Verizon Wireless launched the HTC Droid Incredible smartphone April 29, offering it for $199 with a $100 rebate and a two-year contract. Unlike its Android predecessors, there was no fancy launch event. eWEEK compares the Android 2.1-based smartphone with the existing Google Nexus One and BlackBerry Bold 9650 high-end smartphones. The Incredible is comparable to the Nexus One on Web browsing, but easily beats the Bold 9650, which is the superior device for e-mail and messaging.
Verizon Wireless
launched the HTC Droid
Incredible smartphone April 29,
offering
it for $199 with a $100 rebate and a two-year contract.
Unlike its Android predecessors, there was no fancy launch event, but it
didn't need one. The early reviews helped in a big way and the devices have
sold out and won't be available until May 4.
The new Android 2.1-based gadget comes with a fraction of the plaudits of
the Nexus One, which Google launched in January with half the buzz of the
Motorola Droid, which Verizon launched with a
blitzkrieg, Terminator-style marketing campaign last November.
You get the idea. Unless there is a major breakthrough in hardware,
processor or operating system design, the best we may have to look forward to
from Google's Android OS is Android 2.2, the Froyo version that is slated to
support Flash and could possibly mitigate the gross fragmentation surrounding
Android.
For now, we turn an eager eye to the Incredible, which is a fine, fine
device for browsing the Web and using Web applications. eWEEK provided a
detailed run-through
here, along with pictures of the device
here.
I've had the Incredible for nearly a week now, and the best thing that I can
compare it to is the Nexus One. In fact, they are much the same.
The Incredible is black, cased in plastic; the Nexus One is gray, coated in Teflon.
But they share the same Qualcomm Snapdragon 1GHz processor, which makes them
both load Web pages nearly as fast as my Asus EEE PC netbook.
At least it feels that way; the Incredible is fast. I don't remember the
Nexus One being this fast. Maybe it was a slow test unit?
I'm not kidding. The Web rendering capabilities of these devices alone make
them worth buying if you're the type who needs to take your Gmail, Facebook,
Twitter and other Web apps with you on the road.
If you're an amateur photographer or simply need a fine camera, the
Incredible is a great choice. The device sports an 8-megapixel camera-the first
of its kind from Verizon-making the Nexus One's 5-megapixel offering seem
pedestrian by comparison.
The Incredible also employs HTC Sense's
user experience, with seven customizable home screens. What does anyone want
with seven home screens? If you need a phone to be an extension of your desktop
or laptop, where you're accustomed to opening in several browser tabs, the
Incredible is a nice fit.
I posted
Google Buzz from the device with ease and searched the
new Google Place Pages, which have been optimized for
mobile, making the feature a nice little personal assistant for the pocket.
Calls on the device were crisp and clear. It could have been my imagination,
but the speech-to-text capability seems to have improved a bit from just a few
short months ago. The battery held up well over the course of the day with a
handful of phone calls and some considerable Web browsing-12 hours before
dying.
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