My Incredible - First Impressions. How about yours?

[y0diggity]

Some thoughts and things I've noticed about my Incredible after the first day of use. This is from someone who is just moving a Moto Droid to the Incredible, so some of these may be normal HTC things.

• When using TuneSync for my music, the wifi connection is sketchy. Regardless of what I set the "sleep" properties for, it just seems to time out occasionally. This is annoying
• My Bluetooth on the phone is wonky. When I'm using it in the car with my Motorola T505 hands free and I have my music streaming to my radio, the sound will cut out for a brief second about every 2 - 4 minutes. Again, annoying. Haven't tried taking a call on it yet, but I hope it doesn't do that during calls.
• The HTC versions of some of the apps I use are really pretty cool. The Friend Stream is one that I really like. There are a couple others, but I can't recall them right off hand.
• I've noticed that the signal (both carrier and wifi) seems to be weaker than on my Droid. In fact, to test my observations, I walked around the office and around my house with them side by side and it was consistently weaker. Not sure what that's about, but it really hasn't affected anything that I've noticed. I figure as long as the device still does what I want it too, I don't worry too much about what the signal displays say.
• Coming from the Droid to the incredible made setup a bit difficult for me. I had a tough time finding what I wanted sometimes when looking through options and I almost smashed the thing when it continued to notify every time I got an email. I get a LOT of emails. I couldn't find out where to turn that off at and it was absolutely driving me nuts. Of course, when I found it, it was in a reasonably logical location, so shame on me, but still...
• I really love the camera on it. It just took some great pictures yesterday. Amazing in my opinion.
• I'm not entirely certain where things are saved right now. I read the options in the settings, and I assume that when it says "phone memory" that it means the 8gb of onboard. I hope so. I put a 16gb card in it, so that's where I put my music, but my photos are hopefully going on the 8gb internal. Who knows? I spose if its the 512mb or whatever that the phone will warn me when it's about full.
• The thing is FAST. It runs live wallpapers and still zooms through Sense UI like it was nothing. That was one of the biggest factors in my decision to switch.

*edit*

• Another thing that bugs me is that when I make a call to my wife, it defaults to the primary number in her contact which is her cell, but when I go to text her it defaults to her work number. Whats up with that? I sent her a couple texts yesterday and wasn't paying attention and then I got a couple messages back from some Alltel service saying it delivered my messages to a landline succesfully via some sort of text to voice service. I'm sure her job loved that...

So there you have it. Things I can think of right off hand this morning. Overall I really like the phone. How about you other folks? What do you think about yours? I've read about a couple things that seem to be common issues in certain clusters, but for those that haven't had any major "I'm returning the phone" type issues, how do you feel about it? Was it worth it? Not worth it? Anyone kicking themselves for making the switch?

Speak up!

[mohmandm]

I'm going from the original EnV to this phone so anything is better.  First I'll go through the likes.  I try to be positive.

-Droid OS (Friend Stream, custom-ability, speed, abundance of apps)

-Camera takes great shots in the right conditons

-Speeeeeeeeeeed

-Screen Clarity

Now for my dislikes

-Battery seems to be going really quickly.  I was warned saying I needed a recharge after 4 hours.  Granted I was using it non stop, messing with GPS, Pandora, etc but that was really quick.  I'm debating on getting the higher capacity battery.

-Notification Alerts.  Is it just me?  I can't get the phone to vibrate when I get an email, text message, voicemail...  I have the phone on vibrate, I put in the settings to have it sent me a notification as well as vibrate.  I just can't figure it out.

-The signal does seem to be low.  It is usually on 1 or 2 bars and I am in a very populated area outside of detroit.  The actually call and data usage doesn't seem sluggish even though it is 1 or 2 though.

- I was taking pics at the rainforest cafe for a friend's child's bday.  It was too dark without flash and too bright with flash...

- For some reason now as I started this message.  My phone keeps moving home screens w/o even touching it.

[kenyu73]

The radio issue may be just a display bug as they're talking about it in AndroidForums.com.

The settings are hidden all over the place with HTC, haha... but mainly, SMS and the email apps both control their own notification setups (ie: vibrate, notification bar, notify light, etc).

If your SMS is defaulting to a landline, it must be because you have that number listed as "MOBILE" in your address book. I had a few like that when I first got my Eris.... correctly setting up your numbers is KEY!

[y0diggity]

---

kenyu73 wrote:

The radio issue may be just a display bug as they're talking about it in AndroidForums.com.

The settings are hidden all over the place with HTC, haha... but mainly, SMS and the email apps both control their own notification setups (ie: vibrate, notification bar, notify light, etc).

If your SMS is defaulting to a landline, it must be because you have that number listed as "MOBILE" in your address book. I had a few like that when I first got my Eris.... correctly setting up your numbers is KEY!

---

Settings are definitely all over the place.

Your thought of the work number being listed as mobile got me wondering so I went and checked. No dice. It's listed as work. Bummer...

[kenyu73]

@ y0diggity

How are you starting the text?

If I go into "Compose" and start typing my wifes names, I get all contact references then I select her cell number

If I tap "Phone" then long press here name in my recent calls, I get an option to "Send Text Message", I choose that and it brings up her cell as it should.

I do know if you use "Favoties" you can setup a default action, like call cell or send text. Is this where you're seeing the issue?

[y0diggity]

Yeah, if I reply or something, it goes to the number she texted me from. But if I go to "new message" and start typing her name, it starts to pop up her numbers and I just tap it and go, but the first one it pops up is her work number. I was just thinking that it would be nice if the first one it brought up was the one marked as "primary" in the contact. I mean, it makes sense that it would. Not a major complaint, just an annoying observation.

I tried to add it to favorites, but it won't let me have a favorite for calling and a favorite for texting with the same contact. So since I already have her in there as a favorite to call, I can't add an additional item that would be for messaging.

[Livefortherayz]

I love the phone, very impressed. Keep in mind that I owned an LG Dare before this and never had a smart phone before.

Likes:

     •  Screens bright, clear, responsive, at times I have had to tap it more than once..but it's rare. Way better than the dare..

     *  The phone sounds great, not a lot of distortion or reverberation at high volume

     *  This is more of an Android thing, but having all my Facebook, email, and phone contacts linked by person is amazing..

     *  The browser is great and the multi touch is intuitive and is wonderful while browsing.

     *  The camera takes WONDERFUL pictures for phone. I saw negative reviews online and I just don't see why, no issues here.

     *  Having the FM when you have Headphones in (act as antennae), is great, so I don't have to use an app or online stream.

     *  Battery does okay in my opinion, considering it's size and how many things I have going on simultaneously.

     *  The keyboards are Great. Especially the small vertical one, does pretty well for it being touch and so small.

     *  The phone is a little Faster than what I expected, didn't really know what to expect though I guess.

     *  Very secure lock feature, my last touch phone Butt dialed people constantly by unlocking in my pocket..

     *  I like the capacitive buttons, and their responsiveness, much better than clunky buttons, like the clean lines, phone looks               much better in person than it does in pictures.

     *  Have had no problems connecting to any networks, no re-boot issues, pretty much no anything (One in dislikes, minor)

Dislikes:

     *  Though the phone does NOT feel cheap in any way, Im scared to death to drop it, or I think it would be lights out.

     *  Considering what I said in likes about the battery, I do wish they had battery upgrade options, like larger capacity..

     *  Very big disappointment, I can't talk and then txt, web, or use other phone apps simultaneously, once on a call thats all I can         do. My Dare could do that.....

     *  Big one for me, I wish I could use the music I ALREADY own,like from my Itunes library or music off of my comp..maybe                there is an app, idk.

     *  After letting my battery run down completely, the phone wouldn't charge. But a simple battery removal re-insert fixed.

So obviously, I love the phone and there is more I like and more I haven't even discovered.. Some of my issues are more OS related than phone related too probably.  But android OS and my incredible are just that to me, INCREDIBLE

[y0diggity]

Try an app called "tunesync" for your music. It installs on your phone and your pc. Then you set it up and tell it which playlist to sync from your itunes, and it syncs up over your wifi connection. For mine, I just have a playlist in itunes called "droid" and tunesync checks periodically throughout the day to see whether I'm on my home wifi or not and if I am, it checks for changes in that playlist. If it finds any, it takes the appropriate action. Very nice app and well worth the 3.99 to not have to mess with dragging and dropping or setting up WMP on my pc along with itunes.

You can find it in the marketplace and check out their website at www.highwindsoftware.com

[Livefortherayz]

Hey, thank you. I have a Mac OS, so thats what I worried about for apps, but I see the mac version is there. Thanks again, big help!

[Livefortherayz]

Actually, I don't have a wi-fi router, I just use the local Wifi internet connection at my complex..   So, is there a similar app that does the same, but can be done with a mac and a usb cable or by bluetooth or something? I guess it's just the drag and drop you were talking about..

[y0diggity]

Hmmm.... So you don't have any way to connect from one pc to the other? That makes it tough. But, you can still plug your phone into your computer and just drag and drop the music manually onto your phone. It doesn't matter where you put it, the phone will find it and use it in the library, but I prefer to make a folder called "music" or whatever and just keep it in there. That way it just stays a little more organized than filling up the root of your storage with a million music files.

[pappyharley]

SO far I've had no issues with the Incredible. My only gripe having been an avid Iphone user is that you HAVE to pat for visual voice mail. In the scope of things it's a minor issue altought i find after using iphone VVM that regular VM is a big pain. I don't really agree with Verizon milking something from consumers that should be included, especially if Verizon wants to be REALLY competitive. Other than this it's a great phone far better than the iphone in terms of performance. I really hope Verizon reads these posts. Peace Out!

[y0diggity]

So after a few more days, I have a few more observations.

• The battery life is just ridiculous. I know it's a powerful device, but someone's going to make a load of money off of selling extended-life batteries, guaranteed.
• What happened to the Picasa album showing up in my photos app? I know there are decent workarounds, but that was one of my favorite parts of the 2.1 upgrade on my Moto Droid. Still not a deal breaker, but that sort of chapped my hide.
• I'm still getting used to the HTC Sense UI. I'm getting better with it, but why are all of the settings scattered all over the place? Craziness...
• Bluetooth and my music player on my Moto hands-free in the car still do that skipping thing. I DEFINITELY don't like that. I've tried to look into it and see what the heck could be causing it, but I just haven't been able to nail it down yet. This is probably the #1 on my list of things that I don't like about my new phone.
• The wifi sleep options don't seem to do much of anything. I've tried changing the settings, but the app I use to sync my phone with iTunes still times out when the phone sleeps. I know this isn't normal behavior because my Moto Droid didn't have a bit of problems doing this when I set the wifi to not sleep.

Still like the phone overall though.

[Elad13]

Porting over from At&t and my beloved HTC Tilt as been great so far! the service is better in my house which is great, and the learning curve is not so bad thanks to the forums here and at phonescoop. I LOVE the display on this phone the camera is really much better then anything else I have seen on the market right now. I had left verizon a long time ago because they cut out a lot of features the phone has....back then the big deal was real ringtones. SO I went to At&t to a HTC 5600..I have pretty much stuck with HTC products...lets hope this incredible holds up as good as those did. SO far everything is workign out great! I could not be any happier!. Not only did I get this phone but also they ported my wife over so the deal I got was this....1 incredible, (199)1 moto droid (Free) 1-16gb card, 2 covers(1 for each phone) a $95 credit for my wifes account for the at&t cancelation fee and a car charger...so I left the store with 2 new phones and accessories for about $200 (this is subtracting the 2-$100 mail in rebates). Plus a $95 credit towards my wifes next bill and on top of all of that my plan was about $50 cheaper.

The phone so far has no cons to me, maybe about the only thing I hate is that the data cable and the home charger are the same cable so I have to move it from one room to another, but I will buy another one down the road. Battery life is an issue but with my car charger and an extended battery coming out soon, that shouldn't be a big concern. Really I can not think of any reason anyone wanting to get a new phone should not at least consider this option....I never had an Iphone but I see this as just as good if not better...my friend that has had an iphone is a little jealous of some of the phones features and amazing speed!

[ModernTenshi04]

I purchased mine yesterday, switching over from the iPhone.  Let it be know that I still have a tremendous amount of respect for the iPhone, but it simply wasn't giving me a lot of what I wanted, and looking at the Android sector, Android would give me a lot of what I wanted.  I've also not experienced a lot of the problems with AT&T that most people seem to complain about, and I was with them for 6 years prior to this.  However, given recent developments with their 3G network (mainly matters pertaining to video streaming with the iPad), I've decided to give Verizon a go.

Anyway, I'm simply floored by this phone.  The screen is large and insanely clear.  I really love how light and thin the Incredible is, especially for how powerful the handset is.

I've loaded several apps thus far, a lot of them being apps I previously had on my iPhone, with some new ones as well.  I was miffed at how basic the music app is by default, but upon learning about bTunes and summarily downloading the player, I'm very satisfied.  This action also outlines a major reason I switched to the Android platform: if I don't like the way something is, I can likely find something else that will suit my needs.  So far I'm not really finding anything that I had on my iPhone that I can't get on my new Incredible, with the exception of some games.  I'm terribly sad that I won't be able to experience Squares new iPhone exclusive RPG, which I hear is fantastic, but I'm hoping they'll start porting some stuff over eventually, as they do enjoy money.

Regarding battery life, I simply don't know what a lot of people are complaining about.  I have my brightness set pretty low, and I kill apps with relative regularity (though ATK is set to be aggressive every 30 minutes, so that could also help), and I'm really not noticing a major hit in battery life compared to my old iPhone.  I've had it off the charger for 5 hours now, and I'm only down to 50% battery life.  This is with about half the time being on WiFi, and the other half being on 3G, with fairly frequent Tweeting, GTalk, and some light email, along with installing some apps and light web browsing.

I'm wondering if a lot of the complaints are stemming form people who have never owned a smartphone before, let alone one this powerful, and not understanding that you need to do things a tad bit differently with them.

Then again there's not a whole lot new with this phone compared to my old iPhone (app wise anyway), so maybe people are just playing with it too much and not realizing it.

That said, I do still intend to buy the 1750mAh extended battery for my Incredible, simply to give it epic battery life based on my current usage standards.

Overall, very satisfied with the purchase.

[n1acguy]

This is my first smartphone, so I'm not sure what to expect, but so far I like it.

The first day, mine did a hard lockup. Had to remove the battery. It hasn't done it since.

I really liked being able to book a hotel on short notice by selecting the location's phone # from the website. Maybe other smart phones do this, but I'm impressed. 

Was it supposed to come with a paper manual?

I found it doing a Google search. The Verizon site wouldn't let me select this phone model under support. I had to wing the first part and didn't realize the charge light would change color once it was fully charged. I hope I charged it enough before I used it.

After coming from an LG Dare I already see it's superiority even without setting it up.

FWIW, no more LG phones for me. I thought they had time to evolve since my first junk LG phone. Not so.

[budone]

No most phones anymore have their manual online.

Here is a link.

HTC Incredible Manual

[linda7915]

Having trouble with keeping the 3G network.  On Friday, lost the network in the morning.  I thought maybe Verizon was having trouble so waited until afternoon and called them.  She had me remove the battery, wait 10 secs and then put it back.  That worked.  Then, Saturday, I was traveling and lost it again.  Did the battery thing and got it working again.  About 10 miles later, same thing.  When I got home, it was still gone, so I did it again and got it back.  This is frustrating. The lady at Verizon said that she had not heard of the issue as of yesterday afternoon and told me to email her if it happened again, which I did.

 Anyone else having this problem?  

[ModernTenshi04]

Couple of gripes:

The accelarometer seems to be pretty bad.  I can't count how many times I've taken an app horizontal, then I want to return to being vertical, but it'll take several seconds to recognize this, and sometimes I have to shake the phone to make it happen.  Coming from the iPhone, that's pretty terrible.

I'm also really missing not having a dock.  I loved being able to come home and just plop my iPhone into its dock on my nightstand to let it charge.  Connecting it to a USB cable that's connected to my PC just feels old.  Yes I know it comes with a wall adapter, but it's still not as easy as just setting it in a cradle of some sort.

[kenyu73]

There is a desk dock for it, but it may be out of stock or online only. All I know is my local store is out of them.

[ModernTenshi04]

I haven't seen a desk dock for it.  You got a link for where it's being sold by any chance?