HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE Review: One Alternative
by Jason Inofuentes on July 13, 2012 9:24 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- HTC
- Droid
- Mobile
Like I mentioned in our discussion on cellular speeds, we’ve had trouble getting reliable signal at our two test locations. There’s a very real possibility that this reception issue affected our battery life tests, and so we leave that caveat in our results. Battery testing is easily the biggest part of our review process. In an ideal world the OEMs would send us seven samples, so we can have all our battery tests running at once, and still have samples on hand for performance and display testing. What this means is that battery testing is hard to repeat. So, bear with us as we prepare to do just that.
We’ll start with our call test, one that has been bringing good news for most of the phones we test over the last year or so. Here we see our first sign of trouble. The test is simple, play a little music through a phone calling another phone, through which a little music is being played. The Incredible 4G manages just under seven hours, nowhere near the One X and One S performance. There’s a penalty to be paid in data tests for CDMA devices because the 1xRTT radio has to get pinged periodically to check for calls. Here, though, with no background services syncing data, the screen off, and the phone doing nothing but making a call I find no way to explain the performance. If signal issues are the culprit then we will update, but it's not looking good so far.
The web browsing test cycles through a suite of websites with the screen on and set at 200 nits of brightness. Performance under 3G was well below the results from the similarly equipped One S, and even lower (by nearly an hour) than the HTC Rezound. Indeed, the AMOLED screen, higher clock speed and smaller battery of the One S should handicap it against the Incredible, but the Incredible 4G falls distinctly behind. There's a glimmer of improvement in the 4G LTE Web Browsing tests, but performance is still well below what we would have expected. Once we account for battery capacity and normalize the data we see that the Incredible 4G remains at nearly the bottom for 3G performance, and not nearly so impressive in LTE performance as the One X for AT&T. [Update: These 3G performance numbers are in a sure better signal area, with great signal, so we're marking these as infallible. We'll work on 4G LTE numbers more, but for now, in 3G, performance is definitely poor.]
In our tethered data test the Incredible 4G moves a little closer to its One, forebear; mustering nearly 5 hours to the One X's just over 5 hours. This number makes a lot more sense, the savings from having a 20% lower clockspeed would be mitigated by having a 20% smaller battery. So, if having the screen off leads us to a much better battery life result, perhaps the real culprit is related to inefficiencies in the display? Whichever the case, tethered data performance is the only feather in the cap of the Incredible 4G's battery life so far.
We’re not going to bring the house crashing down on the Incredible 4G for battery life just yet. If the reception issues are the root cause of the battery life deficits then we should hopefully find out before long. If, though, it turns out that there’s something more to it, then one of this phone’s most damning deficits will be battery life.
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lunarx3dfx - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
It will be interesting to see what happens with the new iPhone, but just like Mac vs. Windows, Google and Microsoft can only do so much to optimize for devices considering how varied they all are. Throw in some LTE radios and things get even more interesting. On that point though, I have a Galaxy Nexus and a Focus Flash, and I was completely impressed by the battery life Microsoft was able to squeeze out of Windows Phone. Of course, they restrict what SoC's manufacturers are allowed to use.As far as Android is concerned, I don't know which phone you have, but my Galaxy Nexus running the stock rom but rooted outlasts my girlfriends iPhone 4S in battery life. With Android devices, it has been my experience that battery life truly varies device to device.
As far as UI responsiveness, Google started to fix that with ICS and have made it almost perfect if not perfect on Jellybean. However, you can't really blame them yet again for how laggy Android has been in the past considering the fact that hardware acceleration for the UI was pretty much not an option until ICS was released. Anything running ICS or higher has to be designed to a standard, meaning a GPU that can handle hardware acceleration.
Microsoft and Google have a much more difficult task than Apple when it comes to designing, maintaining, and improving their mobile OSes because of how varied the hardware is. They don't have the option to optimize to the extent that Apple does. Considering that I think they have both done a fantastic job so far, and it is only getting better.
sssbbb - Thursday, July 26, 2012 - link
What's 3G?legoman666 - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
How is that a $150 phone + 2 year contract is considered budget whereas a $200 phone + contract is not? The difference after 2 years is a whole $50 out of approximately $2300.Please stop ignoring the cost of contracts in your consideration.
MrSpadge - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Doesn't he say clearly enough that the difference is just 50$, and this is not very much - from where ever you look at it. And that difference remains, whatever else you're spending on the phone, contract etc.tbutler - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Except that the contract cost is going to be the same no matter which phone you choose. So by reductio ad absurdum, phone cost should never matter, because it will always be a small fraction of the contract cost.... right?But, y'know, people do care about these things for some strange reason.
bill4 - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
With these absolute garbage Motorola and HTC droid phones-usually incredibly overpriced too boot-, being their "flagships".I mean this thing is pathetic by todays standards, 960X540? I'm not surprised it's overpriced too, Verizon phones always are. I'm actually shocked they only charge 199 for the GS3 instead of 299 like they usually charge for top phones, but I think they just didnt want to look horrible compared to the other carriers on that one, if they could have gotten away with it they probably would have priced the GS3 at 399 on contract.
I still remember when Verizon had the "HTC Thunderbolt" and everybody thought it was so awesome, ATT got the same phone a little later called the inspire for $100 less and nobody cared, because ATT customers dont have nothing but garbage to choose from on a regular basis.. I think Verizon customers rival Apple for their love of being overcharged.
Verizon is absolutely awful.
danjw - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
So Verizon made HTC nerf their version of the HTC One XL? Most of the benchmarks seem to come in worse then her counter parts on AT&T and Sprint. Epic fail Verizon!chrnochime - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
I'd be happy with a 4" screen phone instead of something even larger. I don't use the phone to play games and nurture my fb page every 10 minutes like a lot of people do or even browse that often, so anything larger is just too bulky to carry around.Looks like I'd end up with an iphone, if there's nothing that's not huge running android in a few months...
geniekid - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
Too bad about the battery life. I really want a 4 to 4.3" phone, but form is secondary to battery life for me. As it stands, I'll probably give up one-handed usability for battery life by getting the SGS3.amdwilliam1985 - Tuesday, July 24, 2012 - link
One-handed usability with SGS3 is very possible. Don't get fool by the Apple cool-aids about 3.5" one-handed and >3.5" 2-handed.I'm surprise to see a lot of girls in the NYC subway using SGS3 with 1 hand, if they can do it you can too. It just takes some time to get use to it. But once you got used to it, you can't look at or type on a puny 3.5" anymore. Trust me, I went from 3.5"(iPhone 3gs) to 4.5"(TMobile SGS2) and I can't go back anymore.