HTC Droid Incredible 2 Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on July 3, 2011 11:44 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Verizon
- Droid Incredible 2
- Mobile
General Performance
In a world where dual-core smartphones are all the rage, the Incredible 2 actually performs surprisingly well. Actually using the phone is pretty quick. The UI is smoothly animated and although you can tell that you're not getting anywhere close to 60 fps (think 25 - 30 fps in most cases) the phone never feels slow. That's not to say that it feels fast, it just doesn't feel slow despite running last-year's hardware.
The benchmarks echo my user experience. In fact, our Sunspider results put the Incredible 2 at the top of the charts. Normal run to run variance makes the position of the top 10% of the phones insignificant, but the Incredible 2 runs through this javascript test very quickly.
BrowserMark paints a slightly more realistic picture as the Incredible 2 is fast, but clearly behind the Tegra 2 phones.
Flash performance is identical to other MSM8x55 phones. Only the newer MSM8260 and Tegra 2 based phones can deliver better performance here.
Testing Linpack under Android isn't super useful, it just shows us that single-threaded floating point performance hasn't really improved over the past year. Only the Sensation with its 1.2GHz clock speed gives us a real performance advantage here.
Its the Incredible 2's Adreno 205 GPU that shows its age the most in our performance tests:
Imagination's SGX 540, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and of course Qualcomm's own Adreno 220 are much better performers here.
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poohbear - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
hey, the majority of Anandtechs new reviews are smartphone or tablet related, and yet there's no smartphone/tablet sub-forum for us to discuss this? when will you create one? seems your reporting is ahead of your site.A5 - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
What are you talking about?http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=37
rs2 - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Love all the griping about the phone shipping with Froyo. You'd think that Froyo was the Vista of Android OS's, judging by the tone of the opening paragraphs. Nevermind that fact that Froyo was getting rave reviews on this very site not so long ago.Is it really so terrible that the device ships with Froyo? You can always upgrade, and a good OS doesn't become a crappy OS just because the current version was bumped from 2.2.x to 2.3.x a few months ago. Look at how long people continued running Windows XP.
clarkn0va - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
I updated my Desire and wife's Galaxy S both from Froyo to CM7 for one simple reason: ingegrated voip. I tried a bunch of voip apps from the market and none of them worked to my satisfaction. In 2.3 it just works.Other than that, I can't name a single difference between Froyo and Gingerbread (accounting for the differences between Sense and CM7, anyway).
strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link
If nothing else, the security patches that arrived in later versions of FroYo and in Gingerbread would be nice. Otherwise, it is just the fact that everyone who knows wants the latest version of the OS, and Gingerbread has been available for months.Anubis - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
I really think everyone who bitches about phones not having LTE are forgetting that LTE coverage currently flat out sucks. a huge number of VZW subscribers don't live anywhere near LTE networks. They currently offer 2 levels of phones. More expensive flagship models that do have LTE for those that want it and then cheaper general 3G models for everyone else.I am in the everyone else category. my next phone will NOT be an LTE phone as i wont see it where i live for years
strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link
I forget if they said it would be by the end of 2012 or 2013 that they would have LTE coverage to match their 3G coverage. Either way, assuming they actually pull that off your location might well have LTE before you are ready to replace your next phone.deputc26 - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Anand,In your conclusion you state that the Droid X2 is bigger than the inc 2 but on the first page the dimensions for the two appear to be almost identical, only .1mm off.
orizaba - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Body is not all plastic, BTW. Front bezel is brushed black aluminum all around which largely makes for the solid feel. Came from a Droid1 since release day and have had this phone a month. Love the speed, stability, form factor. No 4G in my area and the no battery sucking dual core (which isn't necessary for the purpose of this phone). Best 3G phone on the market IMO. Froyo has become a solid reliable OS. Will wait for 2.3 until it is well implemented without issues seen today on many phones.dtomilson - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Where are you mentioning the updates of Mango? All I see are the same slow Android phones with no hardware acceleration on a dualcore system where it is still _slow_.Let's hear some real news regarding mobile platforms and how they benefit the user.