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I was considering posting this to the Blog, but since a number of you have been asking me how I like it, and since I think there will likely be some desire to discuss my opinions on it, I figured it would be better to put it out as normal thread...
I've been pining for an iPhone for some time now and have watched the developments with Apple's exclusivity contract with AT&T with great interest. As a very satisfied and long time Verizon customer in the US, I have no intention of switching carriers.
In my personal experience with them, GSM-based carriers have call quality issues that aren't evident on CDMA networks. Echoing, garbled and distorted calls as well as noisy handsets that bleed intermittent noise over to nearby speakers, car stereo systems and other land line phones in the vicinity seem to be the norm. Additionally, having used and tested mobile broadband solutions from AT&T and Verizon, I have found EVDO rev.A devices to be faster in general and more reliable than their 3G counterparts in real world scenarios in my area. Again, this is my personal experience and not something I'd be interested in debating in this review of the Incredible. Hopefully LTE will cure many of these issues, but for the time being, I've found CDMA to be the better technology.
When the Motorola Droid was released on Verizon, I had the opportunity to experiment with it. I found the Android OS to provide most of the functionality I had come to expect from an iPhone and thought it might be a viable platform. After seeing positive reviews of the HTC Incredible, including anecdotal comments from users here, I called VZW and decided to see what kind of deal I could work out to renew my long-expired contract.
I ended up upgrading my plan, which increased my minutes as well as adding text messaging and an unlimited data plan. My total mobile bill increased about $35 monthly. Additionally, the Incredible cost me $150 and they sent me a free LG Cosmos for my wife.
The Incredible arrived with a fairly scant user manual (Verizon's usual "Hints, Tips and Shortcuts") as well as a CD with Windows-oriented software that also included the full manual in PDF form. HTC included a USB-to-Micro USB cable, as well as a wall plug that converts 110V AC to a USB port.
Overall, the design of the Incredible mimics the iPhone 3G, albeit with a slightly larger OLED screen and a trackpad in place of the 'Home' button. The rubberized back panel is removable and allows easy access to the MicroSD slot as well as the battery. On-board is 8GB of internal storage, and this can be upgraded to a roomy 40GB via a 32GB MicroSD card. The Incredible also sports a nice 8MP camera and a dual-LED flash.
Set-up is guided and fairly simple. Within minutes, I could access my Gmail, Yahoo and Comcast email accounts. The HTC Sense UI is also pretty slick, allowing for 8 "home screens" that can be dynamically reconfigured by setting up profiles (presumably for different environments like the office, home and vacation). Each home screen can house app shortcuts and widgets and are configured via a drag-and-drop interface. Android's status bar at the top of the screen displays notifications and network status. If you "pull down" on the menu, it displays more in-depth notifications and allow you to quickly access email, voicemail and some other options depending on context.
Where Android is a let down is in its lack of intuitive controls. On an iPhone, it's usually pretty easy to navigate and pick up the general rules for manipulating the GUI. Android relies heavily on standard buttons at the bottom of the screen. Back usually backs you up to where you were last (like the home screen), but sometimes it functions like a browser back button. Menu usually brings up a context-sensitive menu, but sometimes there's more options just by pressing and holding an item on the screen. There's a dedicated search button too and that does an admirable job of looking through the contents of the phone and also suggesting Google searches. Home always brings you back to the home screen - and if you hold it, it will show you some (not always all) of your running apps.
That leads me into multitasking, which is often trumped up by Android fans as an advantage over the iPhone. Quite honestly, I'm not sure that's true as it is VERY poorly implemented. First off, I mentioned that you should be able to see all running apps just by pressing and holding Home. Unfortunately, that doesn't include widgets (which can suck up power like no one's business) and some tasks that simply don't report in. Most Android users will use a "Task Management" app and religiously kill off unneeded apps. And it's easy to accrue those unneeded apps because very seldom do apps close when you "back" out of them. And it's even more unusual to see a button that closes an app. Google claims that it's not necessary to worry about these things because the OS handles memory management so well. But then, it talks out of the other side of its mouth by saying that anyone who needs to recharge their phone within 24 hours of use is probably running 3rd party apps. You can't have it both ways - either you get used to killing off apps, or you charge your phone constantly.
All platforms have their nuisances, so I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all is bad with this phone. It takes some time to get used to and it’s particularly difficult to shift from the iPhone OS (which I had been accustomed to in using my iPod Touch) to Android with HTC Sense. It would help if things were better documented, but I am learning and have come to find the phone pretty easy to use after a few weeks of experimenting. I’m even getting the hang of the Mail client, which I initially hated.
As much as there are idiosyncrasies in the user interface, there are a few little neat touches that I do like. For example, I love how the phone reacts when you plug it into a Mac (or a PC for that matter). You can tell it to ‘charge only’, ‘connect to HTC Sync’ (for use with the Windows-based sync software, which I did not test), Disk drive (which mounts on-board and MicroSD storage as volumes on your Mac), and ‘Mobile Broadband Connect’ (for use with Verizon’s tethering plan). You can switch between these modes at any time using the status bar pull-down.
I've been pining for an iPhone for some time now and have watched the developments with Apple's exclusivity contract with AT&T with great interest. As a very satisfied and long time Verizon customer in the US, I have no intention of switching carriers.
In my personal experience with them, GSM-based carriers have call quality issues that aren't evident on CDMA networks. Echoing, garbled and distorted calls as well as noisy handsets that bleed intermittent noise over to nearby speakers, car stereo systems and other land line phones in the vicinity seem to be the norm. Additionally, having used and tested mobile broadband solutions from AT&T and Verizon, I have found EVDO rev.A devices to be faster in general and more reliable than their 3G counterparts in real world scenarios in my area. Again, this is my personal experience and not something I'd be interested in debating in this review of the Incredible. Hopefully LTE will cure many of these issues, but for the time being, I've found CDMA to be the better technology.
When the Motorola Droid was released on Verizon, I had the opportunity to experiment with it. I found the Android OS to provide most of the functionality I had come to expect from an iPhone and thought it might be a viable platform. After seeing positive reviews of the HTC Incredible, including anecdotal comments from users here, I called VZW and decided to see what kind of deal I could work out to renew my long-expired contract.
I ended up upgrading my plan, which increased my minutes as well as adding text messaging and an unlimited data plan. My total mobile bill increased about $35 monthly. Additionally, the Incredible cost me $150 and they sent me a free LG Cosmos for my wife.
The Incredible arrived with a fairly scant user manual (Verizon's usual "Hints, Tips and Shortcuts") as well as a CD with Windows-oriented software that also included the full manual in PDF form. HTC included a USB-to-Micro USB cable, as well as a wall plug that converts 110V AC to a USB port.
Overall, the design of the Incredible mimics the iPhone 3G, albeit with a slightly larger OLED screen and a trackpad in place of the 'Home' button. The rubberized back panel is removable and allows easy access to the MicroSD slot as well as the battery. On-board is 8GB of internal storage, and this can be upgraded to a roomy 40GB via a 32GB MicroSD card. The Incredible also sports a nice 8MP camera and a dual-LED flash.
Set-up is guided and fairly simple. Within minutes, I could access my Gmail, Yahoo and Comcast email accounts. The HTC Sense UI is also pretty slick, allowing for 8 "home screens" that can be dynamically reconfigured by setting up profiles (presumably for different environments like the office, home and vacation). Each home screen can house app shortcuts and widgets and are configured via a drag-and-drop interface. Android's status bar at the top of the screen displays notifications and network status. If you "pull down" on the menu, it displays more in-depth notifications and allow you to quickly access email, voicemail and some other options depending on context.
Where Android is a let down is in its lack of intuitive controls. On an iPhone, it's usually pretty easy to navigate and pick up the general rules for manipulating the GUI. Android relies heavily on standard buttons at the bottom of the screen. Back usually backs you up to where you were last (like the home screen), but sometimes it functions like a browser back button. Menu usually brings up a context-sensitive menu, but sometimes there's more options just by pressing and holding an item on the screen. There's a dedicated search button too and that does an admirable job of looking through the contents of the phone and also suggesting Google searches. Home always brings you back to the home screen - and if you hold it, it will show you some (not always all) of your running apps.
That leads me into multitasking, which is often trumped up by Android fans as an advantage over the iPhone. Quite honestly, I'm not sure that's true as it is VERY poorly implemented. First off, I mentioned that you should be able to see all running apps just by pressing and holding Home. Unfortunately, that doesn't include widgets (which can suck up power like no one's business) and some tasks that simply don't report in. Most Android users will use a "Task Management" app and religiously kill off unneeded apps. And it's easy to accrue those unneeded apps because very seldom do apps close when you "back" out of them. And it's even more unusual to see a button that closes an app. Google claims that it's not necessary to worry about these things because the OS handles memory management so well. But then, it talks out of the other side of its mouth by saying that anyone who needs to recharge their phone within 24 hours of use is probably running 3rd party apps. You can't have it both ways - either you get used to killing off apps, or you charge your phone constantly.
All platforms have their nuisances, so I don’t want to leave you with the impression that all is bad with this phone. It takes some time to get used to and it’s particularly difficult to shift from the iPhone OS (which I had been accustomed to in using my iPod Touch) to Android with HTC Sense. It would help if things were better documented, but I am learning and have come to find the phone pretty easy to use after a few weeks of experimenting. I’m even getting the hang of the Mail client, which I initially hated.
As much as there are idiosyncrasies in the user interface, there are a few little neat touches that I do like. For example, I love how the phone reacts when you plug it into a Mac (or a PC for that matter). You can tell it to ‘charge only’, ‘connect to HTC Sync’ (for use with the Windows-based sync software, which I did not test), Disk drive (which mounts on-board and MicroSD storage as volumes on your Mac), and ‘Mobile Broadband Connect’ (for use with Verizon’s tethering plan). You can switch between these modes at any time using the status bar pull-down.