Considering how well received the Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless was back in November 2009, one would think that it would be hard for any other phone in the Droid line of phones to top it. But one would be wrong.
The HTC Droid Incredible from Verizon Wireless ($199.99 after $100 mail-in rebate), released on April 29th, 2010, is the newest phone in the Droid family of phones from Verizon. The Incredible certainly lives up to its name because it is host to all the features that made the Motorola Droid great, while fixing many things that critics and the public at large found to be problematic. Things like the hardware keyboard that many found unnecessary are now gone and other features have been improved.
The 5 megapixel camera of the Droid? It's been replaced with an 8 megapixel camera; a camera that provides quality that's the same as that of a Kodak point-and-shoot. The interface? Like the Motorola Droid, the HTC Droid Incredible runs a familiar Android interface; on top of that HTC has placed HTC Sense, a user interface that they designed to make the phone more personal.
Overall Design
The overall design of the HTC Droid Incredible is fantastic; composed of a single-body design with no visible seams for a battery compartment or antenna, this device is very sleek, smooth, and easy to store. It is much lighter than the Motorola Droid because it lacks a hardware keyboard and much thinner too, for the same reason.
One of the best improvements that the Droid Incredible makes over the original Droid is in fact the removal of the hardware keyboard. On the original Motorola Droid, the keyboard added size, weight, and inconvenience to the device. The directional pad placed at the bottom of the phone, or the right side of the keyboard, was unnecessary on a touchscreen device and shifted the keyboard to the left, making it harder for users to reach the keyboard with their right hands.
Speed Improvements
Due to the upgraded processor of the Droid Incredible, this device responded much more quickly than other phones in the Droid family, providing a faster user experience. Processor-intensive apps performed greatly; even features like the GPS saw an improvement in speed with the user able to gain a lock on GPS location faster.
High Quality Camera
The 8 megapixel camera of the Droid Incredible essentially blows other phones out of the water in the area of photo quality. Every photo taken with this device was clear and focused, even ones taken in foggy or low-light situations. On close ups and far away shots, the camera performed well by taking photos that were the same quality as photos taken with a typical 8 megapixel point-and-shoot consumer camera from Kodak.
The Network
As usual, the Verizon Wireless network had great call quality and speedy network connection times. Calls were crisp and clear with no dropped calls during testing, and pages loaded in almost no time while browser the Internet. On issue, however, was that sent texts seemed sluggish in arriving at other phones while texts sent to the Droid Incredible arrived almost immediately. This could have simply been an issue with the other phones sending the texts, but multiple phones were used in the test and the Incredible consistently performed below-par in this area.
Selection of Apps
One great thing about the Droid Incredible, like all other Android phones, is the Android Market where thousands of free and paid apps are available for download and purchase. Although the Android Market lacks truly great counterparts to certain Apple App Store apps, like a decent Facebook app, the apps that are available can meet any user's needs. Apps like Runstar are well designed and run well on the Droid Incredible. The Android Market contains thousands upon thousands of apps, so any user can find what they need.
Overall, the HTC Droid Incredible is, well, incredible. It sports a sleek body design which boasts major improvements over the original Motorola Droid from Verizon Wireless, improves on many areas in which the Droid lacks, and maintains the selection of apps and software of all other Android phones. This phone met or exceeded expectations in almost every area and therefore is a recommended buy.
Nicholas Anderegg - Nick Anderegg is an experienced freelance writer who has done everything from working as a contributing writer for several online ...
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