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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jigglywiggly - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
single core and no amoledphone sux
TrackSmart - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Those items don't bother me. It's the lack of LTE on a new Verizon smartphone. Of course, if having a world phone is more valuable to you that might be an okay tradeoff...nomagic - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
I cant stand AMOLED.AMOLED has awful color balance.
Why do people like AMOLED so much?
synaesthetic - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
Not sure. I like the SLCD on my Glacier just fine. Sure, blacks aren't quite as black as they were on my old Galaxy S, but the color balance is much nicer and white webpages don't slaughter my battery.vol7ron - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
I like the options, but Droid has some identification problems. Apple doesn't come out with a lot of phones, but when it does, it's easy to tell it's an iPhone and what version it is. Part of having a smartphone is having those bragging rights.Droid has many options and features, but their products are becoming more and more ambiguous by the time they hit the street. Combine that with all the different version names and it makes it tougher for consumers to remember what one they really wanted.
I think this problem begins with the manufacturer. So while I might like this, or another phone, I hope I write it down because a month from now, I doubt I'll remember its name.
The0ne - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link
People follow reviews no matter what, that's how AMOLED is loved.kmmatney - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
I have to admit - I don't see the real need for dual-core on a phone. What's it going to do for you? My lowly iPhone 3GS is already pretty darn smooth, and has no trouble browing the web, doing email, playing games. Maybe there are apps that can use it, but the only thing I can think of that really needs the dual GPU would be hardcore games.vision33r - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link
Good software code, trumps any higher end hardware + poor code. In the case of Google, 98% of all their phones run crappy because of OS with OEM modified UI.Download any top end game on the Android Market and compare with top end game in iOS.
It's not even a contest at the moment in terms of software and app quality.
Death666Angel - Friday, July 8, 2011 - link
I wonder how well your 3GS would play my extensive .mkv library consisting of mostly 1080p series and movies. Or how well it would be able to browser flash websites or use google docs etc. :-)Just because it's good enough for you doesn't mean it is for everyone else. If everyone thought like you, we'd still go around with 30km/h trains and ride on horses most of the time.
makken - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link
It seems like HTC's hardware has been going downhill lately. IMO, HTC's hardware design peaked with the Tmobile G2 / Desire Z.Every HTC phone since that has just felt cheaper. I especially loved the metal battery cover with a dedicated release lever; and I wish HTC would incorporate that design into other phones they make instead of the plastic-rip-off cover that they've been going with lately.
I also liked the fact that it had a dedicated camera button and an optical trackpad, things that HTC has elected to delete from this generation of android phones. I know a lot of people are going to disagree with me on the trackpad, but I found it useful as a wake method (instead of having to push the power button on the top), as a D-pad for quickly repositioning the text input cursor, and as a notification LED.