Gadgetory

for the second time this month we're reviewing a phone that's the third in its family line will it live up to its good name or will it fall flat on its face or somewhere in between I'm Michael Fisher this is PocketNow dot-com and this is the full review of the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE for Verizon Wireless let's get to it the Droid Incredible 4G LTE packs a lot of hardware into its body and that's a pretty small body the device is much smaller and more importantly it feels much smaller than some of the super phones that flank it on store shelves like the Galaxy Nexus here or the Samsung Galaxy s3 like its predecessors the new incredible isn't trying to be the biggest on the block but don't let the small size fool you there's some very capable hardware here taking a little tour around the device we've got a four inch Super LCD panel at 540 by 960 resolution up front at 275 pixels per inch down below it here HTC's three capacitive Android buttons and up above below the red painted earpiece a VGA resolution front-facing camera and there's also a notification LED hiding behind the glass there on the right side here is the volume rocker and we can see that the phone is not going for the thinnest award either it's pretty Hardy at eleven point seven millimeters but because it's got such a small footprint that thickness actually makes it feel great in the hand flipping it around to the back we have this wonderful asymmetric styling reminiscent of the first generation incredible we lost some of that uniqueness in the incredible two so it's really nice to see the boldness come back there's the 8 megapixel camera lens there with its flash alongside and the 4G LTE and beats branding there as well as the speakerphone grill very much like the same component on the resound over on the left side here there's just the micro USB port and up top the power button and the 3.5 millimeter headphone jack we wish the lock button here was on the side as it would make a lot more sense with a device of this size but obviously that preference is subjective in all the phone feels really really great in the hand and it's nice to carry a phone that doesn't have to take up your entire pocket when you're carrying it around on the town and like we said about the huawei ascend p1 it almost feels technologically more advanced because it doesn't need all that space in the casing to deliver almost the same user experience the new incredible isn't gonna blow you away with its specs but it's no slouch either this phone is powered by a dual-core Qualcomm Snapdragon s4 CPU running at 1.2 gigahertz that's a little on the slow side compared to its contemporaries but still nothing to sneeze at that's backed up by one gig of ram and 8 gigs of on-board storage of which for a little over 4 is user accessible there is microSD expansion up to 32 gigs and powering all that a battery rated at 1700 milliamp hours now this is an HTC phone so it's running a skin on top of Android how does it feel to revisit sense 4 on Android Ice Cream Sandwich in all pretty good we felt pretty good about sense 4 on the HTC One X which we reviewed several months ago in fact we called it the best version of the skin yet and that still holds true here though on this smaller screen you're gonna be dealing with smaller touch targets which take some getting used to if you're coming from a larger phone still HTC does everything it can to make the experience smooth providing convenient features like home screen widgets and their custom card based multitasking view and a pretty convenient lock screen and all of it runs fairly smoothly we've made our feelings pretty plain about OMS slapping on custom keyboards the stock ICS keyboard is preferable to most manufacturers substitutes and that holds true here but we don't like HTC's attempt as much as we do some others the haptic feedback is inconsistent and it will drop feedback inputs at some points the keys are a little crowded in portrait view here as well but it's the first time in a while we haven't wanted to immediately replace the keyboard with a stock ICS build now it won't work for everyone and if you're a super fast typer you won't like it at all but it should serve the average user just fine overall census impact on android is noticeable even though this is the lightest version of the Sense skin it's still plenty heavy and it does slow the experience down slightly but the lag it introduces is at least consistent and it's predictable and it's very minor and the conveniences sense brings with it our worth the trade-off testing the incredible 4G LTE in the real world was a distinct pleasure it's really nice when a phone strikes the right balance between power and pocket ability the new Incredible did that very well we tested it in and around the Greater Boston area from the city to the seashore reception was above average beating out our Galaxy Nexus for connectivity in some remote areas like a far-off Beach we were able to average consistently good data speeds over Verizon's LTE network averaging about 20 megabits down and about 10 up callers said I sounded loud and clear even over speakerphone on my end people I spoke to sounded just fine through the earpiece the speakerphone was tinny like they all are but it was loud the new Incredible might lack the same hardware as the One X but HTC has brought its full set of software camera improvements to this device the unified viewfinder multi shot HDR panorama and fun filters they're all here and they all work pretty well HDR tends to deliver cartoony results that are too bright but it's handy to have around when you have a backlit subject or a shot with a wide variation in light and dark but all that aside if you're just taking regular old still shots the new incredibles 8 megapixel camera really does quite a nice job 1080p video is sharp with quick white balance and exposure correction and the sound it captures is great it's nice to have the option of shooting slow-mo as well using all these features will constitute quite a bit of power but we're happy to report that the incredible did pretty well in this regard not exemplary mind you it only about seven hours of heavy usage to go from 100% to shut down but that's heavy use average users should be able to go a full day if you can't make it that long you can always grab a spare battery remember it's removable so should you get it well if you're looking for a feature-packed top-of-the-line jumbo phone then no that's not what this phone is but if you're looking for a mid-sized attractive boldly designed smart phone that doesn't sacrifice too much performance for pocket ability the incredible 4G LTE is definitely worth a look personally I still have two friends carrying the original Droid Incredible more than two years after its release and they both still love it that's a great legacy and it looks like this newest Incredible is living up to it so even at 149 99 on contract after all discounts which is a little pricey if you're shopping Verizon Wireless for an LTE Android smartphone I would definitely rate this one a strong buy this has been Michael with pocketnow.com thanks for watching our full review if you want to check out the written review it's over at pocketnow.com throw us a like here on the video if you liked what you saw leave a comment on the post at pocketnow.com if you'd like to contribute if you like us to respond to you there you can also follow us on twitter at pocket now twits that's the official account you can follow me on twitter @ @ KN - phones that's Captain the number to phones and stay tuned to pocket now we've got a lot more content as usual coming down the pipe sooner rather than later thanks for watching we'll see you next time you