HTC Touch Phones: Is the Latest Droid Really Incredible?

 30 Apr 2010 - By Omar Mariño+
 omar@myddnetwork.com


Android phones have really taken a lot of the steam out of AT&T stranglehold on the super-smart phone market and HTC is the leader in Droid compatible mobile devices but is their new Incredible really as good as the company promises?

There’s no doubt that the HTC Incredible is a sleek little machine.  The exterior design and physical layout of all the controls including their integration with the 3.7” AMOLED screen is near to perfect and developers somehow managed to shave an ounce and a half out of the weight compared to Motorola’s Droid.  But when you get into the inner workings of the gadget, it’s almost as if the folks who slapped it together forgot it was supposed to be a phone.

Running on the Android 2.1 OS you can’t really fault the operation.  It’s 1GHz Snapdragon processor really speeds everything up (with some operations clocking in at nearly 1/3 faster!)  You also get an 8-megapixel camera with Dual LED flash (something Apple fans are going to have to wait for the iPhone 4G to get) and 8Gb built in memory—not a lot but better than the previous generation Droid phones.

HTC Incredible's Customizable Home Screen

Is the HTC Incredible all Flash?

There’s no physical keyboard, which I personally don’t mind, but I know some of you purists out there are going to hate the phone for that, and for the sake of aesthetics the Incredible doesn’t have an external shutter button—it’s touch screen only.

Unfortunately, that’s about it for good marks for the Incredible.  For a phone, the call quality is abysmal.  On both ends of the callers sound snowy and washed out like back in the caveman days of cell phones though lost calls generally aren’t a problem.  Another drawback is the short battery life (somewhere around 5 hours give or take the amount and type of usage) which is confusing because the AMOLED screen is supposed to be so much more energy efficient than standard LCD screens.  Perhaps the larger processor is sucking more juice.

While the Incredible really isn’t, it’s not a bad device.  It’s very web-friendly and features “Friend Stream” showing all of your Facebook, Twitter, and Flikr updates on one section of your customizable home screen.

So if you need a mobile device but don’t actually make many phone calls the Incredible may be perfect for you.




3 Responses to “HTC Touch Phones: Is the Latest Droid Really Incredible?”
Paul says:
April 30th, 2010 at 3:50 pm

Are you sure you’re using the Incredible?? Five hours of battery life!? I admit that battery life is not great, but I get five hours easily when I’m playing with the thing non-stop. I imagine I will get through a full day pretty easily once I get over the novelty of the device and start using it more normally.
And call quality is “abysmal”!? Perhaps you should check into sending your unit back for an exchange. Mine is crystal clear, and my callers on the other end have no complaints. My wife has told me how clear my voice sounds.

This review is contrary to just about every other review out there. Something is afoul. Do I smell iPhone fanboy?? Just wondering…

Robert P says:
May 1st, 2010 at 6:24 pm

Perhaps I do have an affinity for Apple products though I wouldn’t call myself a fanboy by any means–their call dropping/misconnecting IS abysmal! I can’t even get service in my house, I have to step outside!

Here’s how I feel about the iPhone and AT&T http://archive.themaineedge.com/files/18433.shtml

And I did say the Incredible was a very good device for web, etc. but I still miss my old boxy Nokia flip phone when it comes to call quality. Nothing I’ve used since compares and I curse the day my cell phone salesman talked me into “upgrading.”

What I am frustrated about is that fact that we don’t get cool phones like they do in Japan (have you seen some of those?) and have to suffer extended contracts in the US. I thought the Sprint/Nextel lawsuit in California was going to clear that up but apparently that’s taking a little too long to resolve.

Anyway, thanks for reading and I hope I didn’t come off too biased.

» 2010 new smartphones – iPhone 4: The first problems appear - New Gadgets for 2010 says:
June 25th, 2010 at 11:07 am

[...] this excuse could be valid, especially if we keep in mind that other gadgets such as the HTC Droid Incredible, Nexus One 3G, and even the iPhone 3G would be suffering similar problems, according to recent [...]



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