HTC Droid Incredible Review.

[Kaneman]

Yea, I know, I've been in every thread here talking about it, but its time to make my official review, as promised. This is a great "phone", but not without faults...as with any piece of electronics.

Lets just get this out of the way, the battery situation leaves much to be desired. If you're a power user who leaves the Wifi, GPS, and BT on, run a lot of programs, likes the screen bright and is constantly updating Weather, Email, etc. etc....then you're going to get 5 hours of battery max on a properly conditioned stock battery. Furthermore, the Incredible's battery problem being two-fold, once your phone is fully charged it stops using outlet power and begins working off the battery again. So, when you wake up in the morning it is necessary to disconnect and reconnect the charger to get back to 100% before you leave.

Its not a deal breaker for me. I use a car charger, plug it in when its being used as a media player at the house, and I do ok. I did order a larger 2150mah battery from Verizon which came in today and is on the charger. I also had to cut the back of my holster case out with a Dremel to fit the new battery/back. I expect to get 8-10 hours of laptop like use with the new battery, and I really like the added thickness.

Surfing the web is done at near laptop speeds, whether on Wifi or 3G, and in most cases it has replaced my laptop. Android 2.1 still can't handle all Flash, but will be upgraded for that soon enough. The phone's browser comes with auto-wrap for text, meaning no more left to right scrolling when you zoom in. This is nearly instantaneous and very useful. Mobile sites are no longer a necessity for mobile surfing.

I have over a thousand voice minutes used and not one single dropped call, as opposed to one or two daily from my iPhone. Sometimes I even hold it in the lower left corner, Audio is clear and crisp, no complaints there.

Email is a cinch. I've hear people complaining about not being able to sync their Yahoo! account, but I haven't had that problem. Google Voice integration is excellent, as is the turn-by-turn navigation. Re-routing is done in just a couple of seconds when you miss your turn, and works flawlessly when running other programs, like Pandora. Navigation volume and Media volume can be controlled separately so when you're jamming to Pandora in your car the navigation lady doesn't scream at you. In many ways, like voice control, the Incredible has an edge over actual Navigation systems.

Multi-tasking speed is so fast that you don't even think about it. Switching back and forth between programs is seamless and without stutter. The widgets are where its at. If you've got a smartphone, and you don't have widget capabilities, then that sucks for you because they're the shit. Hey, I bet you have to open a program or go to the internet to see a weather radar huh? Well, not me, got it right on my 7th screen.

Anyway,t hat's all I can really think of right now. Going to go look at the Droid X now...