I recently realized that it has been almost a month since my last blog post, and much longer than that since I was anticipating the delivery of my new HTC Droid Incredible. Clearly I’ve had a lot of time to use the phone since then, and so I’ve decided to follow up with a minor review of the product.
Phone Functions:
Consistent with most Verizon phones, the Incredible has good connectivity…I’ve had one dropped call in the 45 + days I’ve owned the phone, and that was in a tiny town in Vermont called Plainfield that usually doesn’t get service at all…it was kind of a miracle that my phone even rang there at all. The clarity through both speaker and earpiece is very good, and I haven’t had a complaint from a listener at the other end that they can’t understand my speech, except for once in Seattle while I was outside in some pretty serious wind. All in all no complaints on the phone end of things, although dynamic noise reduction would be a nice-to-have.
Google Integration:
The Google integration on this phone is quite good…I use all Google apps professionally, so this is perfect for me that these mobile apps tie in so seamlessly to my handset. My one gripe would be that the GPS location within the Maps app is not super accurate, but hopefully that will improve in the near future.
HTC’s “Sense” Interface:
One word, “beautiful”! Sense is an extremely polished interface with a lot of nice features…weather, for instance. When you wake your phone up, the weather widget will give you a nice little sparkly animation of the current weather conditions…not essential, but some delicious icing on the cake.
Browser:
The browser is very standard for a mobile browser, with the exception of one thing: Flash. Yes, you can view Flash sites on the Incredible, although at this point, the browser only supports Flash Lite (which is not so great) but with the upcoming release of Android 2.2, the full version of Flash will be supported within the browser.
Keyboard:
There is no physical keyboard on the Incredible, which was a bit unnerving for me at first because I have never owned a phone without one, and I also was unimpressed with the virtual keyboard on the iPhone which I tried a few times…simply to great of an offset. However, the Incredible’s keyboard made it a relatively easy adjustment to make…it really has about the least amount of offset (virtually unnoticeable) of any virtual keyboard I’ve ever used. It also gives you tactile feedback (a slight vibration when a “key” is pressed) to indicate that an action has been taken.
Camera:
The camera on the phone is excellent. It boasts 8 mega-pixels and the clarity is pretty ridiculous for a mobile phone. Sometimes the auto-focus messes up and you wind up with a blurry picture, and there’s not much for red-eye reduction, but for the most part the camera works perfectly and takes great pictures. The video capture quality is also excellent for a mobile device.
All in all, I’m very happy with the phone…it serves every purpose I need it too plus many more, and I’m looking forward to seeing what Android 2.2 has in store for the Incredible. I will warn you all that I’m not an “app-head” so I really don’t mess around too much with different apps, aside from Yelp and Open Table (and the built-ins), so I can’t really speak much about app quality or availability. But as far as the basic and extended functions that one should expect from a smart-phone, in my humble opinion, the Incredible passes muster with flying colors.