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
Hallelujah, The Keyboard
In my Nexus One review I complained about the keyboard limiting my ability to type as quickly as I could on the iPhone. Many of you responding by telling me to use a different keyboard. This is Android after all, you can replace your keyboard app if you wish. The Incredible ships with HTC’s attempt at a virtual keyboard and I’m happy to say that it’s like a more cluttered, but more flexible version of the iPhone keyboard.
The autocorrection engine is easily iPhone quality. You get very accurate recommendations while you type. Type in a word that the engine doesn’t know and it gets added to the dictionary. You can also manually add words to the dictionary. The live dictionary listing is present unlike the iPhone which only provides a single suggestion for every word you type. Personally I prefer the Apple method because it keeps the screen from getting too cluttered, while HTC’s approach shows you more of what’s going on in the background.
I like that the keyboard tells me when something is added to the dictionary and that it allows me to manually add words to the dictionary. The end result is the same as what you get on the iPhone (Apple does a good job of figuring out what you want added and actually adding it), but HTC is much more transparent about the whole thing.
There's still no multitouch support for the keyboard. While this doesn't impact me on a day to day basis, if you're transitioning from a physical keyboard you will find that the lack of multitouch slows your progress. With a physical keyboard you're often still holding one key down when you go to hit the next one. On the Incredible, that's simply not possible.
If you don’t pay attention to the added visual clutter, you can hardly tell the difference between the iPhone and the HTC keyboards. The keys feel a bit more cramped together but the autocorrection works well enough that this isn’t a huge issue. HTC does do a great job of hiding the option to disable vibrate on keypress. Contrary to popular belief, disabling haptic feedback will not stop the phone from vibrating anytime you press one of the virtual keys. To do this you need to have the keyboard open, hold down the microphone key until the popup switches to a gear and release the key. Then you can disable the vibrate option, which is too distracting for me.
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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.