Droid Incredible Cell Phone Review

Keypad, Android & Sense OS

Unlike the Droid, the Incredible has no physical keyboard. Instead it relies on the on-screen keypad, which is shown in horizontal position in Figure 9. The keypad has haptic feedback which we found useful, but which can be turned off for those who don’t happen to be haptic fans.

Figure 9: The on-screen keypad.

The Incredible uses HTC’s on screen keypad which we found easier to use than the Android keypad. We found it to be the easiest on-screen keypad we have ever used. Whether thumb typing or hunt-and-pecking, the slightly wider keys made it easy to use. We even found it easier to use than the on-screen keypad on the iPhone. However, if you don’t happen to be that good with the keypad, the Incredible also offers a useful predictive text feature that gives you 3-4 other ideas for words that you may have been trying to type.

As with other touch-screen smart phones, the screen is a magnet for fingerprints and smudges. So be sure you have a cleaning cloth handy.

The Incredible uses Android 2.1 operating system which features voice recognition, Google navigation maps, and live wallpaper. All of these features are wonderful.

The voice recognition on this phone is excellent. You can simply hit the search button, then touch the microphone and speak in what you want to search for. The results appear quickly. Similarly, but even better, is being able to use your voice to create text in applications like the Incredible’s email. You simply touch the microphone and speak what you want to type. Your words are immediately translated into text. It works quite well in our testing. You can insert punctuation by simply saying the word “period” or “comma.” If the Droid doesn’t translate your words properly, you can simply hit the spacebar to erase what was typed and start over again.

Google navigation gives excellent turn-by-turn instructions. The live wallpaper is a little gimmicky, but still works well. It can show you the sky changing with the time of day and clouds floating by on a cloudy day in your location.

Besides the Android operating system, the Incredible makes use of the HTC Sense interface. Sense is like an overlay that HTC puts on top of the Android operating system. It tends to make the Android OS more user-friendly. For instance, Sense lets you have four additional home screens for a total of seven, instead of Android’s three home screens. A leap screen, which shows you a thumbnail view of all your home screens, lets you easily switch between screens without having to scroll through each one. “Friend Stream” aggregates news feeds from Twitter, Facebook and other social networking sites. Sense also adds a useful tabbed interface along the bottom of the email, contacts, and calendar windows. It even makes the media player more attractive.

Verizon and HTC have already announced that the Incredible will be updated to Android 2.2 Froyo, when it is available. This will add even more useful features.