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Ditched the Inc. - Back to the Droid

AndyH

Newbie
Feb 18, 2010
26
12
There are lots of questions people have about the Incredible v. Droid, etc. I have had a Droid since January, and I got an Incredible on launch day. After trying out the Inc. for a bit, I ditched it and went back to the Droid (ok, a new Droid, because I gave my wife my old Droid). So, in case another opinion on this is helpful, here are my reasons for going back to the Droid.

1. Battery life is better on the Droid.

2. Battery life is better on the Droid.

3. Battery life is better on the Droid. I could not make it through the day on the Inc., even with an extended 1750 mah battery, no live wallpapers, and only using 3/7 homescreens. What's the point? With the Droid, I can make a bunch of calls, stream Pandora for a couple of hours, and still have juice at bed time.

4. Screen accuracy is better on the Droid. There were several occasions when I would hit reply or something in Gmail on the Inc., and it would not register the click without hitting it a few times. I don't have that issue on the Droid.

5. Screen clarity is better on the Droid.

6. I prefer stock Android, and I did not like the way that HTC tweaked the dialer and contacts. If you have a contact with multiple phone numbers, HTC's interface automatically assigns one of those numbers "primary" status, which then makes it a more-involved process to dial the non-primary number for a contact. Plus, the phone automatically designated the primary numbers (thought you can change it), and it didn't choose the "right" numbers. When you have 383 contacts, that's a pain to fix. Plus, the phone imports every contact in Google, not just those in your "my contacts" folder. You can limit the view to "my contacts," but when typing an e-mail address in Gmail, the other options still show up, which clogs things up.

Now, the Inc. is a great phone, and I could probably get used to the dialer/contacts issue. But without better power management, it's not for me. I'm not interested in disabling the mobile network always on feature, or other such things to make the phone last through the day.

Don't get me wrong, the Droid could have some slight improvements -- but they are minor, for my usage.
 
i'm surprised. i find the touch screen on the Droid to be kind of iffy. and i was expecting the battery life to be much better coming from an Eris but haven't found it to be that much of a difference. perhaps it's my battery, or that the phone is still relatively new. and maybe i'm using it a lot right now or often in bad service areas. anyway, i have definitely heard the battery life of the incredible isn't very good. i would imagine it would be similar to the Eris. haven't played with it enough to know about the touchscreen. i find HTC's Sense to be pretty awesome. but if the dialer is similar to the Eris that is a huge weakness. couldn't stand the dialer on the Eris. just terrible.
 
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I sure wish I could make it through the day on my droid. After months of it dying on me half way through the day I have resorted to keeping a charger EVERYWHERE! Kitchen, living room, office, bedroom, both cars, with my laptop and a spare battery for long flights... guess thats about it. I now keep it on a charger and use my headset.
 
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I sure wish I could make it through the day on my droid. After months of it dying on me half way through the day I have resorted to keeping a charger EVERYWHERE! Kitchen, living room, office, bedroom, both cars, with my laptop and a spare battery for long flights... guess thats about it. I now keep it on a charger and use my headset.

Have you considered getting the Seidio extended battery for the Droid?
 
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I was tempted by the Incredible but your issue #5 is to me the most important;

5. Screen clarity is better on the Droid.

ultimately we read on these screens a great deal, emails, web pages, etc. And this is the deal breaker for me. It’s also why I left my iPhone for the Droid. The best screen on a mobile device I have ever seen.

BTW, I start at 6:00AM and by 7:00PM I have about 30% battery, with GPS, Wi-Fi, max screen brightness. Using it for texts, email, twitter, browsing constantly all day. NO complaints on battery life since January.

Not over clocked, stock Android 2.1
 
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I sure wish I could make it through the day on my droid. After months of it dying on me half way through the day I have resorted to keeping a charger EVERYWHERE! Kitchen, living room, office, bedroom, both cars, with my laptop and a spare battery for long flights... guess thats about it. I now keep it on a charger and use my headset.

Perhaps, overclocking is draining the battery a bit?
 
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I went from being rooted to stock about 2 weeks ago. I mainly did it because I kept getting random reboots on bugless beast. However, after I did a factory wipe the phone had noticeably better battery life. That reason alone has kept me from re-rooting my droid and I just love having the Droid work the way it was meant to be.
 
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Perhaps, overclocking is draining the battery a bit?

It's more ensuring that you have appropriate profiles set up (ie. when charging/asleep/idle, it's not set to overclock, just simply sit at 550 or whatever). Also setting it to scale up "Ondemand" helps. I've seen no difference in battery life (perhaps better life) since OC'ing, and mine's set to go up to 1.2Ghz when needed. However, all Droids are different....
 
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Battery life on the Droid can be good. Stock I made it 12 hours if I was lucky. Overclocked I've been able to squeeze over 24 hours out of it, thanks to undervolted kernels, and SetCPU profiles. Not all HTC phones are horrible. I could get 2 days out of a charge on both my HTC Kaiser and my HTC Excalibur.
 
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With the Incredible using the 1750 mAH battery I get through the entire day using it to stream Pandora for several hours, moderate email/texting use as well as live wallpapers + 7 screens full of widgets/shortcuts. I've definitely had an app or two that goes nuts and kills the battery in a couple hours, but you need to just watch for that and use a task killer to end that app when you're done with it. I am at about 10-35% at the end of the day, never killed it completely.

Keep in mind things like GPS and Bluetooth do seem to take extra battery, depending on the apps you have. It took a bit to get used to but I can easily get through the day with this phone. Love it.
 
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My findings were the same. The Inc, while a nice screen and a bit faster, the battery life was abysmal. I turned off everything and it was sketchy. The droid, I could rock all the settings on all the time and the battery lasted.

I will say that HTC's Exchange management (Email, Calendar) is superior to everything I have tried. Touchdown is only second to HTC's Exchange management.
 
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Surprising. I usually make it through the day with heavy use on my incredible. I usually kill the apps that I am not doing and make sure that I have a full charge. Outside of that I really don't have any problems. Had the moto droid and it just didn't do it for me. For me it just seemed kind of clunky and the touch screen was kind of stiff. But I always say, to each his own.
 
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To each his own for sure. I now have three chargers to be prepared for the dead battery at all times. I used to make it about 14 hours now maybe 8 and I hardly touch the phone anymore for fear of draining it for when I might need it to make a call for something important. It has to be plugged in the car and at home and I take the other wall with me to plug it in if I go somewhere and need to wait for like an hour. It is bad. I love my droid and am not going to replace it anytime soon but we all have a vast difference when it comes to this issue so to make a blanket statement on the Inc or droid is impossible.
 
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I sure wish I could make it through the day on my droid. After months of it dying on me half way through the day I have resorted to keeping a charger EVERYWHERE! Kitchen, living room, office, bedroom, both cars, with my laptop and a spare battery for long flights... guess thats about it. I now keep it on a charger and use my headset.

That's a shitload of chargers (I have three myself...home, car, work). Maybe your Droid is defective? Do you keep your screen on full-bright?

With the brightness turned down, the Droid has outstanding (for a smart phone) battery life. I can't lie, I keep my screen on full-bright most of the time unless I KNOW I'm going to be away from my chargers for an extended period of time.

For example, last week I went to get my car serviced and I figured I would be there for 3 to 4 hours so I charged my phone up and turned down the brightness to about 6% before I got there.
 
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for me there was only 3 things better about the Incredible and in the end it wasn't enough: the camera, Sense UI (just because the favorite widget was sweet and the screens transition smooth) and the media players are the best on android.
The droid is faster in every other way (custom kernal installed), better battery life and a way better loud speaker. I blew the loud speaker on the incredible 2 times in 2 weeks (was not happy)
 
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