After my GPS on my (Drowned) Motorola Droid failed on my business trip last week, I decided to purchase the HTC Incredible. I was initially excited to have the HTC Sense UI, but quickly I realized it comes at a cost. There are aspects of the Motorola Droid and Android I will miss because they are hidden behind the HTC SenseUI. One feature on the HTC Incredible I will never understand is why it gets stuck in reboot cycles. After connecting my Incredible to the USB ports on my Dell monitor it got stuck in a reboot cycle (4 reboots). Upon disconnecting it continued to reboot two additional times. I got a message that there was an issue with my 16GB micro SD card but after reinserting the reboots have stopped.
Dial by Name or Number
A feature I have not had on a phone in almost 5 years since leaving Windows Mobile was the ability to dial by name or number. Here is how it works: as you start typing a number the phone is filtering out all the possibilities based on both the phone numbers and names (first and last) of people in your contact list. Thus if you typed 301 you would quickly filter to show only numbers in the Maryland area where typing 76484 would filter to show you people with a name like Smith or any other combination based on those keys.
By far, the filtering feature was a killer aspect of Windows Mobile and when I moved to the iPhone, Blackberry, and then Android it was always in the back of my mind as a missing piece. From a user experience, nothing comes close to a smart way to manually dial a number. I suspect Microsoft has a patent on this concept or else some other phone would have implemented it by now. I am rather sure this is a function of the HTC SenseUI.
Copy and Paste
Outside of sucking at Microsoft Exchange support, Android really stinks at copy and paste. Copy and Paste is so bad throughout Android that it is hard to describe. In fact, I don’t even talk about it when listing features of the phone. In the web browser, the HTC Sense UI implemented the copy and paste functionality of the iPhone. This is good for getting content on web pages. Seeing this functionality almost made me tear up as I thought it would be all over the phone. Well it wasn’t! Smacked back to reality. I loaded up GMail and there was this nasty inability to copy part of an email courtesy of the Android operating system. Forgive me for having an Apple moment but this lack of end user consistency is what impacts the user experience. There is no doubt that Android needs a skin like the SenseUI, but it impacts the experience between Android devices and it is not pervasive throughout the phone. The result is a brilliant experience some of the time and an annoying experience other parts of the time trying to perform the same action.
Personalize
HTC has a dedicated area to personalizing the phone this includes Scenes, Home wallpaper, and default ring tones. The built-in themes include:
- Verizon Scene
- HTC
- Social
- Work
- Play
- Travel
- Clean Slate
I started with Clean Slate and built the experience I wanted on the phone. This is not to say the other scenes are not nice. The truth is, I liked many of the scenes, but I know what apps and widgets I want quick access to after using the Droid over the last several months.
Proximity Sensors
On the Incredible I believe the proximity sensors are located on the upper left side of the phone screen. This is purely speculation on my part. For those not familiar, the proximity sensors are designed to detect when the phone is put to your face during a call. The sensors detect the distance and turn the screen off to prevent muting, hanging up, or other annoying accidents during a call. On the Blackberry Storm is was a huge issue on the initial launch and a lot of users purchased software to lock the screen during calls. On my Motorola Droid I had no issues with reading emails during a call but on the Incredible the location of the proximity sensors prevent me from interacting with the upper portion of the screen. For example, I cannot pull down the notification panel, because when my finger gets to that area the screen goes black, and yes, I know that if I go to Home, then click Menu, I can access notifications. This is a minor annoyance but something that was not an issue on my Motorola Droid.
Almost a Dedicated Phone Button
In an effort to create a minimalist look on the mobile phone, the dedicated talk and hang up buttons have been removed. A value of the HTC SenseUI is the almost dedicated phone button. Regardless which of your home screens you are on, the phone button follows you. This does not replace the desire for a dedicated calling button but it is a nice feature of the HTC Android experience.
Overall, I do like the HTC Incredible. It is light, thin, and an amazingly powerful phone. The Incredible is packed with many features that all make for an amazing experience. The expose view for navigation of your home screens is brilliant (Press the home button from the default home screen). The phone is not without its flaws, such as short battery life or the Apps not automatically installing once Google credentials are entered. Despite the flaws, I like the phone overall. If you’re considering an upgrade of your Android handset, first setup your account with AppBrain. This will make app reinstall a snap. Or, use a dedicated app backup program like AppControl. Another post detailing these options is in the works. Stay tuned!
