HTC Incredible S Review

Introduction :

HTC announced the new HTC Incredible S at the Mobile World Congress (MWC) 2011 in Barcelona. This handset is the successor of the popular HTC Incredible smartphone and it currently runs on the Android 2.2 (FroYo) operating system. According to our friends at Mahesh Telecom, a popular retailer in Mumbai, the HTC Incredible is already available for sale in India with HTC India warranty.

HTC has earned a name for itself and there’s no wonder that the launch of the Incredible S was greeted with excitement. Their new potential bestseller is too important a device to go unnoticed even if it tries to be merely an evolutionary, rather than revolutionary step forward.It seems the Incredible S has got the proper set of ingredients to make for a really capable smartphone at a reasonable price (for a high-end device, that is).

Features HTC Incredible S :

• Quad-band GSM and dual-band 3G support
• 14.4 Mbps HSDPA and 5.76 Mbps HSUPA
• 4″ 16M-color capacitive LCD touchscreen of WVGA resolution (480 x 800 pixels)
• The best screen on an HTC device by some distance
• Android OS v2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense UI (ver. 2.3 update promised soon after launch)
• 1 GHz Scorpion CPU, Adreno 205 GPU, Qualcomm Snapdragon MSM8255 chipset
• 768 MB RAM and 1.5 GB ROM
• 8 MP autofocus camera with LED flash and geotagging
• 720p video recording @ 30fps
• Wi-Fi b/g/n and DLNA
• GPS with A-GPS
• microSD slot up to 32GB (8GB card included)
• Accelerometer and proximity sensor
• Standard 3.5 mm audio jack
• Stereo FM radio with RDS
• microUSB port (charging) and stereo Bluetooth v2.1
• Smart dialing, voice dialing
• Front facing camera for video calling
• DivX/XviD video support
• Dolby Mobile and SRS sound enhancement
• HTC Locations app
• HTCSense.com integration
• HTC Portable Hotspot
• Ultra-fast boot times (if you don’t remove battery)

Disadvantages of HTC Incredible S :
• No dedicated camera key and no lens cover
• Runs Froyo on launch, instead of Gingerbread
• Poor video recording, 720p footage is pretty jerky
• Uninspiring audio quality

2010 was the year of the droid in the smartphone calendar and Google will undoubtedly try to serve us more of the same in 2011. To achieve such an explosive growth is a tall task, but certainly not impossible. There are two things that the Open Handset Alliance will need to achieve in order to complete it.First, they will need to finally grab a sizable share of the lower mid-range market and second they need to maintain their positions in the high-end segment, which has been their stronghold lately.

And while the implosion of Symbian will certainly help the droid army with their march towards lower segments, some serious efforts will be required to keep iOS and the rapidly improving WP7 at bay on the top.That’s why devices like the HTC Incredible S are so important. Not only do they need to generate as much revenue as possible for their manufacturer, but they also need to perform well to maintain the platform’s reputation.
This certainly is a heavy burden, but is the Incredible S fit to carry it? We’ll find out in the course of this review. Now join us on the next page for the unboxing of the beast.

Conclusion :

The HTC Incredible S has all the ingredients of a great smartphone. A large screen with great image quality, powerful hardware under the hood and a decent camera with HD video recording sounds like a great formula for success. It also provides a solid user experience so all seems fine, right?Well, not quite so. See the thing is, while the Incredible S hardware is perfectly adequate for the moment, it’s far from future-proofed. The first dual-core droids just hit the shelves and there’s a whole bunch more to come.

Developers will soon start to make use of the extra processing power and make their apps and games more demanding, which will render them incompatible with the Incredible S. And you wouldn’t want your new high-end smartphone to look underpowered in six-months time, do you?Plus the Incredible S lacks any unique differentiating features. You know, something like dedicated gaming keys (the XPERIA Play), or a Super AMOLED screen that can seal a deal by itself.

All that coupled with a high asking price like this makes the Incredible S a device that’s pretty hard to recommend. Of course, if your carrier offers it at a bargain price you may disregard this argument and get the handset – the solid smartphone experience is guaranteed.The Incredible S main undoing is its creators’ failure to anticipate market trends and equip it with the hardware that would let it remain competitive for more than six months after its release.