There is a new phone on the shelf of your local Verizon store that you should take a look at, The HTC Verizon Incredible. This is the latest in the Android arsenal of open source platform phones and it is going to get a lot of attention.

The HTC Incredible is thinner than the Motorola Droid, mainly because of the touchscreen and lack of tactile keyboard and little wider than the Iphone keyboard, about an eight of an inch.

It is also very fast, built on the 1GHz Snapdragon processor. Even with several of its apps open, I tested with five, the phone didn’t bog down.

Outside the new phone there is a 3.5mm headphone jack, a power/sleep button on top and a volume rocker and Micro USB connection on the left side, and a 3.7 inch, 480 x 800 pixel AMOLED screen. The screen is a little tough to see in bright sunlight.

For digital journalists the Incredible is another good option for the field arsenal. Battery life is about the same as most smart phones, with a charge lasting a full day – but down to the last marker on the battery meter and definitely in need of a charge.

The 8 megapixels camera on this phone is what is being touted as what sets this camera apart from others, but frankly I really didn’t see much of a difference. In natural light it takes vivid picture, but falls short in low light situations, even with the LED flash.

The phone camera also captures 800 x 480 mpeg-4 video. it is not HD, but the video is better than that on Blackberry’s and Iphones. You can even edit video in the phone with free Qik software from the app store.

The web browser on the phone loads pages quickly and the touch sensitive screen lets you slide and zoom into web pages that are not mobile enabled.

Conclusion

A few months back the Droid was the phone to own, but now HTC steps it up with the Incredible. It is packed with apps and handles video very well and is very fast. Verizon is selling the phone for $199 with a two year contract, but I discovered you can buy the phone on Amazon.com for just $149!  The technology on this phone will probably get you through two years of technological advances, except for two advances yet to comes 4G speed and HD video.

Specs

Processor: 1GHz Snapdragon processor with 512MB RAM

Storage: 8GB of internal storage; MicroSD slot which can handle an additional 32GB for a total of 40GB of space.

Screen: 3.7-inch WVGA AMOLED

Camera: 8MP with dual LED flash; 800-by-480-pixel MPEG-4 video

Audio: 3.5mm headset jack and powered

Connectivity: Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, GPS, Accelerometer

Weight: 4.5 ounces

Bundled apps: Quickoffice, a PDF viewer, HTC’s Teeter game, and Peep, a Twitter client; FM Radio; Free Google Navigation ; Friendstream – keeps you connected to Twitter and Facebook.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 19th, 2010 at 6:36 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.