Overview

I’ve had my HTC Incredible cell phone, from Verizon, for over a month. The Incredible is a “smart” phone based on Google’s Android operating system. My phone currently has Android v2.1. I’m anticipating the new version being released soon.

I’ve connected the phone to my home email accounts, Facebook, and Windows Live accounts, as well as my personal calendaring.

If you’re looking for a comparison to the Apple iPhone, you won’t find it here. My exposure to the iPhone is limited, so I wouldn’t be able to provide solid comparison.

Call Quality

I haven’t suffered from dropped calls, although the reception isn’t as good as my previous phone, the LG chocolate 3. The Incredible has a much louder ear piece, but the audio breaks-up more often than I found with the chocolate 3. Still, the Incredible is acceptable for phone calls. I think it’s odd that I need to comment on how well the phone-section of the device functions; it should just work.

Signal Reception

It appears, from the various displays, that the Incredible’s sensitivity to cell phone signals is less than my previous phones. The Incredible can also connect to local Wi-Fi, which I use at home. The Wi-Fi feature allows the phone to access the web without using cell signals, and is faster. This has also been handy when free Wi-Fi is available in restaurants and other public places.

Screen (Display)

The screen is gorgeous. It has very rich color and fine resolution. Text and images both look great. It is very easy to read long text on this phone. The screen readability suffers when in direct sunlight, but this is common for color screens. Some of the newer phones have larger screens, however I find that the Incredible is a nice size for me – fits in my pocket, and is large enough to view photos and web pages.

Battery Life

Smart phones eat their battery. People who have smart phones love their phone chargers – in the car, at home, at the office. Careful usage of the phone can yield two days of battery. However, I find that I’m charging it every night – and sometimes while at work – to keep the battery charged.

User Interface

The phone manufacturer, HTC, created their own visual interface that lives on top of the Google Android interface. HTC’s “Sense” interface is derided by some geeks as being slower and unnecessary. I have found the interface to be smooth and intuitive, so I haven’t tried to change it. It works fine for me.

Stability

The Incredible has been the most stable smart phone I’ve used. The others I have used were Windows Mobile phones (Samsung, Palm) and I found them to randomly freeze or restart – often multiple times in a single day. The Incredible occasionally restarts (reboots) itself, although it seems rare.

Applications

There are thousands of free applications for the Android phones; many are very useful. There are the content applications (such as accessing news, weather, or tech information in a format that fits the phone nicely), social media interfaces (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), a good web browser (with “pinch” zooming), GPS, and more. In fact, sometimes the sheer number of available applications is so overwhelming, it’s difficult to discern the ones that are really useful.

A glaring omission for me is hands-free calling when using a Bluetooth headset. Supposedly this will be addressed as a “new feature” in an update that is due this month. This is such a basic feature (which I’ve had on other phones for years) that I thought I was “doing it wrong” when I couldn’t get it to work. A little research and I discovered that it isn’t supported – whoops.

Camera

The 8 megapixel camera on the Incredible is surprisingly good. The images rival some inexpensive point-and-shoot cameras, although it does over-apply a sharpening filter. It’s definitely a nice addition for Facebook updates.

Video

I’ve only recorded a couple of video segments, but I haven’t been too impressed with the results. Perhaps in bright sunshine, it would do in a pinch… better than nothing.

Summary

I really like this phone. It’s fast, fun, geeky, extensible, and dependable. The Google Android operating system, paired with good hardware, yields a pretty dandy piece of equipment. Just knowing that a new version of the software, which addresses some of my concerns, is being slowly rolled out to customers now is very encouraging. The update may push my rating to five stars…

Four of five stars

Pros

• Stable
• Highly responsive
• Lots of useful, free applications
• Good camera images

Cons

• No Bluetooth hands-free dialing
• Just okay cell signal sensitivity
• Mediocre video

Five years seems like a short time for many things, but not for computers. While many of us have computers older than five years of age, it’s generally acknowledged that five years old is about the lifespan of a well-used machine. My home computer reached five years and had the equivalent of a stroke; a core electrolytic capacitor in the power filtering section of the motherboard popped.

Unfortunately, it means I was also left with a box of out-of-date parts – power supply, CPU, video card – even the DVD burner. I realized it was time to gut the beast and start over.

There were several “user scenarios” to be met in the parts selection – photo editing, sound editing, video editing (sensing a pattern here?); these were the activities that would stress the machine. Simple activities, such as surfing the Internet or writing email, could be accomplished with a surplus machine. However, the media editing scenarios demanded more oomph.

Careful examination showed that the video editing software, Sony Vegas, would put the machine under the greatest strain. Since Vegas relies upon the CPU for most of its processing, and is multi-threaded, I went for a chip that has been doing well in such challenges when tested by trustworthy organizations; I settled on the Intel i5 Quad 750. Vegas will use all four cores – as do some of the other applications I use, including my Nikon photo editing package.

After selecting the CPU, the other components fell into place – 4GB of DDR3 RAM, 1 TB Western Digital drive with 64MB cache, 5750 ATI video card with 1G RAM, 650 watt Corsair modular power supply, a SATA-based DVD DL burner, and they are all hosted by a Gigabyte motherboard that includes SATA3 and USB3. The operating system? Windows 7 x64 Ultimate.

Assembling the beast took little more than an hour, including the time to carefully route and bind all of the cables to insure good air flow and easy maintenance.  I decided to use the stock cooler for a couple of reasons – first, it’s the warranted cooling solution, second, I’m not overclocking the CPU, and third, I was too impatient to get a new bracket to fit one of my old coolers.

So, what’s cool about the result? It is mighty quick. I’m very pleased with the performance; particularly when editing media. This machine goes into sleep mode quickly, then restarts in two seconds; literally, two seconds and it’s ready. Playing a DVD uses single digit CPU cycles. Heavy audio processing (Stereo Tool) results in single digit CPU cycles. Windows 7 pre-fetch means that Outlook 2010 loads in two seconds.

I’ve reattached my audio chain to the input. It’s my overkill method for Skype connections. A Shure SM 87, preamp via an old Mackie mixer (VLZ preamps), ancient dbx 163x Over Easy compressor, to a BeachTek XLR adapter. It probably doesn’t sound much different from the average setup, but it’s fun to play with. The video duties are handled by a Microsoft LifeCam Cinema – very clear image. By the way, the little blue doo-dad on top of the compressor is a badge reader so that I can VPN into work. The gray box beneath is my USB memory card reader.

So, that’s the rundown of the refit. Still using the same keyboard, monitor, mouse, and DLink gigabit switch, but there’s no denying it’s a whole new machine.
 

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