather dated Adreno200
-Audio quality- especially with Voodoo Sound
-Bootloader design- ODIN mode is great for recovering from ****ups
Things that really don't impact my opinion
-4G is incredible in theory- in practice, Google Music and Netflix could both stream just fine over good old EV-DO RevA, and for anything else I need to download I have home wifi and 25Mbit Comcast Xfinity, so it's still sort of unnecessary. It is cool to be able to say my phone has a faster broadband connection than my home.... I'm regularly seeing 30mbit down/6 up. I'm not using it as a hotspot as I don't feel like either shelling out or risking my service, and I will say that I'm using 3-4x the data on LTE than I did over 3G, with better battery life as previously mentioned.
-Overall usability- the Hummingbird is a tad quicker than the Snapdragon, but overall I always found the DInc to be a quite responsive phone- no problems with either
-Call quality- though the Charge has a dual mic setup, they both sound the same on my end. Hard to find fault with Verizon.
Things that I still have to hand to the Incredible
-I have the Charge in an Otterbox Commuter to protect its incredibly vulnerable back shell. While this gives it a great solid feel in the hand, it also makes it a bit on the difficult side to slide in and out of pockets. The DInc was a very convenient size.
-ROM selection is way better for the DInc- though, let's be honest, I didn't care about anything else once CM7 for DInc was out. Here's hoping it hits the Charge soon.
Final thoughts- rumor has it the Bionic could be out within a week, but even if that's premature it's certainly not more than a month away. The Galaxy S2 and HTC Vigor are also both right around the corner. The Charge is about to be replaced as a flagship model. My approval of it is tempered by the fact that I got it for free. You may want to hold off a bit.

I came from the Droid incredible as well and echo the posts above. The charge is an upgrade but at this point just wait for gs2, vigor, or nexus.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA App

I came from the Dinc which I treasured. The dev community was awesome for the Dinc but I love eclipse.
Not sure why you would wait for the sgs2, it may not have 4G.
And the Bionic is just a bigger droid 3 with 4G. Of course to each his own, and I personally saw the samoled+ and just had to have it. I could have waited for the bionic or sgs2 but why? Whatever phone you get, im sure you will love. Afterall, they all do just about the same thing.
Sent from my SCH-I510 using XDA App

I upgraded from the Dinc a couple of months ago and I'm semi happy with my upgrade. The 2 main reasons to upgrade to this phone are the screen and 4G. I guess it depends how important those two things are to you. All the phones coming out in the next couple of months will probably have those two things AND have upgraded processors, RAM, etc. So if I were in your shoes, I would wait a couple of months to see what else is coming out.

I came from the Incredible and am in love with mCharge. Has the hardkey buttons and 4g. Plus the screen it was everything I wanted. Before I got the Charge I was considering waiting on the Bionic but I personally am happy with the choice I made.
Sent from my GummyCHARGED Charge using Tapatalk

MillionManMosh said:
I did this in a roundabout way in that I used the Incredible for a year before getting my Charge, but I didn't use an upgrade (one of my kids had the Fascinate, but since he doesn't live in a 4G coverage area, I replaced his Fascinate with my Incredible and appropriated the Charge). I can say that I'm much happier with the phone having gotten it for free than I would be if I had paid for it, but overall quite pleased.
The Charge has has better:
-Battery life (by around 40%)
-Screen (I had both the SLCD and OLED DIncs- SAMOLED+ blows both away)
-Usability (screen size is much better for typing accuracy)
-Multimedia experience- SGX540 trounces the rather dated Adreno200
-Audio quality- especially with Voodoo Sound
-Bootloader design- ODIN mode is great for recovering from ****ups
Things that really don't impact my opinion
-4G is incredible in theory- in practice, Google Music and Netflix could both stream just fine over good old EV-DO RevA, and for anything else I need to download I have home wifi and 25Mbit Comcast Xfinity, so it's still sort of unnecessary. It is cool to be able to say my phone has a faster broadband connection than my home.... I'm regularly seeing 30mbit down/6 up. I'm not using it as a hotspot as I don't feel like either shelling out or risking my service, and I will say that I'm using 3-4x the data on LTE than I did over 3G, with better battery life as previously mentioned.
-Overall usability- the Hummingbird is a tad quicker than the Snapdragon, but overall I always found the DInc to be a quite responsive phone- no problems with either
-Call quality- though the Charge has a dual mic setup, they both sound the same on my end. Hard to find fault with Verizon.
Things that I still have to hand to the Incredible
-I have the Charge in an Otterbox Commuter to protect its incredibly vulnerable back shell. While this gives it a great solid feel in the hand, it also makes it a bit on the difficult side to slide in and out of pockets. The DInc was a very convenient size.
-ROM selection is way better for the DInc- though, let's be honest, I didn't care about anything else once CM7 for DInc was out. Here's hoping it hits the Charge soon.
Final thoughts- rumor has it the Bionic could be out within a week, but even if that's premature it's certainly not more than a month away. The Galaxy S2 and HTC Vigor are also both right around the corner. The Charge is about to be replaced as a flagship model. My approval of it is tempered by the fact that I got it for free. You may want to hold off a bit.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I came from the Incredible as well, and I echo everything this guy said. Although I did pay for the phone instead of free (lucky guy lol) I feel like it was worth it. I still use my Incredible (deactivated, but still works on wifi) just for random games and testing out custom roms because we all know the Inc has some great developers. Charge development is looking great too though and I can't wait to see the likes of CM7, MIUI, etc on this phone. It's not perfect, but if you convert from RFS to EXT4 it's really close.

DINC to Charge
bigsapz said:
Hey guys,
Currently have the incredible and love it but I need a bigger screen. Im due for an upgrade and like the charge. Would Anyone who upgraded to it from an incredible be down to post their experiences?
Thanks,
Sent from my 2.3.5 Incredible Obsession
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I echo all the "good" comments as I came from the DINC a month or so ago. The only thing I miss is the LED that the "DINC used for letting you know it's charging. The Charge experience is a little different than the HTC experience but it just lets you know what else is out there.

I would hold out for the Bionic. I upgraded from Dinc to Charge because Verizon was changing their unlimited tier plans and I was afraid of missing the boat so I used my upgrade to lock myself in. The Charge was the best at the time but if you can wait until the Bionic comes out 9/8-ish I would. Dual core, 4G, 4.3 inch screen plus the ability to use the Motorola dock/laptop thingy (if you're interested) is a def plus. I can't remember RAM and storage specs but I think they beat the Charge as well.
One thing I did notice coming from Dinc to Charge was the snappiness of the ROMs. Once lagfix was enabled though it was pretty hard to distinguish the difference.

wenzer said:
I would hold out for the Bionic. I upgraded from Dinc to Charge because Verizon was changing their unlimited tier plans and I was afraid of missing the boat so I used my upgrade to lock myself in.
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Click to collapse
You do realize if you were already on an unlimited data plan, you were locked in?
Anyway to the OP. I came from the Fascinate to the Charge. I got in on the free exchange. The Charge is a great phone. I would say it's a Fascinate 2. I don't think I would have used (wasted) an upgrade on this phone. I think it's best to see what the Bionic, Vigor, SGS2 & iPhone 5 bring to the table. This is especially true when you consider Verizon did away with 1 year contracts.
On a side note, my daughter has a Dinc. She absolutely refuses to upgrade her phone. She says it's simply "Incredible". Lol.