I am a rooted droid owner. running bugless beast 1.0 now. I had an opportunity to use an incredible for a day today. Nice phone, but in my opinion not worth couple hundred dollars over the original droid.
Here is a quick comparison between the two:
Form factor: Incredible wins hands down, I have no need for the keyboard, and the htc phone felt much nicer in my hands and was lighter. Battery door design is much better as well on the incredible (i dont know how many time my Droid's battery door fell off in my pocket).
This is true. I bet a ton of money though that there will be a market for Inc door replacements since that topographic design is hideous. Look for clean, smooth battery door replacements for the Inc coming soon. Count on it!
Screen: Droid by a long shot. I hated the AMOLED screen on the incredible. The resolution seems higher on the Droid. Incredible displays pictures really well, but text seems pixelated and low-resolution-like. The blacks are nicer on incredible, but whites look absolutely terrible. Side-by-side droid displayed whites properly, while incredible had a rather bad blue tint. Droid screen is much brighter and i always prefer higher dpi.
The resolution of the DROID seems higher because it IS higher. The resolution of Samsung's VisualVGA AMOLED uses a PenTile structure for pixel grouping. Effectively, these are not true 800x480 resolution screens, but "appear" like 800x480 screens. The actual resolution is something on the order of 392x653, far, far, far less than what you paid good money for.
Blue tint is a by-product of AMOLED. Some OLED screens will have a blue tint and yellow tint is an indication that the OLED screen may be going bad. Another one of the reasons that Samsung went with the PenTile structure is that the blue pixel in particular is twice as large as the green pixels. Inherently weak in OLED, blue pixels tend to diminish and dim over time. Making them twice as big allows them to remain as luminescent over time as the OLED ages.
This is NOT a weakness in LCD screens with LED backlights. Couple that with poor sunlight performance, I don't know why anyone would consider this first generation OLED screens for mobile phones as an advantage. Super AMOLED is suppose to rectify some of these issues, but Samsung is sticking to the PenTile structure, retaining its VisualVGA position (or perceived resolution).
Speed: Draw here. I have rooted droid running at 800mhz, so might be different on stock model. Menu scrolling was a bit smooter on incredible, but the rest was basically the same. Web site load/rendering speed went back and forth with no clear winner. Incredible's inertia scrolling was setup a bit too fast for my liking.
Menu scrolling, page-to-page transitions are all a product of the Sense UI. Compared to the Nexus One, the Inc was noticeably smoother and quicker, IMO. Incidentally, it's not "inertia scrolling"; I've seen this term mis-used. The terminology is "kinetic scrolling." But it seems that people are using them interchangeably so much that they're becoming synonymous.
Voice quality: Incredible wins. Sounds much better over the phone. However i dont like the speaker design. The speaker "hole" is small and easly obstructed. If it sits funny in the pocket, easy to not hear the ringer.
Really? This must be a personal issue. I feel the speaker of the Inc is not as loud or as clear as the DROID. Much better than the Nexus One, but not as good qualitatively as the DROID. The earpiece is just as bad as the Nexus One. Small dynamic range.
Reception: hard to tell. Droid displays more bars in my building, but incredible didnt seem to struggle with connection, even though it had less bars. Is it display "bar calibration" issue, or does droid have stronger antenna, i dont know.
I'm still trying to get my hands on my buddy's Inc to test this with actual data numbers, than bars. It seems that the bars are not an accurate reading of strength.
UI: Droid. I like stock Android UI with certain customizations, the Sense seems "busy" with alot of junk that I never use. I prefer a rather minimalistic setup. I did like the pinch feature on homescreen that pops up that mac-os-like selection thingy. The only thing thats nice on Sense is the keyboard skin, which I already run on my Droid. The lower dpi screen also seems to make keys a bit bigger on Incredible, making typing easier.
I think this is a personal taste issue. Some like the MT-enabled keyboard for Sense and other of the fancy doo-dads of Sense. What is important to note is that Sense enabled phones are not considered pure Google experience devices and may not easily receive updates to the latest OS. This is an important point that many people fail to consider. As for the keys, they seem bigger because the screen is actually bigger. The diagonal may be the same 3.7", but due to resolution, it's a more squarish screen (which I think helps for typing accuracy; see iPhone).
Battery life: Didnt have incredible for long enough to tell, and it also was brand new.
Biggest complaint so far, but so are all the initial complaints for these smartphones as people rag 'em, having them on all the time. When the usage settles down, I think so will the complaints. But I do believe that the battery life is probably not quite as good, but the difference isn't as staggering as people make it out to be.
So my conclusion: Right now I wouldnt pay extra $$ for incredible, but if I was offered a straight-up trade I would consider it. If there was a root available for incredible I would probably take it for sure. I really really really love the form factor and lighter weight, but was not impressed with screen and plain dislike the SenseUI. Now rooted incredible with stuff cooked to my preference would be awesome.
Thanks for another review of the device! Good stuff.