The HTC Droid Incredible Review, Clearly Better than the Nexus One
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 10, 2010 1:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon
- Droid Incredible
- HTC
- Android
- Mobile
The Camera
HTC outfitted the Incredible with an 8 megapixel camera with a default resolution of 3264 x 1952. Like the Nexus One, the Incredible’s Camera is very fast. You get a smooth frame rate from the live viewfinder, and there’s minimal shutter lag. It makes the iPhone 3GS' camera feel archaic by comparison, like I've just dusted off my first point and shoot from 13 years ago.
Unlike the Nexus One, HTC’s camera app gives you a lot of control over the post processing of your photos. You can adjust brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness. There are even white balance and ISO settings. While I found these items more of a pain to use (who wants to mess with sharpness settings on a smartphone camera?), I do appreciate the option.
The Incredible comes with a blindingly bright LED flash that actually makes low light photography possible. We are talking about a very tiny lens so low light performance, even with the flash, is grainy:
But in a pinch it works just fine, which is more than I can say for the iPhone’s camera in low light conditions.
The flash can be forced on/off or left on auto mode. This is important because the flash has the tendency to blow out photos when used indoors.
Outdoor performance is great but be warned that the photos look better on the ultra high density screen than they do blown up at full resolution.
Browsing through photos in the camera app is very fast and uses the swipe gesture, again an improvement over the Nexus One. And just like the rest of the phone, you have tight integration with online services within the camera app itself. You’re two taps away from sharing any photo you take via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr or the usual suspects (MMS, Email). I’ll say that the HTC Incredible was the first smartphone I really found myself using as a camera on a regular basis simply because of its speed, quality and ease of use.
Smartphone cameras are quickly making headway in becoming the point and shoot camera of choice. I’ve seen demos of smartphones that have two lenses (one wide angle and one telephoto) and use a fast SoC to combine the output of both to produce photos where everything is sharp and in focus.
In the case of the HTC Incredible however, there’s a very practical use of its high quality camera today...
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
59 Comments
View All Comments
Chloiber - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
"If you want to quickly see what’s on all of your home screens just press the optical joystick and you’ll zoom out to see all five screens at once."Five? Really? ;)
Chloiber - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Sorry, still no edit.But:
"There’s still no way to delete multiple emails at once, no way to copy/paste from an email and no way to search through emails stored on an IMAP server other than Gmail. Imperfect much?"
I hope I'm not wrong: but isn't it the exact same mail app as in the HTC Desire. There is a GMAIL App and a MAIL app. You CAN copy/paste from the normal Mail app and you CAN delete multiple messages from the standard Mail app.
jasperjones - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
+1I'm on a Nexus One here and I can delete multiple emails at once in the Gmail app. Just tap on the check mark (to the left of the email title) for each email you want to delete. On the bottom of the screen, a delete button automatically pops up. Tap it--done.
Copy-and-paste works only if you're editing an email.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
But can you delete multiple emails in the standard Mail app? I haven't been able to find a way to do this. In fact, deleting emails is a bit of a pain as there's no swipe to delete. You have to hit the confirmation box for every message you delete.Take care,
Anand
jasperjones - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Anand,I set up the regular mail app just to test. It's exactly the same thing as in the gmail app: you hit those little, greyed out check marks to the left of the email subject. After checking the first message, on the bottom of the screen, the virtual buttons "Mark read," "Add star," and "Delete" appears. Again, the is on the Nexus One (with stock firmware). No troubles deleting multiple emails at once at all...
Jaybus - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
Works the same on my Motorola Droid. In the list of e-mails, just touch the check boxes of the ones you want to delete, then select the delete button. When you touch the first check box, the "Mark read", "star", and "delete buttons pop up at the bottom of the screen.I've had the Moto Droid for about 4 months now and have found the standard e-mail app just works, at least with my business mail server ( Postfix using TLS and user authentication, Dovecot using IMAP / TLS, both on standard ports). Incoming e-mails show up in the notification bar and you can define a ring tone for them. HTML e-mail works just fine.
FWIW, I too was confused as to how to delete multiple e-mails at first. It was so simple it alluded me. :)
geniekid - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Tap Mail. Tap Menu. Tap Delete. That allows me to use checkboxes to delete multiple emails at once. This is from my HTC Incredible using the defautl Mail app on the Home screen.jaydee - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Anand,I know you didn't officially review it, but I would like to see the Motorola Droid in these comparisons. I know it's older, but it's the one that "started it all" for android being a real iPhone competitor, and there are a LOT more people using with Droid's than with Nexus One's. Plus the hardware differentiates itself much more from the Incredible than the N1 (different manufacturer, different processor, RAM/ROM specs, ETC).
Thanks,
Jim
jaydee - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Also, there's an app called PDAnet. $30 one time charge for unlimited data via USB. Why even bother with Verizon's own version for $25-30/month?secret99 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
I don't think the Nexus has 8 GB of storage. Just FYI.