I thought I would provide other DROID owner's with a first impression of the HTC Incredible. Getting your hands on an HTC Incredible might be a little difficult. My buddy pre-ordered his as soon as it was available for pre-order and received it a bit ahead of schedule yesterday -- 3 days, ahead of schedule. So, with a brief hands-on with the device, here's how it measures up with our DROID:
Form Factor/Design
Obviously, the two are different form factors. One's a slab, the other's a candy-bar. One's fully touchscreen, the other incorporates a full-QWERTY slider. What you'll probably be pleased to hear is that the Incredible is not that much thinner than our DROID. It's thinner, but it doesn't look thin like, say, an iPhone looks sitting on a table, floating almost. The Incredible very much has that "Droid" look -- squarish, unabashedly industrial.
How much thinner it is depends on where you're measuring. As I suspected, the camera lens on the back of the Incredible juts out and so at the top of the device, it's almost the same thinness as the DROID. Since it doesn't lay flat, the bottom of the device is notably thinner. Conservative estimates are about 2-3mm different.
Plasticky is an accurate. The back of the phone doesn't have that nice tactile feel of the DROID (and the topographic feature is hideous), but it is considerably lighter, almost toy-ish. What I will say is that this phone will be pocket friendly (not back pocket of your pants, per HTC's recommendation). It's a shirt pocket friendly phone. The DROID is a brick when it comes to this battle, but that has a lot to do with the all-metal chassis and requirements to be a slider.
Interface
The touchscreen is very responsive. Compared to my experience with the Nexus One, the four soft keys at the bottom were DROID-like responsive. No double tapping, re-aiming your touch shenanigans. The touchscreen tracked really well with finger inputs and I didn't have any issues with it.
Sense UI on the Incredible is... well, incredible! It's so fast; it's so slick. Any Eris owners or Hero owners are going to want to jump to this phone. It makes those devices look silly running Sense. Speaking about speed...
Performance
I don't know what HTC did. Maybe they optimized Sense UI to utilize the GPU more, since the release of 2.1 Sense coincided with Google's release of the NDK. Whatever it is they did, this device is the FASTEST Android device I've had the pleasure of playing with (even compared to the Nexus One). The page-to-page transitions are so fast, so fluid. Opening apps and widget functions are so quick. They happen almost instantaneously.
I did a non-scientific test of speed versus my DROID with the following things:
1) Beautiful Widget vs. HTC Widget: With BW, you know if you press the weather image, it brings up the 4-day forecast? In a side-by-side comparison between BW and HTC, pressing on the weather image INSTANTLY opened the 3-day forecast. Okay, maybe not instantly, but like, in a second. Whereas, the DROID was easily 2-3x slower.
Okay, okay, you're probably thinking, apples to oranges. BW isn't HTC and I'm sure there are intrinsic differences...
2) Market: So, I thought, level the playing field, let's open up an app like the Market app. I have to say, the same results -- Incredible was 2-3x faster than the DROID.
3) Browser: Opening the browser was very similar between the two phones. Navigating pages was not too dissimilar though, with both phones pulling 3G signal. Speaking of 3G signal, I did note that the DROID was pulling a stronger 3G signal than the Incredible. Where I would have 2-3 bars of signal, the Incredible was waffling between 0-1 bars. Perhaps, the Incredible has inherited the weak 3G antennae of the Nexus One, but VZW's service compensates for it?
Incidentally, just to give you an idea of how good Helix is on the DROID. I have to say that the screen-to-screen transitions between the two phones were JUST AS smooth and just as fast. Furthermore, my DROID was carrying more than a handful of widgets, in addition to folders, apps, etc. while the Incredible had a few empty screens and two widgets running.
Screens
I have to say that the Incredible's screen looks better than any of the other OLED implementations I've seen in the past (Nexus One, Omnia II). That's weird to me because they're the same OLED. There was less perceivable yellowing that what I've seen in the past. But like all accounts have said, the screen is colorful, clear and vibrant. But how does it compare to the DROID's screen?
Honestly, I've had the same qualms about the OLED screen ever since I laid eyes on it with the two devices I mentioned above. 1) It's useless on a sunny day. With yesterday being the first sunny day after a series of torrential downpours, it was an issue. 2) The display is clear, but it's definitely not as SHARP as the DROID's screen. There is the same sort of "grid"/"pixel" look to the screen I just can't stand.
Contrast, I would say was on par with the DROID. Blacks are definitely blacker, but even at ~30% brightness, the DROID's LCD was just qualitatively better, in my eyes than the OLED at the same setting. Don't get me wrong, OLED is an outstanding display, but the DROID's display is still hands down, the best LCD implementation on a smartphone and to me, the sharpness is unrivaled, even by the Incredible.
What I do like about the Incredible's display, which is naturally going to be an advantage of the OLED is the actual distance from display to glass is much less than the DROID's. What I mean by that is, if you look at the DROID's image, you can tell it is at a distance from the glass surface, whereas the Incredible's is so close to the glass it's like you can touch the image.
Conclusions
I will still have to play with it some more to give a full, in-depth review of the device's features, but I am seriously impressed by the Incredible's speed vs. the DROID and I would venture to say even faster than my experience with the N1. I'm sure it has something to do with making more use of the GPU. Opening things like the camera was a pleasing experience, compared to the "pure" Android implementation, even if dark performance is still lacking (like the DROID).
So after playing with the phone, would I recommend it? I think I'm still holding firm to my initial, pre-test assessment of the device. If you're on the fence about an Android phone, get the Incredible. It will be a satisfying experience. If you're an iPhone user, looking to jump ship, pick up the Incredible, it will rock your world. If you're an owner of a DROID wondering if you should drop it and pick up the Incredible, I say, "Wait."
It's a great phone, no doubt, but it has its limitations. It doesn't represent that large of a step forward to necessitate a change of device. With the next version of Qualcomm's chip slated for a Q3/Q4 release in smartphones, LTE and Android releasing another 12-15 phones by year's end, no reason to ditch the DROID now.
Form Factor/Design
Obviously, the two are different form factors. One's a slab, the other's a candy-bar. One's fully touchscreen, the other incorporates a full-QWERTY slider. What you'll probably be pleased to hear is that the Incredible is not that much thinner than our DROID. It's thinner, but it doesn't look thin like, say, an iPhone looks sitting on a table, floating almost. The Incredible very much has that "Droid" look -- squarish, unabashedly industrial.
How much thinner it is depends on where you're measuring. As I suspected, the camera lens on the back of the Incredible juts out and so at the top of the device, it's almost the same thinness as the DROID. Since it doesn't lay flat, the bottom of the device is notably thinner. Conservative estimates are about 2-3mm different.
Plasticky is an accurate. The back of the phone doesn't have that nice tactile feel of the DROID (and the topographic feature is hideous), but it is considerably lighter, almost toy-ish. What I will say is that this phone will be pocket friendly (not back pocket of your pants, per HTC's recommendation). It's a shirt pocket friendly phone. The DROID is a brick when it comes to this battle, but that has a lot to do with the all-metal chassis and requirements to be a slider.
Interface
The touchscreen is very responsive. Compared to my experience with the Nexus One, the four soft keys at the bottom were DROID-like responsive. No double tapping, re-aiming your touch shenanigans. The touchscreen tracked really well with finger inputs and I didn't have any issues with it.
Sense UI on the Incredible is... well, incredible! It's so fast; it's so slick. Any Eris owners or Hero owners are going to want to jump to this phone. It makes those devices look silly running Sense. Speaking about speed...
Performance
I don't know what HTC did. Maybe they optimized Sense UI to utilize the GPU more, since the release of 2.1 Sense coincided with Google's release of the NDK. Whatever it is they did, this device is the FASTEST Android device I've had the pleasure of playing with (even compared to the Nexus One). The page-to-page transitions are so fast, so fluid. Opening apps and widget functions are so quick. They happen almost instantaneously.
I did a non-scientific test of speed versus my DROID with the following things:
1) Beautiful Widget vs. HTC Widget: With BW, you know if you press the weather image, it brings up the 4-day forecast? In a side-by-side comparison between BW and HTC, pressing on the weather image INSTANTLY opened the 3-day forecast. Okay, maybe not instantly, but like, in a second. Whereas, the DROID was easily 2-3x slower.
Okay, okay, you're probably thinking, apples to oranges. BW isn't HTC and I'm sure there are intrinsic differences...
2) Market: So, I thought, level the playing field, let's open up an app like the Market app. I have to say, the same results -- Incredible was 2-3x faster than the DROID.
3) Browser: Opening the browser was very similar between the two phones. Navigating pages was not too dissimilar though, with both phones pulling 3G signal. Speaking of 3G signal, I did note that the DROID was pulling a stronger 3G signal than the Incredible. Where I would have 2-3 bars of signal, the Incredible was waffling between 0-1 bars. Perhaps, the Incredible has inherited the weak 3G antennae of the Nexus One, but VZW's service compensates for it?
Incidentally, just to give you an idea of how good Helix is on the DROID. I have to say that the screen-to-screen transitions between the two phones were JUST AS smooth and just as fast. Furthermore, my DROID was carrying more than a handful of widgets, in addition to folders, apps, etc. while the Incredible had a few empty screens and two widgets running.
Screens
I have to say that the Incredible's screen looks better than any of the other OLED implementations I've seen in the past (Nexus One, Omnia II). That's weird to me because they're the same OLED. There was less perceivable yellowing that what I've seen in the past. But like all accounts have said, the screen is colorful, clear and vibrant. But how does it compare to the DROID's screen?
Honestly, I've had the same qualms about the OLED screen ever since I laid eyes on it with the two devices I mentioned above. 1) It's useless on a sunny day. With yesterday being the first sunny day after a series of torrential downpours, it was an issue. 2) The display is clear, but it's definitely not as SHARP as the DROID's screen. There is the same sort of "grid"/"pixel" look to the screen I just can't stand.
Contrast, I would say was on par with the DROID. Blacks are definitely blacker, but even at ~30% brightness, the DROID's LCD was just qualitatively better, in my eyes than the OLED at the same setting. Don't get me wrong, OLED is an outstanding display, but the DROID's display is still hands down, the best LCD implementation on a smartphone and to me, the sharpness is unrivaled, even by the Incredible.
What I do like about the Incredible's display, which is naturally going to be an advantage of the OLED is the actual distance from display to glass is much less than the DROID's. What I mean by that is, if you look at the DROID's image, you can tell it is at a distance from the glass surface, whereas the Incredible's is so close to the glass it's like you can touch the image.
Conclusions
I will still have to play with it some more to give a full, in-depth review of the device's features, but I am seriously impressed by the Incredible's speed vs. the DROID and I would venture to say even faster than my experience with the N1. I'm sure it has something to do with making more use of the GPU. Opening things like the camera was a pleasing experience, compared to the "pure" Android implementation, even if dark performance is still lacking (like the DROID).
So after playing with the phone, would I recommend it? I think I'm still holding firm to my initial, pre-test assessment of the device. If you're on the fence about an Android phone, get the Incredible. It will be a satisfying experience. If you're an iPhone user, looking to jump ship, pick up the Incredible, it will rock your world. If you're an owner of a DROID wondering if you should drop it and pick up the Incredible, I say, "Wait."
It's a great phone, no doubt, but it has its limitations. It doesn't represent that large of a step forward to necessitate a change of device. With the next version of Qualcomm's chip slated for a Q3/Q4 release in smartphones, LTE and Android releasing another 12-15 phones by year's end, no reason to ditch the DROID now.
But yeah, I'll add it to the list. What I want to do though, is check the signal strength where signal strength would otherwise be hard to come by. I noted the difference while in another buddy's house, in a rural area, in his basement. Can't get more confounding than that!
