I’m a pretty tech-savvy person. I worked in computer repair for some time, I’m a gamer, and I like to keep up on current technology. Sure, there are more tech-savvy people than myself, but I’d say I’m pretty tech-savvy.
So it may seem a little odd that my cell phone has always been just a telephone to me. My motto for years has been “If it makes phone calls, that’s good enough for me.” I never texted, I never browsed the web from my phone, nor did I tweet or post to Facebook from my phone. Finally, I’ve realized the convenience of having a miniature computer to carry around in my pocket, and I made the jump to a smart phone about two weeks ago.
The Droid Incredible from HTC seemed to hit a good balance of specs, features, and cost, and when enough reviews told me that this is “the best Android phone on the market,” it’s hard to refuse.
So how is it?
While I never owned my own smartphone before, I have had some experience with a BlackBerry Curve, as well as an old Samsung Omnia (Windows Mobile). I immediately noticed that the Droid Incredible is more intuitive than either of the other smart phones I’ve used. The multi-touch screen of course trumps the trackball or trackpad on the BlackBerry any day, and the interface is much cleaner and easier to use than the old Windows Mobile UI, but of course, that’s not necessarily a fair comparison, as the Omnia is over two years old, and smart phones and their respective user interfaces have been developing at a breakneck pace.
Physically, the Incredible isn’t much to look at. It’s a slate phone with a large touch screen, and it’s black, but this sort of “blandness” actually works in its favor. There are plenty of other Android phones that have a rounded, almost bubbly look to them that sort of makes them look like toys, such as the LG Ally, Motorola Citrus, and Samsung Continuum. The Incredible isn’t trying to be flashy, and has a classier, higher-quality look for it. Still, there are a couple of interesting aesthetic choices made to the back of the phone, with its unusual three-tier backplate/battery cover and hint of red around the camera lens. Also, everything underneath the battery cover is colored a fiery red, which is sort of baffling; like getting a tattoo on your butt, no one is going to see it (unless you’re a plumber). Wait, did I say something before about being “classy”?
The Droid Incredible, as expected, comes pre-loaded with plenty of applications to serve the purposes you’re probably getting a smartphone for, like email, calendars, maps, Twitter, and Facebook, and plenty of other apps that I haven’t even looked through yet and probably won’t ever use. With a PC, I would normally want no software beyond the operating system and device drivers to be pre-loaded, but using applications on Android is a whole different animal from running programs on an OS like Windows. With the Incredible, and I assume all Android devices, you never manually close an application; instead, Android simply stops giving background applications CPU time, and automatically reallocates memory when necessary. This means that your most-used applications stay in memory and load faster when you return to them, but are completely unobtrusive when not currently in use, and that’s definitely a good thing, since you can’t uninstall any of the Verizon pre-loaded apps.
The Incredible gets a lot of flak for its battery life, which is highly dependent on how you use the phone. I’ve personally seen both ends of the spectrum; if you’re constantly using it all day, the battery could last as little as eight or ten hours; if it’s just sitting on your desk seeing absolute minimal use, you could get up to three days out of the battery. That’s right: the Droid Incredible has an 8 to 72 hour battery life. If you’re a really heavy phone user, a higher capacity battery is available at the expense of making your phone thicker. The phone only takes about two hours to fully charge with the AC charger (though it takes longer over USB) so you can pretty much get away with just charging it at any time.
The display shows bright and vibrant colors, and packs a lot of detail in with a resolution of 800×480 on a screen measuring 3.7″ diagonal. Touch control is nice and sensitive, though the touch keyboard can sometimes be a pain. When held upright, the keys are very narrow and easy to fat-finger, however, in almost all cases you can rotate the phone on its side and the display will rotate, giving you a wider keyboard. I actually like the wide touch keyboard better than the slide-out physical keyboards I’ve used on other phones, plus not having a physical keyboard keeps the phone’s footprint down.
What about using the phone as a phone?
You know, talking to people… with your vocal cords and mouth? Well, there’s not much to say; it works like a phone should. The address book/dialer leaves a little to be desired, though. The default screen for the dialer is a combined “recent calls” and contact list screen that shows contacts not just from your phone address book, but also your Facebook friends. If you have many Facebook friends who aren’t so much “friends” as “acquaintances” who have their phone numbers on their Facebook profile, it can be a little strange having all their phone numbers in your address book, particularly considering it only takes an errant tap on the screen to accidentally call that person you’ve never met who lives on the opposite end of the country. Maybe that’s just me.
Speed dial settings are a bit silly; you only have nine speed dial positions (1 through 9) that are accessed by hitting “Menu”, then “Speed Dial”, then selecting the contact. That’s right, you can’t open the phone and simply dial that speed dial number; you have to go to the Speed Dial menu and select the contact. It’s faster to just find your desired contact from the main screen. Oddly enough, I seem to have more complaints about the phone functionality of my phone than any other function, but it’s really not bad, and the smart dial function makes up for it, which allows you to easily find a contact just by beginning to dial either part of their phone number or part of their name.
Overall, I’m very happy with my Droid Incredible and I’ve definitely become a smartphone convert.