My HTC Droid Incredible: 6 Things I Absolutely Love
You’ve heard more about the HTC Evo than you would ever have cared to, so we’re switching gears to discuss the HTC Droid Incredible. You might have trouble getting your paws on it, since the damn thing is back-ordered across America forever (just like Verizon’s Droid X will be, after its launch yesterday). But luckily, Sarah (our lovely Editor and recent Android convert) shoved a little old lady out of line to get her hands on the Incredible. And we’re glad she did! No regrets. Here are her impressions.
A month ago, I had a cute little slider phone from Sony Ericsson — a “dumb” phone, if you will. While it was awesome in that it survived THREE complete dunkings in various liquids, the features were obviously lacking. It had a one megapixel camera and could barely load the simplest of webpages. Obvs, the leap to a smartphone was a big one for me. It took me so long to make that jump because I also have a two-year-old iPod Touch, which satisfied my desire for an iPhone long enough for me to realize that what I really wanted was an Android phone.
And now that I have the Incredible, I couldn’t be happier about my choice. I never thought I would hear myself say “Thank god I didn’t get an iPhone,” but here we are. Without further exposition, here are my top 6 reasons why I f*cking love my HTC Incredible.
1. Google Integration
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You know what’s fun? Gchatting while walking down the street. Yep, I am that asshole now. What was life like before? Bleak, probably. I realize that all Android phones — not just the Incredible — unleash the full, unbridled power of Google. Howevs, the native Google apps for almost every service make me so happy that I’m gonna talk about it anyway.
The calendar syncs with my Gcal, the phone book syncs with Google contacts (including everyone’s Gchat icons), and my email syncs seamlessly to my phone — no fiddling with forwarding or POP codes.
I’ve been a hardcore Apple geek for years now — just try and pry my Macbook from my hands & see what happens — but I have to say, I really like my life when Google runs it. Everything just WORKS. I kind of hope Google takes over the world so that I can stop having different login info on every site on the Internet. (more…)
6 Things I Loathe About My New HTC EVO
Okay, ‘loathe’ might be a strong word, but these things bug me. Yes, I absolutely love my HTC EVO and can’t imagine life without Android, a 4.3″ screen and a kickstand (yeah, I’m that asshole). But no device is perfect (and that includes the iPhone 4, fanbois and girls!). Android is so customizable that almost any minor complaint I’ve come across can be tweaked easily with a widget, but here’s a few annoyances about my HTC EVO that still plague me. They’re a bit different than the standard complaints about the device that I’ve run across, but deviant’s just how we roll.
1. Dearth of Android accessories
I took this for granted with the iPhone. If my iPhone 3G wanted to get gussied up and pick out a pretty new outfit for the cotillion, it had no problem. I could find a new iPhone case to suit my mood in a heartbeat. But with Android devices, the market for any given phone changes so rapidly that it’s hard for case manufacturers to keep up (or want to).
I tend to prefer a very thin, sleek case that adds a bit of color, so my iPhone usually sported a super-svelte Incipio Feather case. I absolutely LOVE the Feather line (though Incipio’s other options are way better if you like your device heavily armored). Apparently, Incipio is working on the Feather case for the EVO, and if that little rumor pans out, I’ll weep tears of brightly colored joy.
DIY Fix: This adorable actually DIY case you can find on Etsy that supports a cool lady-run Android site. They’ll fit any device– just specify when you order it! Mine’s charcoal grey and classic Android green.
2. No landscape homescreen
With a 4.3″ screen, it seems natural to want to use the phone in landscape mode most of the time, like the massive Dell Streak. Especially because I like to pretend the EVO is more of a tablet than a phone, which it arguably is.
DIY Fix: Cock your head. Lay horizontally.
HTC Evo 4G: From the iPhone Into Android’s Warm Embrace
To the delight of Android-lovers and spurned iPhone users everywhere, Sprint stores nationwide unleashed the HTC Evo 4G on the masses yesterday. And while there are about 100,000 things to marvel about in the HTC Evo 4G so far, I’ll try to pare down on decimal places and tackle my awe bit by bit. If you’re late to the game (that’s fine), catch up on the Evo basics, and see how the Evo will potentially stack up against the next-gen iPhone, which we’ll get introduced to on Monday at Apple’s WWDC 2010, presumably by a man in a black turtleneck.
Defying my current state of bedridden flu-induced misery, I crawled out of my viral den for just as long as it took to make my Evo pre-order appointment with Sprint yesterday. That said, I’m gonna prattle on about my first impressions of the phone for as long as I can manage before keeling over into the horrible twilight sleep of my illness and listlessly stare at my Evo’s 4.3″ screen for hours, swapping wallpapers when I can muster the strength.
1. Android + Sense
First off, after using an iPhone 3G for as long as I canremember, Android is absolutely blowing my mind wide open. Seriously, I feel like someone just let me out of some kind of closed-off police state or something.
For now, as an Android newcomer, I’m extremely distracted by the mobile OS in the best way possible. The HTC Evo runs Android 2.1 (code name: Eclair), and though 2.2 (Froyo) is out of the gate, the Evo likely won’t be seeing Google’s newest version for a little while yet as the Evo’s version of Android is skinned in HTC’s Sense. I’m totally loving Sense (it’s so shiny!) but it gets in the way on the kind of insta-updates that the Nexus One gets. But yeah, like I said, I’ve been using a non-jailbroken iPhone sine approximately the beginning of time, so I’m awash in customization right now. It’s amazing. If you haven’t had your senses numbed by the extremely rigid iPhone OS (you know, the black backdrop with little rounded squares all over it), this might not strike you in the same way.
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The HTC Evo 4G vs. the iPhone 4G: The Next Generation
Yes, I’ve been singing the (possibly premature) praises of Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G, as has most of the internet. I’m thrilled about the Evo 4G. I want it, and I will have it by whatever means necessary. (Happily that just means, like, buying it, and not hand-to-hand combat or a show of wits or anything.) But how did I arrive at this zen-like state of dawning mobile bliss? And how long can I really resist the iPhone 4G’s siren song?
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After recently growing resentful of my aging iPhone 3G, I realized two things:
1) I wanted to try out an Android phone (maybe the adorable little green R2D2 finally got to me?).
2) I wanted an HTC phone.
I love the look of my iPhone, but HTC might be the manufacturer able to pry that sleek little black chassis out of my iron grip. The mobile market suddenly seemed full of possibility! It was high time to give Android & HTC a possibly-two-year, contractually-obligated spin.
Google's Nexus One
Google’s Nexus One (here on Amazon) began to court me almost immediately. I was drawn to support the no-contract model that Google managed to wedge into a very flawed and very stubborn mobile industry. This resonated with me. I could stick it to the proverbial man.
But soon, this ideological harmony between the Nexus One and I wore thin — there was little else to sustain me that I couldn’t find on another phone. It wasn’t long before I turned away from the high-res gaze of the its illustrious AMOLED and delightful Googliness to properly scope out my other HTC/Android suitors. To play the field, if you will.
The Droid Incredible
On the rebound, I instantly fell for the Droid Incredible (here on Amazon). It boasted the finest specs of any phone fitting my two fixed criteria (Android/HTC) on the market. And it one-upped the Nexus One by offering HTC Sense, the manufacturer’s much-lauded custom version of Google’s mobile OS. And an 8MP camera! I use my phone’s camera almost constantly, so this is a make-or-break factor for me. And like the Nexus One, the Incredible offered a 1 Ghz Snapdragon processor paired with HTC’s good looks and Google’s brains! At the time (a few weeks ago), it had yet to hit the market. If I could have rushed to a Verizon store in a fit of mobile lust, I would have bought the Droid Incredible on the spot, in spite of its really, really clunky name. But fate took its course: my would-be impulse buy had time to ripen, and my eye started to wander.
That’s when Sprint’s HTC Evo 4G appeared. Oh to have that thing of glorious 4G legend! I pored over the Evo’s tech specs. We had so much in common. And I wasn’t rushing in this time — I’d have more than a month to consider my most impressive mobile-suitor yet, as it wouldn’t hit stores until June.
The Evo 4G
So now comes the tricky part. Waiting for the Evo 4G to materialize, I have to steel myself. The tiny Apple propaganda factory nestled in some obscure, likely patented recess of my brain caught wind of this. Usually it lays dormant, sated by the obscene preponderance of Apple-branded technology strewn about me at any given time. But the looming threat of the Evo 4G has roused it. The slumbering Jobsian beast has awoken.
Given the Evo 4G’s June release and the iPhone 4G’s likely “summer” release, I will set aside some recent rumblings of smartphone greatness to come later in the year. According to Engadget, the impressive Dell Thunder “will be sold in AT&T and world-friendly HSDPA versions around Q4 of this year, with an LTE model to follow near the end of 2011.” Q4 looks to be a different playing field altogether, but the summer mobile showdown has two clear contestants: the HTC Evo 4G and the iPhone 4G. And by god, I want a phone now. Or like, super soon. ASAP, really.
And while we know most of the facts about the Evo 4G, the newest iPhone remains mostly a mystery. Gizmodo tore their recently acquired prototype limb from limb, but there’s still quite a lot we don’t know about the iPhone 4G. We don’t know it’s called the 4G, for one thing — it may very well be called the iPhone HD, but we’ll say 4G, in reference to 4th generation rather than a “4G” network, and that’ll be accurate enough for our purposes. Here’s how what we do know stacks up:
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The HTC Evo 4G vs. the iPhone 4G
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Screen:
I’m not sure why the iPhone 4G apparently scales down the iPhone 3GS’s 3.5″ inch screen. I like the idea of a larger looking glass into my phone-of-all-trades and the Evo 4G’s huge 4.3″ will be just that. Both screens feature capacitative touch capability, of course. (more…)
Why the HTC Evo 4G Might Blow Your Mind
There’s about to be a new phone on the market, and it looks sexy. I’m not normally a mobile geek, but I’m getting pretty excited for the HTC Evo 4G, due out some not-soon-enough time in June. Here’s why you should be excited too.
Design
The design may not appeal to everyone, particularly anyone who was at any point compelled to buy a teensy iPod Nano, but HTC upped the ante here, increasing the screen real estate to 4.3″ vs. the Nexus One’s 3.7″, its cousin the HTC Touch HD’s 3.8″, and the iPhone 4G’s less than 3.5″ screen.
While we watch the size of our gadgets and devices shrink exponentially, the HTC Evo heralds a welcome step back toward the era of ‘size matters.’ With the phone’s heavy emphasis on streaming video (hell it has an HDMI output), naturally a larger screen can do its feature set justice.
Aesthetically, I find the wider look really attractive, and it brings the Evo one step closer to being a mini tablet, something its feature-rich specs suggest isn’t such an absurd notion. The red accents on the lens and kickstand (more on that later) are the only parts I’m not crazy about. Because isn’t red kind of, well, Verizony? (more…)