David Theiss

As many surely know, Verizon has taken direct aim at AT&T and the iPhone with their new “Droid” line of handsets running Google’s Android operating system.  Technically, the newly released HTC Incredible is the successor to the original Droid which has sold extremely well in the United States since its launch in November.  My wireless contract just ended, so I bought the Incredible on the day of its release, and luckily too, as my BlackBerry abruptly decided to stop turning on the very next day.  My quick thoughts on the phone are as follows:

• The first thing you’ll notice when you pick up the device is the screen – and that’s because the screen is the phone.  The 3.7 inch AMOLED screen is pretty amazing, but not as striking as all the published online reviews would lead you to believe.  It’s nice, but I’m not sure I could tell the different between it an the WVGA screen of the original Droid.  I have yet to see them side by side, so maybe I could.  But as of now, the screen is brilliant but not a gamechanger.
• The second thing you’ll notice is the phone is thin – super thin.  I’ve been using a BlackBerry Curve 8330 for the past 2 years and the HTC Increidble literally feels like half a phone.  At first I didn’t like it because it made the handset feel fragile, but over time I’ve gotten used to it.  It’s really amazing how thin these devices are getting and I can’t even imagine the form factor of the device I’ll buy 2 years from now.
• Then there’s the much ballyhooed 1GHz “Snapdragon” processor inside which allows the phone to flat-out fly.  There’s no such thing as lag on this device.  App downloads literally take less than 10 seconds over Verizon’s 3G network and web pages load at an alarming speed.  I haven’t had  too much experience with it over WiFi, but I suspect that when I do, I will be equally impressed.
• The raised back cover is not the eyesore I expected, but rather it provides a nice soft-feel grip when holding the phone.  A real plus and not worth all the negative speculation it got in the run-up to its release.
• Signing in with your Google account and having the deep integration with all the Google services you use is the biggest advantage over the iPhone in my book.  Gmail, Contacts, Google Voice, Youtube, Google Docs, and many more that I have yet to use on the phone are all there and readily available and usable on Android.  Amazing.
• Also, moving from a phone with a full QWERTY keyboard (BlackBerry) to this couldn’t have been less painful.  Typing is easy as can be and the new voice-to-text input option is friggin’ awesome.  Until getting this device I was leery of using a touchscreen only phone for fear that typing and data input would be a hassle.  It isn’t.  I can definitively say touchscreen’s are the future (I do miss my big keyboard juuuust a little, though).
• As for the negative, there’s really only one thing: battery life.  A full day of heavy use is impossible with the current battery.  A full day of moderate use is still hard to achieve.  I’m toying with the idea of buying a larger battery, but I really don’t want to.  You shouldn’t have to blow an extra $50 just so you can use your phone for a single full day.  Turn off the WiFi and GPS when you’re not using it and use a Task Killer to keep power consumption down.  Other than that, there’s little you can do to save battery.  It’s really disappointing.

In all, I’m thoroughly impressed with the phone and extremely happy I bought it.  It’s a huge step up from anything BlackBerry has to offer and really rivals (and in many aspects, surpasses) the iPhone.  Android is an amazingly power OS and the HTC Sense UI (that I thought I wouldn’t like, by the way) really pretties it up and makes it more user friendly.  I’m eager to see what the next iPhone has to offer aside from the OS 4.0 updates that were rolled out a few weeks ago. But in all, the HTC Incredible is truly a fantastic device and will be very hard to top.

This story would have been cool had I written this in 2008.

But unfortunately, the people who run Research in Motion do one thing well (that is make an epic full-keyboard messaging phone) and really are ignorant to the rest of the world.  And as all other phone manufacturers started to encroach into RIM’s wheelhouse – things like security and Enterprise support, also a solid e-mail experience – they failed to expand and adapt to the changing environment.  And as a result, BlackBerry is on the verge of irrelevance to basically all consumers except those who a) are already committed to the platform, or b) require heavy mobile messaging devices.

But the folks up in Waterloo are trying to change that.  They attempted to make a multi-media intensive device (the Storm series) and failed rather spectacularly and their newest entry into the Bold line is a pretty impressive device.  The knock against these devices, as phones move more and more in the direction of mobile PC’s, is that the native BlackBerry browser is basically garbage.  And it is.  There’s really no excuse for how bad the BlackBerry Internet experience is.  I know from painful, painful experience.

That leads to the big reveal today at the Mobile Web Congress.  In hopes of improving their own browser, RIM bought Torch Mobile in August 2009, a company that developed a browser built on the WebKit devlopment technology.  Which only means, their new browser will be made with the same technology that all the better mobile browsers (iPhone, Android, webOS) are made with.  The the below videos is the first anybody as ever seen of it.

While the verdict is still out, I can do nothing but shrug my shoulders at this latest development.  BlackBerry has kind of lost me.  I own one now and really don’t plan on re-upping with a new device with or without this new addition.  I didn’t have a bad experience, I’ve just moved on.  I’ve been seduced by the sweet Siren calls of Android.  But maybe this changed minds for some people.

All you need is love.