HTC Droid Incredible for Verizon - Anyone else getting one?

[Tomeeboy]

I don't know about you other Verizon Wireless customers, but I've been waiting for them to get a decent smart phone for a while now. I've been using an antiquated Treo 755p for what seems like an eternity.

When the Motorola Droid came along, I was really tempted to bite on that, but decided to wait for something better. I had hoped to get a Google Nexus One, but Verizon and Google fumbled that whole release so badly that it's not even going to happen now (Google is now telling people to buy the Incredible if they were waiting for the Verizon Nexus One).

The reviewers all seem to agree that the HTC Droid Incredible is one of best (if not the best) Android phone currently on the market. While I've engaged in a couple of debates already with people holding out for a Verizon iPhone, the flexibility and power of the Android OS are far more appealing to me than having a bazillion useless apps to choose from :)

So, anyone else ordering one of these, or planning on ordering one? FedEx should be dropping mine off today sometime and it can't get here soon enough.

It's also worth noting that Amazon has a real nice deal going on right now for the Verizon HTC Incredible, pricing it at $99 (50% off!) with new service activation:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B003HC8NUW/ref=nosim/717-20

[W0LB0T]

Nope.

[Volcompat321]

If I had Verizon, I'd say hell yes!
But, unfortunately I have T-Mobile. :/
(been with them since about 1998 or so, when they were Voice-Stream!)

I do need another phone, cause I am able to get picture messages through my plan, but I cant because I have a crappy phone.
I broke my nice phone :( so I had to buy a crappy one.

A friend of mine just got the Palm thing for Sprint(I think it's Sprint), and that thing's pretty cool.
I've never had a smart phone, just nice phones.

[Delete]

I've got me a Droid and I'm loving that enough to not care about anything new. I mean, I can take awesome pictures, go on youtube, Google anything, play NES,SNES, and SEGA Roms to name a few, download a handful of useful apps for free including one that let's me get any music I can think of for free, watch movies (although kinda limited), and then there's all the little things like Myspace,Facebook, Netflix and so forth. Droid has it all. I am curious as to what a new droid would have to offer that mines doesn't ;)

[Tomeeboy]

I've had a chance to play around with my HTC Incredible today and I like it pretty well so far. It's going to take a little time to get used to a new OS (I've been using Palm OS phones exclusively for nearly 7 years).

As for the comparison between the HTC Droid Incredible and the Motorola Droid, the newer one has some notable upgrades, including a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, more memory, 8 MP camera, HTC's Sense UI, unlimited multi-touch recognition, and some other features. It's pretty fast and responsive. It's also much thinner and lighter than the Motorola Droid, as it lacks the physical keyboard. Personally, I prefer a physical keyboard to the virtual one, but I did not like the one on the Motorola Droid. My favorite is still the keyboard on my Treo.

Also, Volcompat, you could get a Nexus One with T-Mobile, which is pretty close to the same thing as the Droid Incredible. It all kind of depends on what you want to use the phone for and how much you want your monthly phone bill to be. Many of the newer smart phones require some type of data package in addition to your standard calling plans, which can make the monthly cost quite unattractive. Of course, most of these phones also support WiFi connections, so that's one way to get around having to purchase a data plan (assuming the carrier will let you).

[Palle]

I'm a Verizon customer, and I'm due for an upgrade in the Autumn, but I'd likely find it hard to live without a BlackBerry. I'll have to see how the market looks at that time, but the preliminary plan is to go with the 9550, and I'm thinking that OS 6 will also play a part in the decision.

I'm curious to hear about your experience, though.

[TheChronic]

I'm on sprint and I use a Samsung Moment (Android OS). Android is awesome, I'm glad I got this phone over an iphone. I don't know much about the HTC phones on verizon, but the ones at Sprint don't. Have a keyboard. Not having a physical keyboard would suck.

[reuxx]

I've gone through android // windows mobile // blackberry // symbian // iPhone and of all of them symbian is my favorite. Android is great don't get me wrong and HTC makes some solid phones. The only issue is that the phone has to have pretty high end specs for it to run well. i.e. not a G1.

[Delete]

As for the comparison between the HTC Droid Incredible and the Motorola Droid, the newer one has some notable upgrades, including a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, more memory, 8 MP camera, HTC's Sense UI, unlimited multi-touch recognition, and some other features. It's pretty fast and responsive. It's also much thinner and lighter than the Motorola Droid, as it lacks the physical keyboard. Personally, I prefer a physical keyboard to the virtual one, but I did not like the one on the Motorola Droid. My favorite is still the keyboard on my Treo.



Sounds interesting. But even so, I think I'll stick with my Droid til they make a phone that makes money :D

[Tomeeboy]

I've had my Incredible for almost 24 hours now and I'm pretty happy with it so far. The phone is blazing fast and has been able to handle everything I've thrown at it. I've downloaded and installed about 20 or so apps on the phone and have set up all of the social networking features, as well as things like Pandora/Last.fm, gmail & IMAP email for work, etc. HTC's Sense UI really makes the Android OS a lot more visually appealing and easy to use.

The main thing I'm having a hard time with is getting used to the virtual keyboard... it's much slower to use than the physical keyboard on my Treo (especially when it comes to inputting certain punctuation marks and even numbers). I imagine this will get better over time. The Incredible is supposed to have better virtual keyboard accuracy (primarily due to the quality and sensitivity of its touch screen, which is amazing by the way), meaning less typos compared to other phones with virtual keyboards. Apparently, SenseUI's keyboard is a little more user friendly as well, though I haven't had enough experience with other phones to be able to confirm that. I will say that I'm far more accurate on the Incredible than I was on the Motorola Droid last time I had a chance to use one. The phone also has built-in voice recognition that allows you to simply speak into the phone and have your words turned into text. You can do this anywhere the virtual keyboard is used, and it's actually quite accurate. It feels a little odd speaking out a text message, but it's a lot better than trying to type while you're driving :D

The only other "issue" I can say I've had is with the battery life. Watching the battery drain on this thing brings me back to the days when laptops first came out. I feel like I should have it plugged into an AC adapter when I'm using it. I downloaded an "App Killer" application to kill programs that are in the memory but not being used. It seems to be a little better now. I'm guessing that this phone will be a prime candidate for an aftermarket battery upgrade, so I'll be keeping an eye out for that.

[watashiwa]

I picked one up last weekend.

Installed the apps I wanted, configured the looks and feel how I like it, and so on. It's a wonderful and, yes, fast phone.

I only have one complaint with it and that's the horrible battery life.

After removing some things from start up, removing a few of the HTC widgets, adding the power control widget, adding the mobile network widget, plus some other tweaks, I've got battery life OK now. Certainly won't last very long if you really push the phone... but let's just say I went from going to 85% to 4% in about 7 hours (while sleeping) to only losing about 10-15% overnight now.

I charged my phone to 100% yesterday at about 10pm, went to sleep around 11:30pm, it's now 2:36pm now and I've got about 20% battery left. (Edit: Darn, I thought it was 30% 'cuz I just checked about an hour ago, but now it's in the 20s.. Looks like some people will have to charge this twice a day.)

It's nothing stellar, but adequate. I'm patiently awaiting the official extended 2150 mah battery coming later this month. (Hopefully it's coming this month anyway...) Going from 1300 mah to a 2150 mah should definitely solve my issue.

Just FYI, the top things that drain battery life on this phone are:

1. Mobile Network (this kills the battery the most... but you usually need to leave it on unless you're at home, in which you can leave Wi-Fi on and mobile off, however Wi-Fi will cut off some time after the display goes to sleep... not sure the exact amount of time, but I think it's within an hour or so... A happy medium is to uncheck the "Always on mobile network" option, but this will slow down your push notifications for gmail and things from instant to about 15 minutes instead... though some people report they don't get their new mail until they activate the display from sleep... I just leave the always on mobile network on anyway... I can't live without instant notifications...)
2. Location service (Turn this OFF if you're not using any location programs... this also zaps battery like a mofo)
3. Bluetooth (I keep this off since I don't have a bluetooth headset or really any use for bluetooth right now, you could turn it off and on as you make calls, but that's entirely up to you...)
4. Some of the HTC widgets have been pointed at for draining the battery life, the Weather app in particular, but that's probably because it needs the location service on to work properly. (I've pretty much removed all HTC widgets from my home screens with the exception of Favorites, FriendStream, configured to sync every 2 hours, Calendar, and Bookmarks...)

There were more things I picked up on, mostly from this thread here: http://androidforums.com/tips-tricks-incredible/61755-want-incredible-battery-life-official-htc-incredible-battery-thread.html

I also turned off Haptic Feedback...

[joefro]

I wish I could get one, but I'm locked in with AT&T for another year. I just convinced my brother to get the Incredible over the Moto Droid, Nexus One and iPhone 3GS. I don't have lots of experience with the Moto Droid or the Nexus One but I've been an iPhone owner since the original one. I don't recommend them to anyone. Go with Android. The HTC Droid Incredible is really incredible. :)

[Tomeeboy]

Heh, it sounds like you, me, and everyone else with an Incredible are doing the same little battery life dance Wata :)

Things I've done so far to increase the battery life include:


Disabled "Always-on mobile data" under the Mobile Network settings (different setting than disabling Mobile Network).
Turned off the keyboard options for vibration, word suggestion, and spellcheck. I like typing on the phone 100% better after doing this, as those features were limiting how fast I could type and were also creating more typos than they were fixing!
Installed "Advanced Task Killer", which I use to kill apps that are running in the background that shouldn't be.
Lowered the brightness almost as low as it will go when I'm indoors (have to raise it back up when outside).
Diabled Wifi, GPS, and Bluetooth.


After doing these things, I can still only get about 16-20 hours out of the battery, and that's counting time when I'm asleep... hehe. Doing any kind of task seems to eat away 3-5% of the battery almost instantly. For example, my girlfriend just grabbed my phone to identify a song on the radio with Shazam (amazing app, by the way) and it used up 4% of the battery in about 1 minute.

I'm not really sure why they didn't include a better battery from the factory... Kind of a cheap and lazy way to launch what is probably the best smart phone on the market right now. From what I understand, it's the same battery that's in the HTC Droid Eris, so I guess they probably thought this would cut down on production costs.

I'll definitely be picking up an upgraded battery for it at some point. There's a 1750 mAH out from Seidio right now, but I'm holding out for something bigger (like the 3500 mAH they are supposedly releasing, even though that will most definitely require a new back for the phone).

[Volcompat321]

Mannnn, I want a fancy phone like this!

T-Mobile owes me like 5 years worth of upgrades too, cause I never took them.
(doubt that means anything to them though)
I've always just went online and bought my phones myself.
(Sidekick3, Tony Hawk Sidekick!(lol), Iphone.. and a few others).

But since I've been poor, and I broke my fancy phone, I bought a $20 Walmart phone!
I miss money!

[watashiwa]

For kicks, screenshots of my home screens! :P

http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid1.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid2.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid3.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid4.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid5.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid6.png
http://www.vengefulsoda.com/droid7.png