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My HTC Droid Incredible Review

shpuntik

Lurker
May 1, 2010
9
0
Before I start this review, let me back track a little bit...

I am a huge Blackberry user and abuser. I was absolutely confident that there was nothing out there that was better...

That was until I got the HTC Incredible.

I won't go into too lengthy of a review as it will bore you out of your mind but let me get down to the specifics.

Speed - I am sure you know the phone comes with a 1ghz Snapdragon processor. Don't doubt it any further, the phone is f'n fast. This will hit home with the BB users as I'm sure you are tired of seeing that black little clock or hour glass every time you try to do anything else but email.

Typing - I won't say that the HTC's "keyboard" is better than the Blackberry's. It is not but its as close to it as they can get. Yes, the on screen keyboard does cause you to misspell words and hit a key that you did not intend to hit, but the Android system starts to learn how you speak (or type) after a while and makes the typing extremely easy. It basically predicts your next sentence and you can totally pick the words you want it to predict most often. I also like the Speech to Text recognition... This comes in very handy when driving and it is very very accurate.

Emails - The phone has full Exchange support and the emails come in to the phone just as fast as they did to my Bberry. The phone also syncs your contacts and calendar.

Screen - The screen quality is phenomenal. I have yet to see anything better than this. That said, it is IMPOSSIBLE to see the screen on a sunny day while outside.

Web Browser - UNREAL!!!!!!!!! Full view of web pages, full Flash and Java support, pinch to zoom. Everything just works!

Here is what I don't like about the phone:

App Notifications - If you have a facebook, twitter, or any other third party application, the notifications don't come to the phone right away like they do on the blackberry. For instance in the facebook app, the minimum interval you can set for it to refresh itself (sort of like Send and Receive in Outlook) is 30 mins.

No search in the Contact List - I'm not sure if I just can't find the feature but it seems like you can't search the Address Book for a contact. So if you are in the "A" letter portion of the Address Book and want to call a guy named Mike, you would have to scroll down to him. This obviously becomes very annoying when you have to call someone named William.

Battery Life - Pretty much awful so far. After about 5 hours of mixed talk time, txt'ing, emailing, and web browsing my battery barely hangs on to life.

I think that is pretty much all.

As of now, I'm not planning to give it back to use my Blackberry instead.

Overall, I love the phone. Coming from a Blackberry, it feels like I stepped into the 21st century with a shitty keyboard.
 
No search in the Contact List - I'm not sure if I just can't find the feature but it seems like you can't search the Address Book for a contact. So if you are in the "A" letter portion of the Address Book and want to call a guy named Mike, you would have to scroll down to him. This obviously becomes very annoying when you have to call someone named William.
If you are in people/contacts app, just press the search (magnifying glass) button on the bottom right. If you are in the dialer, you just press the corresponding letters or numbers. If you press the search button here, this tip shows up.

editied to ask if anyone knows a voice search for these apps.

Hope this helps.
H
 
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If you are in people/contacts app, just press the search (magnifying glass) button on the bottom right. If you are in the dialer, you just press the corresponding letters or numbers. If you press the search button here, this tip shows up.

editied to ask if anyone knows a voice search for these apps.

Hope this helps.
H
I have a question about this. Is it possible to just have your contacts listed and not everyone you have on Facebook and who you've emailed in there?
 
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Lets get one thing straight.....

The screen works fine outdoors. I have been using mine outdoors right now for the past few hours and there are no issues with viewing the screen. I think people are confusing outdoors and DIRECT sunlight.

Yes it is difficult to see in DIRECT sunlight meaning when the sun is pounding down on it with no obstructions. I dont know about anyone else but My Eris was hard to view in direct sunlight as well so was an iphone. I dont care what phone you have the sun will always be a million times brighter than any screen making it diffucult to view.

As for the battery, My first battery cycle SUCKED. I am on my 3rd cycle and battery life has GREATLY improved since then. These are new batteries people, they need to be cycled a few times. Getting better batter life than my Eris.
 
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What lcd screen can you see in direct sunlight? My lcd flat panel samsung hdtv with a million to 1 contrast ratio is washed out in direct sunlight, thats just life. As for the kayboard use swype, trust me, you'll love it. I can input text 4-5x faster using it than touch typing. As for the battery its not that bad, i'll be getting the larger battery when it comes out, but for now i'm happy with how it is. Just plug it into the car when traveling and at home plug it into the wall. It lasts plenty long enough for the times i walk around with it and the other times i keep it plugged in. I think where people get concerned is because they see it jump from 100% to below 90% within just a couple minutes, which is actually due to the fact the battery was never at 100% it was probably in reality at 90%. The last 10% takes 2-3 times as long to charge as the first 90%, thats just how lithium batteries work.
 
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Yeah, I am sure you get 20+ with text, browsing, downloading, and decent talk amount.


Yes - you are absolutely right.

Even better - it was on my first charge!! 22 hours at 14% and I put it on the charger.

It included texting, web browsing, lots of tweaking, customizing, setting up sense ui, youtube app, push gmail, movies app with 2 1 minute trailers (gorgeous), a few calls, and it took me about 10 times to win solitaire.

I'm only on my second charge and I got this at Noon on the 29th.
 
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No search in the Contact List - I'm not sure if I just can't find the feature but it seems like you can't search the Address Book for a contact. So if you are in the "A" letter portion of the Address Book and want to call a guy named Mike, you would have to scroll down to him. This obviously becomes very annoying when you have to call someone named William.

I replaced the "People" Widget on my Home Screen with the "Search People" widget.

It brings up the People Widget with the keyboard ready to go - kinda BBerry like.

But yeah, like the previous poster mentioned, you can hit people and then hit the Search (Magnifying Glass) to get the same result. I just assume already have the keyboard there since that's the only reason i would go into the people app would be to look up a contact..

Long Press Home Screen>Program>Search People
 
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I've had it off charge for 2 hours and down to 71%.

I had major battery issues w/ my Eris as well and is why i returned it (that and to wait for this bad boy).

No live Wallpaper, no updating apps like facebook, etc. Only Gmail Push (no emails yet today) and about 20 mins of phone/text use.

This is my 2nd day (2nd full charge)

I'm probably going to buy the 2150 battery provided it fits the case i'm going to buy and fits in the desktop charger ...but yeah thats the ONLY major issue i have w/ the phone. Everything else can be solved with an app or widget or just getting used to it.

There is one other thing.. the fact that you can't search contacts by business name.

Ex. I have a contact in my phone "Jim Bob" and his company is "JB's Landscaping"

Google BURIES the "Business Name" under a sub category "Other: Organization".

If i try to search for "JB.." it won't bring him up because Android makes that field unsearchable if there is already information in the First/Last name field(s).

Now, if i just had "JB's Landscaping" in there, i could search for it.. but that's not the case for most of a good portion of my contacts.

Oh well, again, probably something that i could get used to or is fixable by a 3rd party app. I was hoping OS 2.1 would fix this coming from Eris and 1.5 but no such luck.

I'll just have to remember my vendors by the contact i have in there for them.... buggah!
 
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I've had it off charge for 2 hours and down to 71%.

I had major battery issues w/ my Eris as well and is why i returned it (that and to wait for this bad boy).

No live Wallpaper, no updating apps like facebook, etc. Only Gmail Push (no emails yet today) and about 20 mins of phone/text use.

This is my 2nd day (2nd full charge)

I'm probably going to buy the 2150 battery provided it fits the case i'm going to buy and fits in the desktop charger ...but yeah thats the ONLY major issue i have w/ the phone. Everything else can be solved with an app or widget or just getting used to it.

There is one other thing.. the fact that you can't search contacts by business name.

Ex. I have a contact in my phone "Jim Bob" and his company is "JB's Landscaping"

Google BURIES the "Business Name" under a sub category "Other: Organization".

If i try to search for "JB.." it won't bring him up because Android makes that field unsearchable if there is already information in the First/Last name field(s).

Now, if i just had "JB's Landscaping" in there, i could search for it.. but that's not the case for most of a good portion of my contacts.

Oh well, again, probably something that i could get used to or is fixable by a 3rd party app. I was hoping OS 2.1 would fix this coming from Eris and 1.5 but no such luck.

I'll just have to remember my vendors by the contact i have in there for them.... buggah!

Is your gps on?
 
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I'm a little disappointed with the battery life too. But I get just over 10 hours with heavy use.

I have already ordered a Touch Pro2 battery for it which will give me 1500 mAg (instead of 1300) and the much needed couple extra hours. But seriously, 10 hours of what I consider heavy use isn't the worst I've heard of. It's just not great.

Hang in there. We'll have push FaceBook and Twitter updates before you know it.
 
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I'm a little disappointed with the battery life too. But I get just over 10 hours with heavy use.

I have already ordered a Touch Pro2 battery for it which will give me 1500 mAg (instead of 1300) and the much needed couple extra hours. But seriously, 10 hours of what I consider heavy use isn't the worst I've heard of. It's just not great.

Hang in there. We'll have push FaceBook and Twitter updates before you know it.


You push facebook and twitter? Isn't that a little excessive?
 
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thanks for the review.
I don't get why battery life is such a 'deal breaker' for people. I have a micro usb plugged into my work computer, I have another one in my car, and a charger at home.

Plenty of easy ways to charge my phone and so far the battery life has exceeded my expectations.
 
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