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  • jigglywiggly - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    single core and no amoled
    phone 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.
  • VivekGowri - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    The optical trackpad was a bit worthless to me, but I agree with everything else about the G2. Unfortunately, the hinge made it so impossible to carry after the first 6 months....man, the hinge just felt like it was going to break within the next few weeks, so I had to sell mine. I really liked it otherwise, I wouldn't have sold it. Maybe mine was one of the early build models with that problem, so I don't know.

    I dunno though, have you played with the Sensation? It's a very, very well designed and well built handset, so I wouldn't write HTC off yet.
  • makken - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link

    I have not had a chance to play with the sensation yet; I will have to go check it out at some point.

    I might have been one of the lucky ones with the hinge. I got my DZ around Christmas 2010, and, although the hinge is loose (i.e. it will automatically close if you hold it upside down while open), the mechanism is solid and doesn't feel like its on the verge of breaking.

    I admit, I had my concerns initially about the hinge. I almost decided on the droid 2 instead of it because of all the horror stories I've read; but I'm glad I didn't.
  • RaistlinZ - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    Pretty nice smartphone.....if this were 2010. This phone brings nothing new or exciting or different unfortunately.
  • deadsix - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    The original incredible supports Wireless N. At launch it did not but an OTA update unlocked it.

    http://www.androidcentral.com/htc-droid-incredible...

    I've personally own an HTC Incredible 1 and I can connect to N wifi.
  • ol1bit - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    I think companies are trying to use old products now days. I'm, not sure how much development time leads up to a release, but at some point someone should say, "ok, let's can it".

    The Droid x2 with only 3g, and the Droid 3 with only 3g. Great on dual core, but missed the tech 100%!

    I will not buy a 3G phone, or a single core 4g LTE phone. I know there are millions like me. I want a significant upgrade for my hard earned cash.
  • lament - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    "I will not buy a 3G phone, or a single core 4g LTE phone. I know there are millions like me. I want a significant upgrade for my hard earned cash."

    You must be holding out for the Droid Bionic like me and everyone else.

    As for this phone, here's the market they were aiming for:

    - people who don't need a monster display
    - people who want something fast, but not dual-core fast because they don't even know what dual core means
    - people who don't need 4G (they either don't need it or don't live in a 4G area)
    - people who want something inexpensive (this phone is 1 cent on Amazon Wireless for new or current individual accounts, or $79 for current customers on a family plan).

    In other words, my wife.. I bought one for her for Mother's day. She had an old Samsung flip phone before this. I've played around with this phone a lot (I'm still rocking an OG Droid on its last legs.. currently rocking MIUI ROM) and it gets the job done.. and quickly.

    The display is gorgeous and bright as hell. Even with a gel case, it's slim and light. It flips through apps without any hesitation. Battery life is excellent.

    It's a great value.
  • JasonInofuentes - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    @lament Let me know how you're wife likes the Incredible 2. My wife hardly users apps at all and her Droid Eris just kicked the big one and I've got her running a Palm Pre Plus for now.

    I too am rocking my OG Droid, on CM7 but having some bugs that really make me wish I'd stuck with CM6. The email address is my name with a . in between first and last at gmail. Thanks!

    Jason
  • lefenzy - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    On the other hand, you have consumers like me who also are interested in getting a good deal for their money but find that the cutting edge is simply too raw. I will not notice the incredible 2's shortcomings in hardware. I want a phone for email, phone calls, and light internet browsing. What's great about this phone is that it does everything relatively well: it's appropriately sized, battery life is sufficient, and performance is satisfactory. The three LTE phones are all too big right now.
  • lefenzy - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    If only there existed an HTC sensation with LTE, a four inch screen, and enough battery life to get through the day. I would jump for that.
  • JasonInofuentes - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    This is, unfortunately, a classic 'have your cake and eat it too' problem. In CPU reviews Anand likes to discuss TDP as basically the processors power envelope. You can fill that envelope using various components including # of cores, clock speed and feature silicon (AES-NI, HD decoders, GPUs, etc). But to meet a power envelope you have to limit the number of components.

    The same thing applies to cellphones. Say you want a thin light phone with 10 hours of battery life (these figures are all arbitrary, just an example). Your battery will be x volume of your phones space, and can be no larger or smaller. If you add a big screen, that will ruin your battery life. If you add LTE that will require a thicker phone and might limit your battery size. If you want dual-core you're going to ruin your battery life. So, you start remeasuring and reconfiguring till you've got a phone that isn't, hopefully, awful and meets your intended design target.

    So why can't you have you're cake and eat it too? An LTE Sensation would have to be thicker, would have to have a bigger battery and would have to use some sort of magic to squeeze all it's components into a chassis designed for a 4" screen. And we call that magic MSM8960. 28 nm, dual-core, OoO, 3G, LTE, GPS, BT, FM, Adreno 3xx GPU in one chip with significant power savings over its predecessor.
  • 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.
  • Penti - Monday, July 4, 2011 - link

    There are no units with Mango yet, and they don't even got their hands on development versions. That's really why. Nobody else does either so. I'm sure they'll jump on the band wagon when there is actual hardware and software to test, it's a gadget review-site after all. They did cover earlier WP just fine. As long as nothing happens there you won't see it in the news or via reviews any how.
  • dtomilson - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    SO let me get this, ignorance is bliss? Awesome. Anandtech has become boring you're so wrong. There are many sites out there that cover mobile phones that have covered Mango. I am a developer for WP7 and find it funny how android phones are covered so much here but they are actually all the same and still disgustingly slow. Dualcore and 1GB of RAM does not make a turtle fast.

    Anandtech will suffer the failure as other tech blogs have. Let the ignorant stick together and die together.
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  • NJoy - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    Finally, you got the review up and i can express some of my feling about htc of late. I've been their supporter for last 6 years, each of my phones over that period been made by HTC and i enjoyed each of them. however, when my upgrade was due last august, i got stuck trying to figure what to figure what to go for - nothing really seemed to be a worthy upgrade. and what HTC had been doing for the next 6 months was just respinning old hardware in different shapes. i was still patient and decided to wait for Sensation , but it was taking forever, so i ended up getting SGS2 that first week of may. And i don't regret it, especially after comparing them side by side - Samsung is faster, lighter , smoother and got much better in-call sound quality. It's just better.
    You also conveniently miss out the fact that sensation is dual A8, whilst tegra and exynos are based on A9
    Locked bootloader is another dealbreaker even if i don't need to root it atm.

    Result is that HTC lost another faithful customer and i am sure i am not the only one.
  • NJoy - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    Ha, how did i mess this up? it was supposed to be in sensation review comments
  • Hxx - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    You really can't go wrong with the DIncr 2. It's fast, slim, nice screen, goood battery life, excellent price (150 i think after rebate). I played with all 3g and 4g phones currently at verizon and this one was the one i liked the most. The global function is a nice plus although I know i;m never prolly gonna use it.
  • Vepsa - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    After washing my Droid R2D2 I picked up a Droid Incredible 2 Friday. I really missed Sense (I know, I'm odd) and the phone just feels faster than my R2D2 ever was, even when overclocked. As for the locked bootloader, that is being worked on ;)
  • alent1234 - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    they have radio chips that will do CDMA and GSM/UMTS/HSPA and whatever so it's not a big deal to make virtually the same phone for AT&T and VZW.

    but i bought my Inspire for $20 from Costco a few months ago and $199 is a huge rip off for this phone. at that price might as well get an iphone 4
  • sitharien - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    Show us Sprint customers some review love, Anand! =)
  • Chaser - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    After owning a 3G, Droid, EVO, Galaxy, and G2X the Sensation is the sweetest spot ever for a phone and I'll tell you why:

    LTE (and Wimax for that matter) is for practical purposes more a battery killer than a monumental feature Verizon and Sprint would like you to believe. Unless you are connected charging using LTE as a hotspot you will use LTE very sparingly while the phone is in your pocket. Who really needs 15mbps on a 4inch display? The point being T-Mobile's "4G" at 4-6mbps is more than fast enough even for occasional tethering like at an airport. But the Sensation's battery life is absolutely superb compared to LTE and Wimax. I can leave 4G on all day without a consideration.

    I wont write a new review on the Sensation. But with this phone, it's specs, battery and T-Mobile's very competitive everything plan, world phone capability, and simultaneous voice/data (GSM folks) T-Mobile knocked this out of the park. Now that's Incredible.
  • Penti - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    It's already running Gingerbread Android 2.3 here in Sweden. Too bad about Verizon's model. Not a phone that fits in with HTC though.
  • peldor - Tuesday, July 5, 2011 - link

    At $199 or $149 this phone doesn't stand out at all. On the other hand, Costco has it for $80 as an upgrade or $50 for new Verizon customers.
  • mikehawk51 - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link

    Cmon, enough with this dual core nonsense. Get some apples/apples comparisons here and show me the difference. None of these benchmark scores, I mean actual user experience. Here's one;

    I own both an HTC Sensation 4G (dual core @ 1.2 ghz) and a HTC Thunderbolt (single core @ 1ghz)

    Guess which one performs better in real world use? THE THUNDERBOLT. The overhead of Gingerbread+Sense3 actually taxes the system to the point where homescreen framerates are actually worse than my thunderbolt. I can flick through pages on my thunderbolt as smoothely as an iphone, however on my Senseation there is a noticeable drop in framerate. It doesnt hinder use at all, but I notice it nonetheless, and it bugs the hell out of me. I feel like I have a substandard piece of hardware which cant keep up with the big boys, even though it is technically superior.

    Guys, we're talking CELLPHONES here. The PC industry still hasnt caught up with multi-threading yet, but at least they have the reason to try. Threading out GPU rendering and physics pipelines at the same time can yield better performance in theory. But exactly what are we going to be threading on a platform which consists of side scrolling games no greater than mario bros? Or ultra pixelated low poly 3d golfing sims, or 1st person shooters on rails? Even if you could squeeze a quad core xeon into a cellphone with 16GB of ram, the platform just doesnt offer a venue for using this kind of horsepower. People dont want to play Crysis on their cellphones, they want to play Soduku and Penguins.

    Dual core processors were developed for phones just because they could, not because there was any need or even demand for it. Dont knock a phone due to white paper specs, especially when older phones may in fact perform better.
  • strikeback03 - Wednesday, July 6, 2011 - link

    check the comparisons on androidcentral between the Sensation and the Evo3D. Apparently there is a software update coming to help the Sensation as something causes the lag that they fixed in the Evo3D
  • nitink - Monday, August 1, 2011 - link

    this phone have a great potential unleach its power get full hd games with sd card data..at:
    http://nitin-xyz.blogspot.com/2011/07/free-and-ful...
  • jjizzle - Thursday, December 15, 2011 - link

    I'm running android 2.3.4 with sense 3.5 on the original incredible I'm pretty sure the S can manage just fine. The phone to get right now for HTC would probably be the rezound. That is my favorite.

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