HTC Droid Incredible PDA Phone Reviews

Are you going to buy a new cell phone? If so, just wait for a few weeks if you’ve decided to get Motorola Droid or Nexus One. On April 29th, HTC is going to launch its new Incredible. The new phone is called as HTC Droid Incredible and you can get it in Verizon Wireless. The price of this phone is $199 with a 2 year contract. Nothing can beat this HTC Droid Incredible Android phone.

The HTC Droid Eris is the second Verizon Wireless' Google Android phone after the Motorola Droid. Where the Droid was flashy and high-end, the Droid Eris offers a simpler, slimmer design that lacks a physical keyboard. You get the same Android features, but it all comes at bargain price. At $99 with service, the Droid Eris is the cheapest Android phone at the time of this writing.

Hardware

The Droid Incredible is going to have a tablet shape designed around a 3.7-inch WVGA (480 x 800) touchscreen. It will be an AMOLED display, the best type currently available, with colors that are more vivid and crisp than you'll find on an LCD.

The design is a good compromise between pocketability and large screen size. At half an inch thick, it's going to be thinner than many of its competitors.

To get this slender shape, there's no physical keyboard. Instead, you will enter text onscreen. In my preliminary testing on a pre-release unit, I found that this works fine in landscape mode, but the tiny keyboard in portrait mode is almost more of a hassle than it's worth.

Below the screen is an optical joystick. For me, this is only useful when writing text, since I can position the cursor with very fine precision. For most other tasks, tapping the screen with my finger was easier and faster.


Software

The Droid Incredible is going to run Google's Android OS 2.1 on a 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon, one of the fastest smartphone processors available. There's no doubt this model has outstanding performance. I put it head-to-head with my Motorola Droid, and the Incredible was consistently faster.

Layered on top of Google's user interface is HTC Sense, which extends the standard UI with additional features, like more buttons and widgets. Possibly my favorite widget is the one for email, which makes it easy to quickly skim through your latest messages to do a bit of triage.

Thanks to the Android OS, this HTC model is going to include a highly-capable web browser, possibly the best available on any smartphone.

The Droid Incredible will offer a balance of productivity and entertainment software. Business users may be happy to read that it will be able to synchronize email, calendar and contacts with Microsoft Exchange Server, and come with a viewer for Microsoft Office files.

In addition, it allows you to synchronize messages and personal data with Google's services, comes with music and video players, and supports Flickr to share and view photos.

If the built-in apps aren't enough, the Android Market offers more than 30,000 third-party applications in categories ranging from games to productivity.

Other High-End Hardware

The Droid Incredible is going be Verizon's first with an 8 megapixel camera that will offer auto-focus and dual LED flash.

I tested the GPS receiver and Google Navigation, and it works well; it quickly locked in on the satellites, Google's app was its usual excellent self, and the device's internal speaker was loud enough that I could hear the turn-by-turn directions in my convertible.

Verizon's 3G mobile broadband network is going to be a boon to this device, and it's going to sport Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.

In addition, the Droid Incredible is also is going to have 8 GB of internal storage and a microSD memory card slot.

Technical Specifications

Operating System	Google Android (Cupcake) Version 1.5
Processor	Qualcomm® MSM7600™, 528MHz
Internal Memory	512MB ROM / 288MB RAM
Display	3.2-inch 320 x 480 HVGA Resolution Capacitive Touch Screen
Technology	CDMA: Dual-band 800/1900MHz, CDMA2000 1xRTT/1xEVDO rev. A
Email	Support for Office Outlook Mobile® and Microsoft Exchange® with Direct Push
Dimensions	4.45” (L) x 2.19” (W) x .51” (T)
Weight	4.23 ounces
Battery	1300 mAh Li-on Talk time: 214 min Standby: 373 hrs (The above are subject to network and phone usage)
Speakerphone	Mono (15*11*3.5 mm)
Built-in Camera	5.0 MP w/ Auto Focus
Audio/Video	MIDI, M4A, QCP, AMR, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, WAV, WMA, MP3, EVRC-B MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV
I/O Interface	Bluetooth® 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for stereo wireless headsets, WiFi®: IEEE 802.11b/g
Expansion	microSD™ memory card slot
Device Navigation	Ultra slim bar type phone with capacitive touch display, end/power button, send, home, menu, back/clear button, search, volume keys, TrackBall
Antenna	Internal antenna
In-Box Content	Phone, 8GB SD Card, Standard Battery (1300mAh), A/C Charger, USB Cable, Quick Start Guide (link to UM), Safety Brochure, Warranty Card

Pricing and Availability

Verizon Wireless is going to launch the HTC Droid Incredible April 29. It will cost $200 after a $100 mail-in rebate with a new two-year customer agreement.

Customers will need to subscribe to both a voice and data plan. Nationwide Talk plans start at $39.99 a month, while Email and Web for Smartphone plans start at $29.99 for unlimited monthly access.

Strengths: This phone is fast, powerful and full of features. I have only had it lock up once with a app that other people reported problems with. HTC has one of the best touch screens available. The Android operating system with the power of Google is the best I have used. You wont have to spend extra for Verizon navigator when it is upgraded to 2.0.

Weaknesses: The battery, is small and week, it needs an upgrade. The audio is good but we need an equalizer. There are very few phone specific accessories for this phone to date; I hope this will change with time. We are all waiting for the upgrade to 2.0. This phone needs sensitivity controls like its big brother. The after market will probably address most of these issues I have listed.

Conclusion
This phone is so much more user-friendly and feature-filled than I could have ever imagined. While its multimedia features fall a tad short, everything else is top-notch. Keep in mind that if you are not a power-user, this phone is perfect. Get the Droid if you must have the whiz-bang techno-flash and the "look-what-I-have" appeal of a near-PC phone (and that's perfectly fine). For the rest of you, the Eris will fulfill everything you need in a smart phone. Now if HTC can do something about that inadequately short battery life! Just make sure you have a home/car charger nearby just in case. But don't let that be a factor in purchasing this phone. This phone is nothing short of brilliant for the price.