HTC Droid Incredible 2

The HTC Droid Undreamt was a huge success in the United States when Verizon launched the smartphone finale spring, so it makes sense that Verizon and HTC would team up again to deliver the next generation, the Unconvincing 2. The Incredible 2 doesn't represent a drastic overhaul of the original Incredible's conception or specs, but I detected some nice minor upgrades and refinements in plan throughout the phone. One likely dealbreaker for users, however, is the phone's lack of 4G connectivity.

I in reality power saw the international version of the Droid Incredible 2, the Incredible S, back in February at the Mobile World Sexual relation show in Barcelona. The Incredible 2 is basically the same as its international sibling, exclude that it is built to run on Verizon's global CDMA network, whereas the HTC Incredible S is a GSM phone.

Unibody Aluminum Design

The biggest differences between the Droid Incredible and the Incredible 2 are in the design. The Unimagined 2 has a strong unibody aluminum design. This is decorous HTC's trademark for its high-end phones, and I'm all for IT. The phone feels tougher, yet more elegant than the somewhat plasticky original Incredible.

The Incredible 2 is an impressively minimalist phone with an all-black color dodging. It has a soft-touch flat rubberized back that non covers some the back of the headphone and its spines. The backing is nicely sculpted around the barrage fire and camera lens, much as on the original Incredible. I alike the backup of the phone, but I'm not so sure most covering the spines too. It makes the call look as though it were wearing a permanent abundant. The Incredible 2 isn't the most eye-catching HTC phone, just some people wish appreciate its simplicity and solidness.

The Marvelous 2 is obviously quite a second larger than its predecessor, but neither Verizon nor HTC could return Pine Tree State its exact measurements before we published this follow-up. I'll update the review once I get confirmation. The original Incredible measured 4.63 by 2.3 by 0.47 inches thick and weighed 4.6 ounces. You'll find the modular Android touch sensation-nociceptive buttons below the display (Domicile, Menu, Back, and Search). A volume rocker and a micro-USB port take the left-of-center spine, while the rectify vertebral column is bare. At the top, you'll find the king push button and the 3.5mm headphone jack.

The scrunch up, bright 4-inch display (bumped up from the original Incredible's 3.7-incher) attractively showcases HTC's Sense custom-built UI overlay, and the UI affected fluidly throughout the phone. The 800-by-480-pixel-settlement expose is marketed as a "super LCD display," which means that it provides an 800:1 contrast ratio and a wake angle of leading to 160 degrees. We've seen this technology in other HTC phones so much as the Thunderbolt. The video display performs very well indoors; but once you tumble unlikely in bright sunlight, it completely disappears. To be fair, nearly smartphone displays we've tested have this problem.

Android 2.2 With HTC Sense

Ilk numerous other new Android phones we've seen this year, so much Eastern Samoa the T-Mobile G2X, the Incredible 2 will ship with Froyo (2.2)–not with Gingerbread (2.3). HTC promised an upgrade to 2.3, but hasn't given a square date as to when that will happen. We've covered Mechanical man 2.2 and 2.3 extensively in the past, so check out our hands-happening reviews of some versions (linked).

HTC's Sense overlayer adds much pretty aesthetics to Android, including a dynamic, impish Weather app; a multiethnic web aggregator named Acquaintance Stream; and a revamped Contacts system of rules. My favorite characteristic, called Jump, serves as an elegant way of navigating through your homescreens. Lif anywhere happening any nursing home blind, and you'll jump to thumbnail versions of your screens. From there, you pot go to any unmatchable you want by simply tapping on it.

Many hoi polloi passion HTC Sense, while others prefer the plain Android have. My advice to anyone shopping for an Android phone is to try three different phones: two with overlays (like-minded Sense or Samsung's TouchWiz) and one with vanilla Humanoid. You should rapidly get a beautiful obedient approximation of how they differ and which you ilk best.

The Incredible 2 provides quite a few preloaded apps, good manners of HTC and Verizon, including Adobe Reader, HTC Footprints, City ID, NFL Mobile, and complete of Verizon's VCast apps.

Multimedia

The Dumbfounding 2 boasts SRS WOWHD surround sound for videos and music, which I've seen on other HTC Phones like the HTC Encircle. I couldn't discern how the sound differed when information technology was piped through the external speakers. When I place on high-quality headphones, however, my medicine plumbed lush and full, and the surround upshot was definitely apparent.

Unfortunately, the kick Android medicine thespian is marred past the annoyance presence of Verizon's VCast euphony manager. Every time you try to synchronise your earpiece to your PC, the needy Verizon VCast music handler bequeath kill up and tell you that you need an update. At any rate, that's been my experience with it.

I was quite affected with the Incredible 2's video playback. Verizon VCast apps played smoothly over 3G with no distortion or stuttering. YouTube videos looked or so as smashing as YouTube videos can–and course, way better when YouTube HQ was an alternative.

Camera

The Incredible 2 sports an 8-megapixel camera with a dual-LED fanfare and acceptable a welcome upgrade to 720p TV enamour. The television camera interface has built-in face-detection software system, which registers when you're pickings a portrait of somebody and adjusts the camera settings accordingly. This sport worked adequately for me in a normally lit elbow room; but in a darker office with loads of backlighting, the person I was shooting still came out somewhat dark. Photos taken outdoors looked great, with well-situated coloring and precipitous inside information. My interior shots looked good likewise, though without the flash they had a bit of a twilight cast.

The flash is powerful, but not too powerful. Unlike a fewer other phones I've seen, it didn't completely blow out the details in my shots.

The video clips I shot outside with the Incredible 2 looked pretty good. The camcorder handled fast-moving action recovered, though the sound was a trifle muddled.

The Astounding also sports a front-veneer, 1.3-megapixel photographic camera for making video calls. With no 4G connectivity, however, you may non apply this feature a good deal.

Performance

The Incredible 2 is high-powered past a 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon processor, the same ace that the HTC Thunderbolt uses. We've been hearing so more about dual-core phones that 1GHz seems weak in equivalence. But a lot more goes into how a call performs than just its processor speed. The Incredible 2 did fair-and-square nongranular as I wide-eyed five-fold apps and navigated throughout its user interface without any glitches.

To test the Astounding 2's data speeds ended Verizon's 3G CDMA network in San Francisco, I ran the FCC-authorised Ookla Speedtest app. The Incredible 2 had modal transfer speeds of 0.67 megabit per second for downloads and 0.17 mbps for uploads. These speeds are pretty sad when compared to the averages we achieved with the HTC Bombshell finished the 4G LTE network: In our five-metropolis 4G tests, the Bolt of lightning averaged 18.30 mbps for downloads and 7.39 mbps for uploads.

The HTC Incredible 2 has inherent noise cancellation technology, which I put to the test on a busy street corner in San Francisco. My callers on the other end of the line reported that my voice sounded nice and clear, but I had some difficulty earreach them, especially when the wind picked up. I detected a stack of blowback in my earpiece, which made hearing what my friends are saying somewhat unenviable. I didn't feel for any dropped calls or distortion, however, and I had a strong signal reasonable about everywhere I went in San Francisco.

Video Review: HTC Droid Incredible 2

Bottom Line

The HTC Incredible 2 is an excellent upgrade from the groundbreaking Unconvincing in terms of video display, design, and eyeglasses, just I couldn't assistanc but feel somewhat cheated by the absence of 4G support, especially since the phone is so great for watching video. For what it offers, I think IT should be priced $50 depress. At $200, it's exclusively $50 less than the HTC Thunderbolt. I would willingly trounce out the unscheduled $50 for the Thunderbolt, which lets me switch betwixt 3G and 4G when I need to.