Expensive, but the best Android smartphone in the market until the dual-cores come along.
The HTC Incredible S wasn't love at first sight for me. That may be because it is just another 'droid, or it is simply down to the horrible name. Nokia may bore you to death with robotic naming convention, but on the other hand, HTC blurs the line between creativity and hilarity with phones such as HTC Hero, Trophy, Rider, Flyer, Dream and Chacha. However, I can't seem to get my hands off this phone - banal nomenclature notwithstanding. The device may not look stunning, but it blends subtlety with out-of-the-box design cues. While it certainly can't beat Nokia N8's excellent anodized aluminium unibody, the attention to detail that HTC has put into the Incredible S is remarkable nonetheless.
Unboxing and Introduction
The phone supports PC charging through the micro-USB cable, HTC also throws in a wall-socket-to-USB adapter for the times when you don't have access to a PC. The supplied headset sticks to tradition with its ugly looks and lacklustre sound quality. Since the phone has only 1GB of internal memory, the retail package mercifully includes an 8 GB microSD card. A rubberised plastic construction provides a comfortable grip over the device. It is good to see HTC experiment with the body material, instead of replicating the design cues of phones such as iPhone and Samsung Galaxy series. The back-cover protrudes along the outline of the battery, but instead of forming a rectangle, it assumes the shape of a SIM card.
The phone has dimensions of 120 x 64 x 11.7 mm and weighs 135.5 g. The Incredible S sports a 4" S-LCD display, which is nothing short of spectacular. The panel has pixel dimensions of 480x800. Despite being an LCD, the display is as good as any fancy AMOLED or Super-AMOLED display. It delivers vivid colours with great contrasts and maintains definition even over acute viewing angles. Sadly, the display tends to reflect light. Even though the text remains readable, the colours seem to fade out under the sun.
Just below the display are four capacitive keys - Home, Menu, Back, and Search. Being capacitive, the keys won't react to anything but your finger. The placement of these keys and the backlight goes perfectly with the display. These capacitive keys even auto-rotate along with it; while that adds nothing to functionality, it looks damn good.
A lock/power button and a 3.5 mm jack reside at the top edge. The volume rocker on the left edge of the phone is flanked by a bare micro-USB port. The right edge has nothing, where a camera key is conspicuous by its absence. Not only does it rob one of the pleasures of using the phone like a standalone camera, but it prevents one-touch-triggering of the autofocus feature. The rear bears a relatively large lens with dual-LED flash and a loudspeaker grille.
The battery cover is easy to release, as long as you can pry it open with your fingernails. It reveals a SIM Card and a MicroSD memory card slot. The bundled 8GB memory card isn't sufficient to hold a good collection of music and movies. A miserly 1 GB internal memory doesn't help matters either. That's a shame when the market is rife with the likes of Nokia N8 and Samsung Galaxy S - both of which boast of 16 GB internal storage. A gigabyte will never be sufficient, considering the number of Android apps available - most of which will be installed to the internal memory.
The HTC Incredible S wasn't love at first sight for me. That may be because it is just another 'droid, or it is simply down to the horrible name. Nokia may bore you to death with robotic naming convention, but on the other hand, HTC blurs the line between creativity and hilarity with phones such as HTC Hero, Trophy, Rider, Flyer, Dream and Chacha. However, I can't seem to get my hands off this phone - banal nomenclature notwithstanding. The device may not look stunning, but it blends subtlety with out-of-the-box design cues. While it certainly can't beat Nokia N8's excellent anodized aluminium unibody, the attention to detail that HTC has put into the Incredible S is remarkable nonetheless.
Unboxing and Introduction
The phone supports PC charging through the micro-USB cable, HTC also throws in a wall-socket-to-USB adapter for the times when you don't have access to a PC. The supplied headset sticks to tradition with its ugly looks and lacklustre sound quality. Since the phone has only 1GB of internal memory, the retail package mercifully includes an 8 GB microSD card. A rubberised plastic construction provides a comfortable grip over the device. It is good to see HTC experiment with the body material, instead of replicating the design cues of phones such as iPhone and Samsung Galaxy series. The back-cover protrudes along the outline of the battery, but instead of forming a rectangle, it assumes the shape of a SIM card.
The phone has dimensions of 120 x 64 x 11.7 mm and weighs 135.5 g. The Incredible S sports a 4" S-LCD display, which is nothing short of spectacular. The panel has pixel dimensions of 480x800. Despite being an LCD, the display is as good as any fancy AMOLED or Super-AMOLED display. It delivers vivid colours with great contrasts and maintains definition even over acute viewing angles. Sadly, the display tends to reflect light. Even though the text remains readable, the colours seem to fade out under the sun.
Just below the display are four capacitive keys - Home, Menu, Back, and Search. Being capacitive, the keys won't react to anything but your finger. The placement of these keys and the backlight goes perfectly with the display. These capacitive keys even auto-rotate along with it; while that adds nothing to functionality, it looks damn good.
A lock/power button and a 3.5 mm jack reside at the top edge. The volume rocker on the left edge of the phone is flanked by a bare micro-USB port. The right edge has nothing, where a camera key is conspicuous by its absence. Not only does it rob one of the pleasures of using the phone like a standalone camera, but it prevents one-touch-triggering of the autofocus feature. The rear bears a relatively large lens with dual-LED flash and a loudspeaker grille.
The battery cover is easy to release, as long as you can pry it open with your fingernails. It reveals a SIM Card and a MicroSD memory card slot. The bundled 8GB memory card isn't sufficient to hold a good collection of music and movies. A miserly 1 GB internal memory doesn't help matters either. That's a shame when the market is rife with the likes of Nokia N8 and Samsung Galaxy S - both of which boast of 16 GB internal storage. A gigabyte will never be sufficient, considering the number of Android apps available - most of which will be installed to the internal memory.
