First of all, I'd like to tell you a little about myself so you get an idea of where I am coming from. I am a college student in computer engineering, and have never had a smartphone before. My previous phone was an LG env2, which while a solid phone had little in the way of multimedia features. I've been waiting for months to purchase an iPhone (and jealously eying my dad's iPhone in the process), but decided to go with the Incredible instead when it became clear the iPhone wasn't coming to Verizon and I couldn't be happier.
The primary reason I decided to go with this phone initially was because of Verizon. My dad has an iPhone 3GS, and even though it is a slick device with great apps and a nice interface, he struggles to get reception both at home and at work (and he lives near a major university and works on that university campus). No matter how awesome a phone is on it's own merits, what good is it if it can't receive calls in the two places where you spend the majority of your time on a daily basis? Note that he is clearly within the stated coverage area for AT&T. As for Verizon, they have an awesome network - I can get 3G in the building where I work while all other networks can't even get cell phone signal.
The second reason I went with Android over the iPhone was because of development. While I don't plan to be a heavy developer, I like the ability to write a simple application if I see the need without having to have both a mac and a developer's license. Additionally, the ability to supply an app outside the app store gives nice flexibility if I don't want to go to all the trouble to have it listed or if I just want to share it with a few people. On that note, while the Android store isn't great and certainly isn't anywhere near as good as the Apple app store, I find that ~95% of the apps I want are available there (plus the awesomeness of several google apps like navigation, maps, goggles and gmail that aren't available through apple), and find that using google search in combination with the Android store is a viable (if somewhat less elegant) alternative to the apple store. Also, the ability to run live widgets (applications that show information passively without being interacted with on home screens) is a nice feature of the Android phone over the iPhone as well.
Now that I've explained why I went with a Verizon Android phone, I'll explain why I went with the HTC Incredible over several other worthy options. The main choices I had with Verizon were the Moto Droid and the HTC Eris. The Eris is designed to be a cheaper, mid-level android device and while there is nothing wrong with that, it wasn't exactly what I was looking for. As for the Droid, it is in my opinion the only serious competitor for the Incredible in the Verizon lineup. While noticeably inferior hardware-wise, it has the advantage of slightly better battery life and a physical keyboard, as opposed to the Incredible's soft keyboard. This does come at the price of making the device noticeably thicker, however, so that's something to be aware of. Personally, I find that with the text-to-speech features and custom on-screen keyboards like swype (which allows you to slide your fingers between keys to make words instead of pressing them - very handy), I can actually type faster than I can on a physical keyboard. But if a physical keyboard is a must, go with the Moto Droid. Additionally, this is definitely personal preference but I really do like the Sense UI of the HTC phones much better than the UI for the Moto phones - it comes off as much more polished and usable in my opinion without sacrificing any of the power of the base interface.
Additionally, be aware that there is another Moto Droid on the way in the next month - the Droid Shadow or the Droid 2 as it is sometimes called. It apparently has, among other things, an updated UI and the same processor as the Incredible (1 GHz snapdragon), but details besides that are sparse. If you aren't sold on the Incredible, it may be to your advantage to wait and see more details on this phone to see if it fits your needs better.
I guess I should probably say a few things about the Incredible itself now - it feels great in my hands, is responsive when I move between applications and windows and has a very nice camera. I was a little disappointed by how much battery the camera uses, but that's to be expected I guess. That leads in to perhaps my biggest disappointment with the phone - the battery life. Coming from an env2 which I had to plug in about once every 10 days, I find myself having to plug this in more than once a day to make it through the day. While a much shorter life than my env2 is to be expected, I was hoping it would last at least a full day of on-and-off moderate to heavy usage, but it can't. However, I have a microUSB cable at work and at home, and I find that if I just put it on the charger whenever I am near my computer and let it charge overnight, that it lasts long enough to get me through those times when I can't charge it.
To summarize:
Advantages of Incredible over iPhone:
-Verizon
-Open platform
-Customizable
-App Deployment/Development
-Live widgets
-Full multitasking with any app
-No iTunes dependency and the ability to sync with multiple computers
Advantages of iPhone over Incredible:
-Apps/app finding
-Ease of use/learning curve
-Battery life optimization
-HD video shooting
-Better integrated multimedia apps (music, video watching, etc)
-Standardization (development for one platform vs. many platforms)
没有评论:
发表评论