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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Chloiber - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
"If you want to quickly see what’s on all of your home screens just press the optical joystick and you’ll zoom out to see all five screens at once."Five? Really? ;)
Chloiber - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Sorry, still no edit.But:
"There’s still no way to delete multiple emails at once, no way to copy/paste from an email and no way to search through emails stored on an IMAP server other than Gmail. Imperfect much?"
I hope I'm not wrong: but isn't it the exact same mail app as in the HTC Desire. There is a GMAIL App and a MAIL app. You CAN copy/paste from the normal Mail app and you CAN delete multiple messages from the standard Mail app.
jasperjones - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
+1I'm on a Nexus One here and I can delete multiple emails at once in the Gmail app. Just tap on the check mark (to the left of the email title) for each email you want to delete. On the bottom of the screen, a delete button automatically pops up. Tap it--done.
Copy-and-paste works only if you're editing an email.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
But can you delete multiple emails in the standard Mail app? I haven't been able to find a way to do this. In fact, deleting emails is a bit of a pain as there's no swipe to delete. You have to hit the confirmation box for every message you delete.Take care,
Anand
jasperjones - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Anand,I set up the regular mail app just to test. It's exactly the same thing as in the gmail app: you hit those little, greyed out check marks to the left of the email subject. After checking the first message, on the bottom of the screen, the virtual buttons "Mark read," "Add star," and "Delete" appears. Again, the is on the Nexus One (with stock firmware). No troubles deleting multiple emails at once at all...
Jaybus - Tuesday, May 11, 2010 - link
Works the same on my Motorola Droid. In the list of e-mails, just touch the check boxes of the ones you want to delete, then select the delete button. When you touch the first check box, the "Mark read", "star", and "delete buttons pop up at the bottom of the screen.I've had the Moto Droid for about 4 months now and have found the standard e-mail app just works, at least with my business mail server ( Postfix using TLS and user authentication, Dovecot using IMAP / TLS, both on standard ports). Incoming e-mails show up in the notification bar and you can define a ring tone for them. HTML e-mail works just fine.
FWIW, I too was confused as to how to delete multiple e-mails at first. It was so simple it alluded me. :)
geniekid - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Tap Mail. Tap Menu. Tap Delete. That allows me to use checkboxes to delete multiple emails at once. This is from my HTC Incredible using the defautl Mail app on the Home screen.jaydee - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Anand,I know you didn't officially review it, but I would like to see the Motorola Droid in these comparisons. I know it's older, but it's the one that "started it all" for android being a real iPhone competitor, and there are a LOT more people using with Droid's than with Nexus One's. Plus the hardware differentiates itself much more from the Incredible than the N1 (different manufacturer, different processor, RAM/ROM specs, ETC).
Thanks,
Jim
jaydee - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
Also, there's an app called PDAnet. $30 one time charge for unlimited data via USB. Why even bother with Verizon's own version for $25-30/month?secret99 - Monday, May 10, 2010 - link
I don't think the Nexus has 8 GB of storage. Just FYI.