HTC Droid Incredible Vs. Google Nexus One

**A Comparison of the HTC Nexus One and Droid Incredible: Which Android Device is Right for You?**

The world of smartphones has never been more exciting, with numerous devices from various manufacturers vying for our attention. Two notable devices that have caught our eye are the HTC Nexus One and the Droid Incredible. Both phones run on the latest version of Android, but they boast distinct features that set them apart from one another. In this article, we'll delve into the details of both devices, highlighting their strengths and weaknesses, to help you make an informed decision about which one is right for you.

**Sense UI: A Unified User Experience**

One of the standout features of the Droid Incredible is its Sense UI, a unified user experience that provides a cohesive interface across all applications. This means that users can expect a consistent look and feel throughout the device, with minimal clutter or redundant features. The Sense UI also enables HTC to provide a range of innovative features, such as Auto Correct and auto-completion suggestions, which improve typing accuracy and reduce errors. Additionally, the Sense UI is built on top of Android 2.1, providing a solid foundation for this popular mobile operating system.

**Additional Features of the Droid Incredible**

The Droid Incredible comes with a range of additional features that set it apart from the Nexus One. These include applications such as Car Panel, which provides GPS navigation, and C ID, a phone book lookup desk clock. The device also features a built-in Twitter client, PDF viewer, Stocks application, Teeter game (a labyrinth-style accelerometer challenge), Voice Dialer, voice search, and YouTube. Furthermore, the Droid Incredible has a FM radio with Geo-tagging capabilities for photos, as well as Friend Stream, which aggregates social network activity. These features demonstrate HTC's commitment to providing a comprehensive user experience that caters to various interests and needs.

**Applications on the Nexus One**

While the Droid Incredible boasts an impressive array of applications, the Nexus One also comes with a range of pre-installed apps. These include home launch applications, such as Google Maps navigation, which is similar in functionality to the Car Panel on the Droid Incredible. Other pre-installed apps include a PDF viewer, Stocks application, and YouTube. However, it's worth noting that these applications may not be as comprehensive or well-designed as those on the Droid Incredible.

**Comparing Battery Life: A Crucial Consideration**

One of the key differences between the two devices is battery life. The Nexus One has a slightly longer battery life, with some users reporting that they can get through a day and a half before needing to recharge. However, if battery life is not a top priority for you, the Droid Incredible may be a better choice. Despite its relatively shorter battery life, the Droid Incredible's robust design and power-saving features ensure that it remains functional throughout the day.

**Glowing Track Ball: A Unique Feature**

One of the most distinctive features of the Nexus One is its glowing track ball. This innovative control mechanism provides users with a unique way to navigate the device, allowing for precise scrolling and cursor movement. While this feature may not be to everyone's taste, it's undeniable that the Nexus One's glowing track ball adds a touch of elegance and sophistication to its design.

**Web Browsing: Flash Support on the Droid Incredible**

In terms of web browsing, both devices offer similar experiences. However, when it comes to playing flash content, the Droid Incredible has a significant advantage. The device comes with built-in Adobe Flash Player support, which enables users to watch Hulu and other flash-based content without any issues. In contrast, the Nexus One relies on third-party apps or waiting for official release of the Flash Player, resulting in choppy playback.

**Conclusion: Which Device is Right for You?**

In conclusion, both devices offer unique strengths and weaknesses that cater to different user needs. If you prioritize battery life, the Nexus One may be a better choice. However, if you're looking for a device with robust features, sleek design, and excellent performance, the Droid Incredible is an excellent option. Additionally, if flash support is crucial for your web browsing experience, the Droid Incredible's built-in Adobe Flash Player makes it the clear winner.

**John Ringer from Techno Buffalo: Final Thoughts**

As John Ringer from Techno Buffalo noted in our conversation, "If I have to pick one of these two devices, I'd go with the Droid Incredible. It's quick, and HTC support is excellent. The extra features you get with the Sense UI are a nice bonus, and the device just feels more solid overall." With its impressive array of pre-installed apps, robust design, and seamless user experience, the Droid Incredible is an excellent choice for those seeking an Android device that checks all the right boxes.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enwhat's going on everyone John reinger from techno Buffalo here when it comes to released Android handsets there are two that are vying for top spot we've got the HTC built an Nexus one which can be used on AT&T or T-Mobile's 3G network and we have the HTC built Droid Incredible running on Verizon's Network these two are very close kissing cousins if you will that share a lot of the same internals but there are some differences that I want to go over with you so let's talk about some of the similarities first they both have 3.7 in capacitive screens with the same resolution and they're both OLED with 480x 800 pixel density and 65,000 colors thereabout uh which is 16 bit for those you guys keeping at home keeping track at home uh the Nexus one here is running on gsm networks the Droid Incredible is on CDMA I know a lot of you were we're waiting for a Nexus One on Verizon however Google said today that will not be coming so if you're looking for an Android experience on Verizon the best is the incredible that we have in front of us here uh battery life they're a little bit different the Jordan incredible is going to get you about 5.2 hours of talk time and about 144 hours of standby time the next one however is going to get you 7 hours of talk time and about 250 hours um that goes to show you a little bit about how the user interfaces uh consumed battery life and we'll get to us your inter bases in just a minute um both run the newest version of Android 2.1 the Nexus one has a 5 megapixel camera on the back with a single LED flash the Droid Incredible has on the back push that back up has a 8 megapixel sensor with dual LED flash so a little bit higher in the camera resolution department and double the flash all right so we've talked about specs they're both running the same 1 GHz Snapdragon processor um very very similar respect however a little different experiences so they both have capacitive buttons across the bottom the same for button array I've got an early model Nexus One this is the came out um I believe the day it was released we had this unit in so I've had some problems with these capacitive buttons at the bottom they haven't been so responsive you tap you tap them often times they don't work however newer reports devices that have shipped in the weeks and months since release claim that has been fixed but some of you guys may be have that problem or be plagued that issue if you have a newer model Nexus One or you bought it off Craigslist for example or Ebay the capacitive buttons here on the incredible are very responsive and work just as well as physical tactile buttons the other big difference here you're going to notice is the track balls how you do your navigation to move around you can get there some physical tactile feel there and you can push it into select we've got sort of a more high-tech Optical trackpad here on the incredible which also serves exactly the same function you can push it in to select so for all the games that need a track track ball or track pad you can use either one of these and they'll probably work just as well it's really six or half dozen they both do same thing can depend on which one you prefer personally I like the optical trackpad I like minimalistic look out of anything protruding uh from the phone but that's just a personal preference all right so let's talk about the user interface user experience that's where the big differences are here this is an unskinned in its natural habitat Android 2.1 as a Google programmers Engineers designed it to be um which is definitely not a bad thing andry 2.1 offers a lot of really cool features you can see those little swirling lines in the background it's part of the live wallpapers that the operating system offers sure to get some interactive and immersive desktop experience so with the Nexus One stock Android 2.1 you get five home screens you can scroll through you can see there are five right here go back the other direction and access the rest of them now if you want to jump from one home screen to the other you can certainly slide your finger across or use the track B like I did right there or you can hit those little dots at the Bott which actually pulls up almost a deck of cards looking feature I can get it there we go and you can jump to whatever home screen you'd like on the other hand the incredible takes advantage of HTC's custom built sense user interface uh which not only adds two extra home screens for total of seven but handles the way you move between your windows a bit differently it's got something called leap so I go ahead and pinch in I access the leap features I only have three Windows here actually have anything on them but the rest of them are down here I can tap and go to any of them that I choose so I've got a blank one right here if I have tap the home button it'll take me back home if I long press it it'll go back to LEAP as well so again personal preference how you like to navigate I like the leap function I think it's uh very intuitive to just swipe your fingers across it and jump to the home screens um when you look at the menu Trace here's where another indifference comes in you get sort of a 3D menu tra you can see them folding into the background the Snapdragon chip in here can handle a decent amount of 3D processing um same thing with the Nexus 1 you've got 3D processing in here as well um although you get just sort of a static array the same trip can handle quite a bit but a little bit more ey candy at least as far as this is concerned on the Nexus One and this is probably one of the two places where you actually see a little bit more of that eye candy so we'll go ahead and exit out of this let's go back and talk a little bit more about the user interface so the big deal about Android one of the reasons I think it's been so successful is because it's based on widgets it means you can have a lot of little programs running on the home screen so here I've got a widget that controls all of my power options if I hold down the home screen here I get a ton more widgets these are all sort of the standard Android widgets and some that I've downloaded extra I'm I'm sure you've seen these many times I've gone through them on countless videos um however with the Jordan credible you get these widgets plus a ton of extra HTC Ones so let me show you what those look like so here are all the standard widgets plus the HTC Ones you can see there are many many more a lot of these are just HTC the S right below them so stocks is HTC Twitter is HTC weather's HTC um you get some something called FriendFinder and friend feed so Aggregates all of your Social Network clients you can sort of pull everything in all at once um there are a lot more options for customization here at least the devices out of the box you can download extra widgets and additional functionality on the Nexus one and you can even Port the ROM over to the Nexus One however I want to give you a demonstration of what these devices look like when you just pull them out of the box I got very excited right there so one of the things that I really do like about the incredible and this is just me is I like the big clock in the weather integrated right there now there are weather widgets that you can have and clock widgets for the Nexus one but I like how really nice and integrated this is I can tap it I get a bit of a 3D animation about the weather you can see it's a little bit cloudy and sunny if it was raining here raindrops would start to show you can scroll through and see different areas you see there's some raindrops right there in New York and go ahead and wipes them away it just seems to be a bit more polished experience I think that sense takes everything good about endr 2.1 which is quite a bit it adds a little bit more to it um one of the other places where I think that perhaps the stock Android build maybe add some functionality is in pictures let me go ahead and so I can find where the pictures are right here Gallery you get sort of a 3D look of pictures you can see some video that I've taken there you can jump right to the camera we'll go back but you get just probably a little bit more 3D immersive environment than you get um otherwise see I'm trying to hit the button to go back and I'm having some difficulty sort of Representative I think of the the capacitive buttons here so sort of some 3D rendering kind of neat uh here pictures aren't handled nearly as eloquently let's go ahead and find photos and it's mostly just handled in a grid however you can serve scroll through these bottom part to see all your photos from flicker they you've integrated from Facebook and then your album photos um there's a few other differences here the keyboards are definitely different on both these devices let me show you what they look like we'll go ahead and go into messaging pull this opposite side we'll create a new message this is the stock Android keyboard that's going to come with any Android 2.1 device uh when you rotate into landscape you get the landscape version of that we take a look here you get actually an HTC keyboard uh which is a little bit different it's a bit smaller um widthwise but the keys are a bit longer I found it actually a little bit easier to type on uh the HTC keyboard than I do on the default Android keyboard I'll show you what they look like as well um in landscape now Android's got a fantastic auto correct and HTC sort of built on top of that added some more auto correction features so again another just a little nice advantage to I think having the sense UI you also get a bit more sort of bundled in let me show you what you get with the device a little more applications so you get car panel which essentially your Google Maps navigation a few other features thr it with a nice user interface on top of it if we go back and continue here you get a C ID essentially a phone book lookup desk clock it comes with FM radio Footprints which is Geo tagging of your pictures I anybody that uses that friend stream is that contact aggregation uh for social networks that we talking about so it'll pull in all of your social networks you can see what your buddy Jim is doing on Twitter and Facebook uh it's got a built-in Twitter Client PDF viewer you've got quick office already in here stocks application you've got a teeter game which is sort of like a labyrinth accelerometer thing Voice Dialer voice search then there's the weather and S of YouTube that you get on other Android devices let's take a look at the applications that come standard with the Nexus one we'll go home launch applications right so you do get quite a bit here as well but um not nearly as much some of these are applications that you downloaded and again you can make up for the lack of included features on the Nexus one uh simply just by downloading them uh from the ever growing Android market however when it comes down to it if I have to pick one of these two devices uh it's a no-brainer that I'm going to go with the Droid Incredible it's quick it's got HTC support and HTC usability which just adds a lot of nice little features that you'll notice so another one of those instances go to messages you can back out to the messages list just a nice way to scroll through and some extra little visual candy but there's a reason that extra visual stuff does take battery life so if battery life is important to you uh the stock Nexus one may be a good way way to go however if you have no problem getting through a day and a half before charging the device I think the incredible is a fantastic phone and a great choice call Quality has been excellent on it user experience is fantastic um they both have multi-touch capacitive browsers same almost exact same network and processor speed and they both do just quite uh quite a bit um however when it comes out to personal choice I prefer the incredible and you can see right there you get sort of the glowing track ball on the Nexus one so before I sign off actually there is one last feature that I want to show you with the web browsers uh they're both running very similar browsers you got techno Buffalo keyed up on here and we'll let um this side load up Google um both multi-touch pinch to zoom and let's check out a website with flash content we'll go to flash.com which is Adobe site so we go to flash.com here and we'll go to flash.com on the incredible try to type sideways it's harder than it looks so all right we got flash.com here so on this one we've got a you must download the Adobe Flash Player which Adobe says is going to be coming um but they've not released it yet however on the Nexus one we've got flash already integrated into the browser now that does not mean unfortunately you can play Hulu Hulu won't work but other flash content like flash games do actually load um and look decent a little bit choppy you'll see right here in a minute so there's flash content loading over pretty fast Wi-Fi network I'll zoom in so you can see it so for those of you that flash is very important you got to have it got to have it got to have it then the incredible is really going to be the best way to go because it has it right now nextus one and other Android devices will be getting it soon you can see it's a bit choppy but it's usable and watchable just something that I felt that I needed to share with you guys cuz that is one of the other fundamental differences between the two phones and I hope you guys enjoy it I'm sort of curious to know which one you prefer or which one you're leaning towards uh if you're Verizon user definitely look at the incredible if you're a GSM user so if you're on AT&T or T-Mobile you are not going to regret an Nexus one purchase it is still a fantastic phone running a very robust and growing operating system so guys hope you enjoyed John ringer from techno Buffalo where you can go to get all your Tech news create your own Tech subblog even monetize it and make some bucks and talk to each other in our built-in social network for exclusive content check me out at Twitter twitter.com/akidneyforscott\n"