Let me preface this review with a disclaimer. I am not a geek. Nor am I a nerd, a techie, or a professional anything. I like my phones to make calls, and occasionally receive them (except when my mother is calling, but that’s another story.) I’m not fussy about connection, the concept of 3G and 4G and the bizarre conglomeration of letters and numbers that some companies use to describe their network – it all means nothing to me. So when my husband handed me the Verizon HTC Droid Incredible and said, “Here, play with this a little and tell me what you think” I rolled my eyes and sighed. Another gadget invading my happy home.
You see, I’ve traditionally been anti-Smartphone, almost to the point of belligerence. My (admittedly antiquated) notion was that a phone should be a phone, not a laptop or a PDA or any other overly-technical device. But after spending a day or two playing with the Incredible, I started to understand. When the little chirp alerted me to the arrival of a new email I had been waiting for, I began to appreciate the functionality. I was reading Tweets from friends while traveling down the freeway at speed (in the passenger seat, of course – never play with a Smartphone while driving, folks. Bad things can happen.)
I’m sure I’m preaching to an overly-technical choir here, though, and my Smartphone Epiphany is probably laughable to those of you who converted to the faith years ago. So I’ll get right down to the facts of the phone and let you snicker at my ignorance under your breath.
The Incredible isn’t the first Smartphone I’ve played with. My husband, being who he is, has paraded a plethora of devices under my nose in our years together. Android is another word for joy in this house, and because of him I’m no stranger to the various shapes and styles and features available in the market today. The Incredible, compared to the T-mobile G1 that was just retired from use this month (another story that I’ll get to in a bit) is a sexy little device, slender and supermodel gorgeous. It’s the Porsche Carrera GT to the G1’s Mustang. Both perform beautifully, but the G1 is just a little chunkier, a little meatier and not quite as racecar sleek. The Incredible streaks down the road while the G1 lumbers a bit.
The Incredible’s screen resolution and graphics are just as pretty as the outside, and while I’d love to delve into the technical specs of the device, I’ll leave that to the pros. I like the wallpapers. And the sound quality that comes from the tiny little speaker. It has a lot of features that I hadn’t really explored in-depth before. I love the pinch-zoom feature, which Rick calls “Multi Touch” – whatever, it’s handy and I like it. It scrolls smoothly and the little tiny knobby thing (I’m told this is called an Optical Joystick…ok, sure) is very responsive and sensitive. I tend to fat-finger everything I touch on a Smartphone, but I didn’t have any trouble adapting to the interface on the Incredible, which is – to risk having tomatoes thrown at me – incredible.
The Incredible isn’t all wine and roses, though. The biggest complaint, and this is a big one for someone as particular as I am, is “The Creak.” The case makes a strange little creaky-groaning noise when you hold it, and it can be a bit disruptive during a call when your phone sounds like you’re holding a demented bullfrog up to your ear. Now, I’m not sure how many hands were on this model before I got it, so it’s possible that the wear and tear of many folks putting it through its paces has taken its toll on the phone, but still, I’d expect a bit more sturdiness in a device of this caliber (and expense.) If it were my phone, I’d be disappointed.
The other issue that I have is with the volume buttons on the side of the phone. They are hypersensitive, and I have more than once accidentally either almost muted the call or deafened myself (especially in calls with the aforementioned mother…) so care needs to be taken not to hold the phone with your thumb on the buttons.
Other than that, I’ve been tickled pink with the performance. Battery life is outstanding – even where we live in the boonies, where signal is weak and the phone has to struggle to find it sometimes – the battery would consistently last well over a day, where the G1 and the Nexus One both require charging on a daily basis. And that brings me to the comparison that I’ve been building toward: How does the Incredible stack up against its sister phone, the Nexus One? Yes, we have one, and I had a few minutes to sit down and compare the devices side by side.
The Nexus One is a gorgeous little bundle of happy, and I was impressed enough with it when I finally saw it that I was half tempted to purchase one for myself. The Incredible carries the same sense of “whoa!” and while its body lines are slightly different, it’s difficult to pick one over the other regarding the overall sexiness of the phone. They perform equally magnificently, at least for a greenhorn like me, and aside from the battery life there are virtually no differences between the phones in performance. Both phones have done amazing things with the technology, and have gone a long way toward changing my view of Smartphones.
Ultimately, the decision between the Incredible and the Nexus come down to personal taste and, of course, provider. Would I drop our provider to get an Incredible? Probably not, since I’ve got access to the Nexus with ours. But if I had to choose which phone to buy and I had no network loyalties, it would be a very difficult decision indeed.
Signed,
A Reformed Smartphone-phobe.
