Droid Incredible 2 review

It wasn’t that way back that we were jonesing for a Nexus One on Verizon. What HTC gave us instead was the Droid Incredible , with an identical 1GHz Snapdragon CPU and lovely 3.7-inch AMOLED display — let alone a wiser camera (8 megapixel vs. five), 8GB of built-in flash storage, an optical trackpad, HTC’s Sense UI on top of Eclair, and a splash of funky industrial design. The Incredible was an excellent phone with a horny camera, marred only by questionable battery life and absence of supply, forcing HTC to construct a Super LCD-equipped model to fulfill demand. Judging by the recognition of the Incredible, it came as no surprise that following HTC’s announcement at MWC , the Incredible S eventually became Verizon’s Droid Incredible 2 . With a 4-inch Super LCD display, global CDMA / GSM radio, front-facing camera, updated internals (including 768 MB of RAM), trick capacitive buttons, and a Froyo-flavored serving of Sense, the Incredible 2 appears like a worthy successor to last year’s Incredible. Does it live as much as our expectations or is it just another fish within the crowded sea of Android? Does it significantly improve upon the unique formula or is it merely a refresh? Hit the break for our review.

Hardware

There is no doubt that the Incredible 2 is a particularly handsome, if not sightly austere looking handset. It’s very similar to the inside of a late 20th century BMW — all class, all business, and all black. When compared with the unique, it’s slicker and softer, with rounder edges and lots better build quality thanks mostly to the ultra-rigid machined and anodized black aluminum screen bezel. Gone are the old model’s whimsical red accents, red innards, and red battery. Instead you will discover a translucent black chassis and a black battery under the hood. Even the bevel across the earpiece is done in black. Yes, it is Darth Vader’s phone, the Droid he’s been searching for. The back cover features the identical grippy soft-touch finish and unique layered motif because the Incredible, but rather than two “steps”, there’s just one this time around. Just like the 3 HTC ThunderBolt 3 , the Incredible 2 includes contacts (missing from the Incredible S) for an optional inductive charging back, and integrates a number of its antennae into the battery door. Pop the duvet, and there is a Verizon / Vodafone SIM under the 1450mAh battery plus a 16GB microSD card pre-installed.

Despite the larger screen, the recent version is just marginally larger than the unique, concerning the same weight, and in fact a smidgen thinner. The layout is sort of similar to its forebear — the headphone jack and gear button have swapped places, and the camera flash is now arranged horizontally rather than vertically. At the left side you can see the amount rocker and micro-USB connector while the correct side is without any controls. The end edge hosts the facility button, a typical 3.5mm headphone jack, plus a secondary mic, while the base edge hides the first mic, together with an indent to pry the battery cover off. A sheet of 4 Gorilla Glass 4 protects the 4-inch display, the 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera next to the Verizon logo on top, and the four capacitive buttons on the bottom. The earpiece and notification light live inside the aforementioned aluminum screen bezel above the glass. In back there’s an 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual-LED flash on top, a slightly tinny sounding speaker, the embossed HTC logo, and the “with Google” stencil towards the ground.

The 4-inch WVGA 5 Super LCD 5 display deserves a unique mention. It’s probably the greatest LCD-based panels we’ve come upon — bright with none leaks or spots, with naturally saturated colors, deep ink-like blacks, and superb viewing angles. Rather than pixel density, it gives the iPhone 4′s 6 IPS 6 screen a run for its money or even warrants a nod or two from the notoriously smug 7 Super AMOLED 7 crowd. We’ve mentioned the 8 trick capacitive buttons 8 before, which rotate when the handset switches between portrait and landscape for apps that support both display modes. It seems the buttons are drawn by groups of tiny LEDs that are turned off and on in response to orientation.

Firstly glance, the Incredible 2 specs look somewhat pedestrian at the present time of twin-core processors, 9 qHD 9 displays, and 0 LTE 0 radios. But do not be fooled by the numbers. That 1GHz CPU is Qualcomm’s latest generation MSM8655 1 Snapdragon 1 SoC with 2 Adreno 205 2 GPU — it’s fast, power efficient, and backed up by a generous 768 MB of RAM. Like with the Thunderbolt (which shares a similar processor), we consistently recorded Quadrant scores starting from 1500 to 1700 — pretty remarkable for a single core device running Froyo. You can find the same old number of sensors on board (compass, gyroscope, accelerometer, proximity, and ambient light) such as the common-or-garden assortment of radios (WiFi b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR, GPS / AGPS, or even FM) plus Qualcomm’s popular MDM9600 3 Gobi 3 module (extensively utilized in Verizon’s iPhone 4), which supports CDMA which include quadband GSM and dual-band HSPA (2100 / 900MHz). In our tests, calls sounded great way to the twin noise-reducing microphone setup, and reception was problem free.

Battery life is great for an Android smartphone. Ranging from a whole charge, the Incredible 2 managed 36 hours and 40 minutes of up time before we decided to plug it back in with 7% battery life remaining. That was mostly light use — reading email (3 accounts), checking Twitter, and infrequently replying or posting — with all of the radios (except Bluetooth) turned on. Still, this included half-hour spent with the handset strutting its stuff in front of the camera for our video review, 20 minutes getting used as a hotspot, taking / uploading about a full-size pictures, and only 6 hours idling while we slept.

Camera

The camera at the original Incredible was no slouch. It can be coaxed into taking fantastic shots given enough care and a spotlight. The Incredible 2 takes this formula to a better level, with a camera that’s able to producing amazingly realistic pictures without an excessive amount of effort. It features HTC’s next generation 8 megapixel sensor with autofocus optics (also found at the Thunderbolt) plus a dual-LED flash. Color balance and exposure are incredible. Low-light performance is impressive. Noise is kept under control without compromising detail. In reality, we’re pretty sure we’re facing a backside-illuminated sensor here. There is a certain clinical precision to the images captured with the Incredible 2 that we’ve really come to understand — the camera simply gathers a big amount of knowledge, leading to amazing shots.

The Incredible 2 captures 720p (HD) video at 30fps with decent results. While it performs much better than its predecessor, video recording isn’t as stellar as photography. The frame rate isn’t quite as smooth as with another devices (the iPhone 4 involves mind), and sound quality leaves room for improvement. The camera interface offers a plethora of settings: there’s touch-to-focus (for both stills and video), flash mode, 0 Photo Booth 0 -like effects, and extra options nestled inside the menus (similar to timer, exposure, while-balance, resolution, ISO, and face detection). The digital zoom is activated by pressing the quantity rocker or with the aid of an on-screen slider. Unfortunately, there is no dedicated 2-stage camera button, no panorama mode, and the 4-inch Super LCD display, while gorgeous, tends to clean out in direct sunlight, making it difficult to correctly frame shots.

Software

While the Incredible 2′s hardware is supremely refined, things are bittersweet at the software front. It’s running 1 Sense 1 , which we’ve 2 reviewed intimately 2 alongside the Incredible S. We appreciate that it brings a elegant, friendly, and consistent user experience across HTC’s multitude of devices, and in addition provides the corporate with a sturdy brand identity, but we’re just not fans. The difficulty is that with each revision of Sense we feel more alienated from what we came searching for within the first place, namely Android. Sense is beginning to appear and feel like its own OS — Android in a parallel universe — with almost every aspect of the user interface getting customized, and deviating significantly from the Android way. Certain changes are positive, just like the cool time / weather widget, the short boot feature, and the much improved music player. Others are frustrating, just like the the convoluted dialer / call log and the poor keyboard layout (who decided to place the hide button slightly below the shift key?!) We realize that it is all a question of taste, and that some people will favor to go down the rabbit hole into Sense wonderland, but we’re purists. So HTC, give us how to disable Sense, and all would be forgiven. Oh, and third-party launchers and keyboards don’t count – like a lot of people, we do not have the time or interest to customise our phones beyond installing a couple of apps.

3

Sadly, the Incredible 2 ships with Android 2.2.1 ( 3 Froyo 3 ) which, despite having stayed properly refrigerated for the past 9 months, is getting rather stale. The excellent news is that the Incredible S is 4 within the strategy of receiving 4 an Android 2.3 ( 5 Gingerbread 5 ) update, so Verizon’s version cannot be far behind. Overall, we do not have much to complain about — Froyo still provides solid performance, especially when paired with speedy internals. The telephone feels snappy and light-weight on its feet throughout. It’s clear that HTC’s hung out fine tuning Sense to make it highly responsive. Still, there’s room for improvement in some areas just like the web browser which, while loading and rendering pages briskly, falls in need of matching the remainder of the user interface by way of smoothness when scrolling and zooming around heavy sites like Engadget.

The main glaring issue we now have with the Incredible 2 is the criminal amount of crapware that Verizon decided to pre-load at the handset — apps that can not be removed and should forever litter the app tray. A number of them, like Adobe Reader, 6 Kindle 6 , 7 Quickoffice 7 (basic version), 8 Skype 8 , and 9 Slacker 9 are apps you’d likely like to install anyway. Others, along with Blockbuster (a shortcut to the Market), Let’s Golf 2, NFL Mobile, and NSF Shift will not have the similar widespread appeal, but are passable. But it’s with apps like City ID, My Verizon Mobile, V CAST Apps, V CAST Media, V CAST Music, V CAST Tones, V CAST Videos, and 0 VZ Navigator 0 that things become downright ludicrous. Apparently Verizon desires to lump its sexy flagship 3G Android smartphone which include its generic dumbphones by contaminating it with utterly meaningless carrier-branded apps and services. We are able to only hope that just a few heads will roll in Verizon’s marketing department when we publish this review, and that good judgment prevails with a Gingerbread update that enables us to uninstall the offending apps.

Wrap up

4

We’ll come right out and say it: the Droid Incredible 2 is the right 3G Android smartphone on Verizon today. In case you live in a 3G-only area otherwise you can forgo LTE (and the 1 Droid Charge 1 ), the decision basically comes right down to the Incredible 2 and 2 Verizon’s iPhone 4 2 . With this device, HTC is pushing the only core Snapdragon platform to the limit, then packaging it into a horny and wonderfully finished product. It improves upon the already excellent Droid Incredible with a nicer screen, a fair better camera, global roaming capability, and most significantly, amazing battery life. It’s an extremely (ahem) well rounded handset — the appropriate storm of quality, refinement, power, and efficiency — so long as you would live with Sense. And that is the crux of it — while we expect Sense will attract numerous people, we feel that HTC is doing its core audience of passionate, tech-savvy, pure Android aficionados a disservice by not providing the way to disable it (or a minimum of making it easier to put in custom ROMs via an unlocked bootloader). This, in conjunction with the insane amount of pre-loaded crapware, are the sole major issues we’ve with respect to the software. In fact we’d have liked to peer Gingerbread available out of the gate, but this appears like it will become remedied soon. Ultimately, the Incredible 2 isn’t a fish within the sea of Android — it is a shark seeing Verizon red and able to devour the contest. Considering how much of a runaway hit the unique Incredible was last summer, perhaps HTC have to have called this new edition the Jaws 2?

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This post is tagged: aluminum screen, battery life, darth vader, flash storage, megapixel, quality thanks, worthy successor