HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE Review: One Alternative
by Jason Inofuentes on July 13, 2012 9:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Droid
- Mobile
There’s nothing that gets the tech press, us included, frothing at the mouth as a top-of-the-line consumer electronics device being announced in some grand spectacular way. If there’s any moments gestalt to us it’s in that instant when the pinnacle of a category is revealed and we all gawk, and fawn. So, with so many column inches devoted to the halos, is there any space for the mid-range? Not just in the pages of tech websites, but in the US cellular market? Or should the mid-range belong to the halos of the past? Whether tailor made for the mid-range or a former champ reduced to the second rung, it still seems risky to spend $149 on second best, when $199 will get you the rest of the way. But with the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE nipping at the internal specs of so many class-leading phones, why does it come in $50 cheaper? Could smaller simply be a better bargain? A real value product?
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Unfortunately, that’s not quite what you get out of the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE. I can forgive the diminished clock speed, the real world impact is negligible and is really only evident in benchmarks. But in their desire to bring bill of materials costs down we’re left with a phone that costs only slightly less than phones that take no compromises. The camera is very good, but not nearly so as the One X camera. The body feels sturdy, but belongs to a design language that felt dated last year. And while we have our concerns that signal may be playing an issue in our battery life testing, there’s a reality that has to be faced that the phone should be outperforming these results. The only standard by which HTC has been able to be uncompromising, is in their choice of display panel; it is bright and vivid from any angle, and suffers not a whit for its resolution.
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There’s no doubt that carriers and OEMs can collaborate to create innovation. Verizon's Motorola Droid brought the landscape sliding QWERTY keyboard to the masses while advancing Android handset design and giving Android a marketing identity that resounded with consumers. The HTC One X and One S move Android handset design forward by being thin, elegant, and sturdy and feature top-notch internals; they’re an easy recommendation to anyone looking to buy an Android handset today. So, it’s a shame that Verizon Wireless isn’t featuring either of these handsets in their line-up. HTC’s Droid Incredible 4G LTE has a fantastic screen and a powerful processor, but is otherwise compromised in too many ways. At $149, you’re only 10 days without your latte away from something better. Then again, perhaps this phone is destined for even lower priced bins. Perhaps, Verizon has a phone that trumps even the just released VZW Samsung Galaxy S III. Perhaps the GS III is the mid-range phone you'll want in a few months, as another 'halo' phone arrives. We'll wait and see. In the meanwhile, save your pennies.
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aNYthing24 - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
The One S has a Super AMOLED display, not a Super LCD.Omega215D - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Kind of strange how battery life differs from other reviews. So far only a couple have said subpar life while more have gotten good to very good usage time. Could it be a problem with the phone itself? Well, it's nice to know my Rezound isn't too bad but I do like the designs of both the Incredible and Rezound.pikahatonjon - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
what is with the differences with the EVO 4G LTE & the Htc One X (att) in the contrast test.also, is the Tmobile Galaxy S 3 actually brighter than the At&t galaxy s 3. arent the 4 phones listed above pretty much identical to each other( one series & galaxy s series) what is with the huge diference in the brightness/contrast test
Rockmandash12 - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
The One X has a Super LCD 2 display, not a TFT display.JimmiG - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
How many more years until Android phones can match the iPhone 4S in terms of 3G web browsing battery life?The Nexus One got 3.77 hours back in 2010 vs 4.5 hours for the iPhone 3G. Fast forward to 2012, and the iPhone 4S has more than doubled the battery life to 9.85 hours, while most Android devices have just barely caught up with the iPhone 3G.
Clearly Apple uses the same batteries as everyone else, so it must come down to incredibly lazy programming and poor power use optimization on the Android side. Some OEMs have apparently taken it in their own hands to optimize battery usage (Samsung, HTC), but this should really be something provided by the core Android OS. Battery life should be the main focus on for the next version of Android!
zorxd - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
The iPhone has a small display. It consume a lot less. AMOLED displays are also not very efficient for displaying white backgrounds found on many web sites.Android's battery life isn't bad. Just look at the cellular talk time.
lunarx3dfx - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
What zorx said. You can't compare the iPhone and most Android phones Apples to Apples because of design differences. I'd be willing to bet money that if you had identical devices, the only difference being that one has an A5 and one has an S4, the S4 would wipe the floor with the A5 in every category except for maybe GPU performance.Not only is the S4 almost certainly more energy efficient due to be being a newer architecture, but it will also smoke it in terms of performance per watt.
A5= Dual Cortex A9's @ 800 MHz
S4= Dual Krait Snapdragons @ 1.5 GHz
On top of clock speed Krait is the ONLY ARM based CPU on the market with out of order execution which is why it is faster than Quad Core CPU's (Exynos 4 and Tegra 3).
Jimmi, I would recommend that you learn a bit about how all of this works before you comment again. The iPhone is a good device (although you couldn't pay me to use one), but in terms of theoretical performance it was out-dated before it was ever even announced.
Phasenoise - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
He indicated, as the article states, that the iphone has superior 3g web browsing battery life.So, for him, perhaps picking display or CPU technologies which consume more power is a poor trade off. He doesn't appear to be interested in theoretical performance, just actual real world browsing usage which as we know is generally not Incredibly taxing (pun intended).
lunarx3dfx - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
The reason I brought up performance, was to illustrate my point that Apple doesn't necessarily make a more efficient product as much as they use low power components. I'll admit that I did get a little lost in my own argument. Oops.JimmiG - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
We will see when the next iPhone comes out with a much bigger display and higher clock speeds but still better battery life. The same thing can be seen with Windows vs OSX on laptops with similar specs - Apple simply spends more time optimizing the software side of their mobile devices.It's not limited to just AMOLED displays, and secondly, the CPU should not spend a lot of time at the highest clockspeed and voltage when you're browsing, especially with 3G which should be bandwidth limited. Unless of course the system is poorly optimized.
I'm an Android user myself, and battery life is the Achilles heel of the system. At the end of the day, my Optimus 2X is down to ~15% of battery while coworkers' iPhones last for two days without charging. It was the same with the Nexus One before that.
Just like the unresponsive and choppy user interface, it's important to realize when there's a problem that needs to be fixed.