HTC Droid Incredible Proves Ideal for Exploring Web Apps

The Droid Incredible, UnboxedThe Droid Incredible boasts the same 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor that impressed users of the Google Nexus One smartphone, rendering Web apps fast.

Sleek, Black, SexyThe Incredible’s 8-megapixel camera’s eye is always ready to take pictures and video.

Pretty WallpapersWallpaper options are nice. We switched up the natural reddish smoke of the Droid Incredible wallpaper for something blue.

HTC SenseWhat does anyone need with seven home screens? We don’t know, but HTC Sense delivers them on the Droid Incredible. Check out the so-called “leap” view to access all panels.

The Weather WidgetThe Incredible’s weather widget is live. When it shows rain, wiper blades swipe raindrops from across the screen. Cool!

Incredible AppsTapping the Apps button calls up 40 preloaded apps, including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and Google Goggles.

Conan at GoogleToday, we procrastinated at work by watching Conan O’Brien’s visit to the Googleplex. That’s Vic Gundotra, Google’s vice president of mobile engineering, with O’Brien. The picture on the 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED display was much better than we can do justice here. But it did take 10 seconds to load the broadcast.

Voice RecorderBeing the journalists we are, we tested the voice recorder app. The microphone’s sound quality requires work, as the recording rendered our voice with bizarre pitch.

Facebook for AndroidGreat little app, providing a fine transplant of Facebook functionality from the desktop to the smartphone.

Swift App for TwitterSimilarly useful and adept at reproducing the desktop Twitter look and feel is this Swift app for Twitter.

Going GogglingBut we love our Google Goggles app, too.

There Are Limits to GogglesHowever, Goggles won’t work with all objects. People are the big coverage subject missing from Google Goggles, in our opinion. Of course, that begs for privacy issues. Google doesn’t list people here. … Hmmmm.

Goggles Works with BooksWe shot this book, “The Way Home” by Wired producer George Pelecanos, and got the correct results with an option to purchase from Amazon.com.

Voice SearchWe then tried Google’s Search by voice feature for “Pizza in Trumbull, Connecticut.”

Pizza!It worked perfectly; Search by Voice is getting better. As you can see, Web apps run great on the Droid Incredible. Now you need to decide whether to wait for the next hot Android phone, the iPhone 4.0 (June), or possible devices based on the emerging Android 2.2 OS. Tough calls, all.