I received the Charge, free of Charge (pun intended!) a little over a year ago. They were giving them away for a 2-yr contract renewal, and I bit!
I've had the Charge for approx. 16 months. During that time, I have received 3 OTA updates (FP1, FP5 & FP8). I have also noticed several problems mentioned in these forums already. Most notably, the problem causing me the most grief is when multiple instances of the phone are created (launched by me, after no activity after each app instance). All app instances appear simultaneously, and the poor person on the receiving end of the phone call hears me talking through several phone apps simultaneously ... echoing like mad. Usually, a reboot clears this up.
I should mention that this problem doesn't happen nearly as much since FP8 was pushed. Don't know if that was a coincidence or not. But the problem does still happen occasionally.
I recently had another critical issue happen. All of a sudden, I was getting force closes from many apps simultaneously, including system apps (com.android processes). The phone became unusable. Factory reset didn't resolve the problem. After doing some research, I found that I could push stock software and re-partition the memory space again through ODIN. I did this, and had no success at first because the phone thought I was using a non-stock battery, even though nothing had changed with the battery (stock battery received with the phone). After pulling the battery, and re-installing, and pushing the stock software w/ re-partition (pushed the original EP4D flavor of OS), the phone operated as it did when I first received it. Verizon pushed the "OTA" updates (FP1, FP5 & FP8), and my phone was back to good-as-new performance. Actually, the phone is quite snappy now.
Needless to say, I'm still concerned about the Charge. I am not up for contract renewal until March of 2014, so I'm just planning on doing a factory reset whenever I have these problems.
I recently read an article, stating that a bug was discovered in Feb 2013, which allows many devices made in the last 4 years (since "Donut" flavor of Android) to be susceptible to a bug taking advantage of "Master Key". It claims that a dev could unknowingly push an apk to the Play store, which is infected with this issue. It seems to be a stretch. Here's the URL to the article:
http://tinyurl.com/kj63ae8
I have followed the suggestions outlined in the article, and found that the Samsung droid charge is susceptible. However, I've read a bit on XDA, and found that this is not really a huge problem, as it requires a user to install an infected apk, which doesn't happen all that often. It's a flaw in the OS which bug-devs are not actively taking advantage of, it would seem.
Here's my question, I know the few Droid Charge owners out there are still a bit hopeful that it will get an update to the Jellybean OS. Any chance this is possible? I for one, would love this!
Thanks for your consideration.
