Review: HTC Droid 'Incredible' A WinnerReview: HTC Droid 'Incredible' A Winner

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Verizon HTC Droid 'Incredible' Smartphone

Using the HTC Droid Incredible is about as good a smartphone experience as one can ask for. The blend of hardware design, raw power, and HTC's Sense user interface overlay make for a highly customizable handset that is sure to please most power users. There are a few quirks, but for the most part, the Droid Incredible delivers on all that its name implies.

As information about the Incredible trickled onto the Internet, it was clear that the device had real potential. After using it for several days, I can say without doubt that it is the pinnacle of the current Android crop. It easily bests the Motorola Droid (Verizon's biggest hit in recent memory) and is surely the premier handset being offered on the Verizon Wireless network. Let's see what makes it so good.

Overall, the Incredible feels very good to hold in your hand. The surfaces are pleasantly rounded off and the device has a comfortable weight. There are only a few buttons. The most important are all on the front, under the display.

There are four capacitive touch keys that activate some of the Android platform's main functions, such as Home, Menu, Back, and Search. The Incredible also makes use of an optical mouse button. Swiping your finger across the optical mouse button moves the cursor around the screen. This button also doubles as the shutter release for the camera.

From a design perspective, touch phones have become a rather boring lot. It is difficult to design a touch phone with lots of personality, due mostly to the limitations introduced by the large display. By mandating a display measuring between 3.2 and 4.0 inches, there's only so much designers can do with the space around the display.

The front of the Incredible isn't all that unique, but the back plate is. There are contour rings that wrap around the Incredible and give the back plate some added oomph. The camera lens is a bright red, which goes well with the black coloring of the phone. Peel the back plate of the Incredible off, and you'll find that the guts of the phone are bright red, too. That's not something you see too often.

The Incredible's display is simply amazing. HTC opted for a 3.7-inch AMOLED screen with 800 x 480 pixels. It is bright, colorful, easy to read in sunlight, and is one of the better displays I've seen on any mobile device. The high pixel count means pictures, video, text, icons, graphics, documents, and Web pages all look their best. I watched several movies on the device, and was extremely pleased with the quality. The Incredible far surpasses the iPhone when it comes to quality of video playback.

What's most important about the Incredible's design and hardware is that none of it gets in the way. It all just works, and lets the user do what he/she wants without any trouble.

Communication

There are so many ways to reach out to colleagues, family, and friends with the Incredible that it's hard to know where to start.

As far as making phone calls is concerned, users will be pleased to find that while there are no physical send/end buttons on the Incredible, there is still a software "Phone" button available on all seven home screens. The phone application is integrated tightly with the contacts application. Both cross-pollinate the other with nuggets of information about recent or missed phone calls.

The dialer is smart and automatically sorts through contacts as users peck out phone numbers. This speeds up the process. Call quality was very good. The device does a good job staying connected to Verizon's 3G network.

There are several ways to configure e-mail accounts, and the Incredible supports Exchange, Gmail, and POP3/IMAP4 e-mail systems. All you need is a username and a password to be on your way. The e-mail program that was developed by HTC is a little bit more robust than the native Gmail application, but Gmail addicts will prefer the Gmail app itself.

The Incredible makes mincemeat of social networking. It comes with Peep (for Twitter) and Facebook pre-installed. Both apps work well, though there are dozens of free alternatives to Peep for those who don't like the HTC-designed software.

There is also HTC's FriendStream application, which merges status updates from both Twitter and Facebook into one larger thread of information. It's a neat way to see what all your contacts are up to, but suffers from poor power optimization. Bottom line, using FriendStream drains the battery much faster.

The Incredible's social networking apps are made all the better by hearty widgets for the home screen. The widgets for Twitter, Facebook, and FriendStream let users see a quick glimpse of what is being posted to their social networks without actually opening said applications.

Making Sense Of The UI

The Incredible is the first handset to become available in the United States to run the new version of HTC's Sense user interface. The original Sense was good; the new version is much better.

Sense offers seven different home screens. All seven screens can be left blank, or loaded full of apps, shortcuts, and widgets. By comparison, the Motorola Droid has only three home screens activated.

HTC offers seven different "Scenes" (a.k.a., user interface profiles) on the Incredible. Each Scene rearranges the seven screens depending on what sort of use-case scenario is being played out by the user.

For example, if a user is at work, the "Work" scene does things like place a calendar widget front and center, with e-mail and call history close by. Other Scenes, such as Play, make similar changes to the home screens.

The Scenes -- which are all customizable -- let users tweak how the phone behaves based on what activity or part of their life they happen to be experiencing. It makes the Incredible one of the most customizable phones available.

One annoying aspect of touch phones these days is the idea of multiple home screens. The iPhone, for example, can support dozens of home screens. The extra real estate to store apps is appreciated, but it can be a real pain to remember what apps are on which page and scroll back and forth to find them.

Enter Sense UI's greatest trick. Double-tap the home button (or pinch any of the home screens), and all seven screens show up as little cards on the display. See a card with the app you want, and press it. Sense then goes straight to that screen. It's faster than scrolling all over the place.

HTC's Sense make the Android platform infinitely more fluid and likable.

Media

The Incredible is a media powerhouse. It packs an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and dual flash. The camera is lightning fast thanks to the 1-GHz SnapDragon processor under the hood. Because it is so fast, the Incredible makes for a worthy replacement to any stand-alone camera that you might have.

The Incredible also happens to take good pictures. The dual flash is extremely bright, and helps to make nighttime picture taking actually worthwhile. Pictures and videos can be manipulated via the gallery app, which lets users send images off to family, friends, and colleagues with but a few flicks of the finger.

HTC has enhanced the music player a bit. It has richer icons, faster performance, and a slightly tweaked user interface. The result is a better experience with the Android music player. An oddity here is that there are no pre-loaded storefronts through which to purchase mobile music. No Amazon, no Verizon V CAST. Users who want to put music on the Incredible are on their own.

One disappointment is that the only way to watch videos is through the clunky gallery application. The Android platform still suffers from the lack of a dedicated video application. Why this weakness remains is beyond me, though there are a number of video player apps that can be downloaded from the Android Market.

The Incredible comes with 8 GB of storage built-in, but no memory card. The Incredible will support cards up to 32 GB, meaning users can opt for a total of 40 GB of storage. That's plenty for a mobile phone.

Performance

One place the Incredible suffers is battery life. It barely gets through a day. The Incredible falls into that category of devices that is so connected, it has almost no hope of acceptable battery performance.

Most users should get through an entire day without any trouble. Users who regularly have FriendStream, Twitter, Facebook, and e-mail running might find the battery reaching the end of its charge by dinner time. Each user will need to set their own balance between connectedness and battery life.

The 1-GHz processor is probably the best feature offered by the Incredible. It makes every task on the phone blazing fast. The Sense user interface, which can be slow on less-capable handsets, works perfectly on the Incredible. Screen transitions are smooth and fluid, applications open nearly instantly, and there are no hiccups or stalls -- even with multiple apps running at the same time.

The Incredible's cellular radio does a good job of finding and connecting to Verizon's Wireless network. Verizon allows the Incredible to tether to laptops. If you don't mind paying $30 above and beyond the standard unlimited monthly data fee, you can skip the laptop dongle. In my tests, that feature worked well, and I averaged download speeds of about 760 Kbps. I had no problems with the Bluetooth, GPS, nor Wi-Fi radios. They all worked as they should.

Final Thoughts

The Incredible has fully earned its name. It is a compelling Android device that impresses in almost every way. True, battery life could be better. The way Android handles video could be improved, but given the flexibility of the Android platform, those are surely surmountable complaints.

The combination of the super-fast performance, amazing AMOLED display, powerful 8-megapixel camera, and capable communications tools make the Incredible Verizon's best offering yet.

For Further Reading

Verizon Announces Droid 'Incredible' Ship Date

Google's Quarterly Android Report

Android Crowding Apple, RIM