The HTC Droid Incredible Review, Clearly Better than the Nexus One
by Anand Lal Shimpi on May 10, 2010 1:27 PM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Snapdragon
- Droid Incredible
- HTC
- Android
- Mobile
Verizon/HTC: Not Treating Tetherers Like Criminals
Sandwiched in between a manual about your phone and one about Verizon is a curious little sheet of paper. On it there are instructions telling you how to download the Verizon Wireless Access Manager. Using that utility you can, with the blessing of both HTC and Verizon, tether your phone to your PC over USB and use your smartphone data plan as your mobile broadband connection:
The process requires you first selecting the device you own and second typing in your Verizon phone number. There is of course an additional charge for tethering and you're limited to 5GB of transfers per month, but this is much, much better than the alternative from the iPhone world. There you either get to choose to participate in a constant game of cat and mouse by jailbreaking your phone and waiting for Apple to introduce a spicy new update that breaks your jailbroken phone, or you get to cling longingly to AT&T's empty promise that iPhone tethering would be coming sometime soon. In fact, while Verizon is encouraging you to tether from the moment you open the box, AT&T is shipping another Apple device with absolutely zero official tethering support. I'm not even arguing that tethering should be free or cost less (which it should), I'm just saying that it's ridiculous to not give customers the option to pay more to use the data connection they're already paying for on another device without forcing a SIM swap.
With that off my chest, it's on to the way the Incredible tethers. Plug in your USB cable, fire up the Verizon Access Manager software, type in your information and you're good to go. HTC has an option to enable Mobile Broadband Connect directly on the phone. Verizon makes it ultra not clear that you need to have a $30 ($25 for a limited time) Mobile Broadband Connect plan to take advantage of this, but you do. Now in terms of making your money back, that's not too difficult. It usually costs $10 - $15 to get internet access at a hotel with a dubious amount of security. Just three days of remote WiFi pays for itself if you've got MBC, not to mention that you can use it anywhere.
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rpmurray - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
So, now that we have a smartphone with Flash, how well does it play those Flash games like Farmville?Johnmcl7 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Actually we've had one for a while in the form of the N900 which has had full Flash support from the start, it can load the likes of Farmville/Mafia Wars fine although it can be a bit sluggishJaybus - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
Motorola Droid also does Flash.coburn_c - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
qualcomm scorpion?pookguy88 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Anand, one thing you left out of your review which is really important to me with regards to Nexus vs Incredible is the charging/docking pins. I love being able to just slide my Nexus into the desktop charger without plugging anything in. I know it's a minor detail but that's a big feature for me coming from Blackberry hardware. Makes using the phone as an alarm clock possible.cfaalm - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
New as it may be, I still think the Legend looks better. It has many of the features mentioned here but a much more beautiful (one piece aluminum) body. OK it has a trackball, which I happen to like, though I do wonder what to do if dirt gets in.homebredcorgi - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
"3G performance was better on the Incredible than on the AT&T Nexus One."Did you mean T-mobile instead of AT&T? I was under the impression that the N1 is set up for T-Mobile's 3G network only. If you used it with an AT&T SIM you would only have EDGE data speeds (no 3G).
secretanchitman - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
google sells a version of the nexus one with AT&T 3G bands now :)homebredcorgi - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Bah! Completely forgot about that...having no advertising campaign to speak of certainly hasn't helped my memory. Thanks for the correction.Pirks - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
"And we all know how that worked out for the PC OEMs; they ship a ton of systems and Apple makes all the money."I and reader1 love you Anand! Keep it up man :) Your reviews are the best, as always.