Android :: HTC Incredible S Review

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Let’s go through the specs: 4.0” 800x480 display, 1ghz second gen Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 processor, 768MB of RAM, 8MP camera with dual LED flash and 720P video capture along with a front facing 1.3MP camera.

The first thing that struck me when I opened up the Incredible S is it’s design language. Instead of being fairly smooth the back is partially raised in spots making the edges sleeker. It’s actually kind of retro in that the partially raised back reminds me of my old Pocket PC Phone (the XDA). In front the speaker grill and screen edges are both chromed.

There’s a LED on the right side of the speaker grill. The back and edges are covered by rubberized paint. I appreciate that HTC is trying something new but overall I’m not a fan of the new look.

The battery cover is very molded looking - I found the right side to be creaky already but besides that the Incredible is a solid phone.

The display is very nice. It’s really bright and crisp. The viewing angle is great up and down but just average when viewed from the side. My only complaint is that it’s too reflective for my taste.

Software wise you get Android 2.2.1 with HTC Sense on top of it.

While I think pure Android with no customizations needs a lot of work Sense is sort of the opposite in that I found it a bit overdone.

Here’s a random list of stuff I like about Sense: the recently run program list when you pull the window shade down, the mail client (not to be confused with the Gmail) has copy and paste (you normally need Android 2.3 to get this feature) plus it can also thread emails. The keyboard is excellent - if not the best one of the best stock keyboards for Android. Some of the widgets are quite nice too.

There is a nice universal search feature which searches everything from your phonebook to Facebook, to Google/Bing/Yahoo/Wikipedia.

What I don’t like is the launcher. Most Android phones have the 4 main buttons (home, menu, back search), but HTC clusters a main menu button, phone and customization button right above it. It’s a bit cluttered. I don’t like the HTC gallery, while I like that it has Facebook and Flickr integration along with DLNA support I prefer the stock Android 3D gallery. Luckily the stock Android 3G gallery is hidden on the phone (search the Android Marketplace for “3G Gallery”). While I liked the universal search feature are are 4 different search programs. The built in Google one, Quick Lookup, Search Anywhere and Search People. While Search Anywhere and Search People appear to be the same program it seems kind of bloated to have this many different searches in the program list.

I’d like to see HTC copy Samsung by allowing you to lock the screen orientation from the window shade. You can lock the screen orientation via a HTC widget but you have to access it from the home screen.

While I’m not crazy with how ‘heavy’ HTC Sense is I have to say that most of HTC’s customizations seem well thought out. It’s just that needs more focus; right now it’s a little bit all over the place.

As I mentioned before the Incredible has an excellent on screen keyboard. Most previous HTC Android phones had a trackball or some sort of navigation pad. The Incredible doesn’t. Instead the bottom of the keyboard has up/down/left/right buttons. While I don’t think the Incredible needs these keys I liked this a lot because they kept me from accidentally touching the menu buttons.

There’s a handy WiFi hotspot feature - most Android 2.2 and better phones have this. HTC’s differs in that it can handle up to 8 simultaneous users vs non HTC phones which are usually limited to 5. The Incredible supports up to 14.4mbps downlink speeds.

As far as crap ware goes the Incredible on Bell and Virgin Mobile Canada come with the following extra programs which you can’t remove using the Manage applications feature; GPS Navigation (actually a pretty good program), Bell Remote PVR (not everyone uses Bell for TV), Bell Self serve (useful unless you’re using it on another carrier), Bell TV & Radio, Tunes & Apps. I don’t mind that Bell includes these programs but you should have the option to remove them if you don’t want them. Then again I guess I could say the same about some of the extra stuff HTC includes. Other other thing that can’t be removed is Asphalt 5 demo (a racing game),

I didn’t find the camera that great. While it’s is better than some other HTC phones I’ve tried in the past it’s AF speed and shutter speeds are much too slow so that most pictures you take will be blurry. Video capture quality is also quite bad. The microphone isn’t very good, the video doesn’t look good and somehow the Incredible is hard to hold still.

Sound quality was average. I found outgoing sound quality to be shrill sounding. Incoming is better. Earlier I mentioned that the side of my Incredible creaked. I found that when I held the Incredible up to my ear my thumb would put pressure on the area where it creaked. That’s mildly annoying.

RF performance is good. I compared the Incredible with a Galaxy S side-by-side and found that the Galaxy S was slightly worse.

Overall the Incredible is a good phone. It’s pretty fast, out of the box it’s very capable and has a nice display. My only serious complaint is that the camera isn’t very good and the screen is a bit too reflective. Minor complaints include Sense being a bit too bloated, the creaking on the side (i’m guessing it’s unique to mine though I’m also guessing that most will creak after a while).