HTC has become one of my favorite smartphone manufacturers, next to Apple that is. Their product designs and quality are absolutely superb from my previous experiences with various smartphones. I have today for review the HTC Droid Incredible 4G, which is noticeably smaller from the typically Android phone most people have been accustomed to. Does the Droid Incredible 4G live up to the expectations and standards set by other smartphones?

Read on to find out.

Body/Design

The HTC Droid Incredible 4G is a bit smaller than the typical Android smartphone, sitting at a 4-inch Super LCD display sporting a resolution of 540- by 960-pixels. On the front of the smartphone you will find, a front-facing 1.3MP camera shooting 720p videos at the top and three touch capacitive buttons along the bottom, which include: Back, Home, and Application Switching. On the back of the phone is a 8MP camera shooting 1080p videos with a single LED flash.

One of the primary reasons for HTC being one of my favorite Android smartphone manufacturers is because of their heavy duty designs. While this smartphone looks small, it packs a fair amount of weight for its size. HTC has retained a similar color sleek pattern of red and black with this smartphone, and includes the Beats By Dre incorporation as the speakers for the smartphone. The back of smartphone was very well designed as the design not only looks incredible, but also feels extremely comfortable in the hand.

Hardware

Don’t let the size of the Droid Incredible 4G fool you into thinking it’s a slouch when it comes to performance, because it’s definitely not. The Droid Incredible 4G features a dual-core 1.2Ghz processor and 1GB of RAM, which has become fairly standard amoungst smartphones nowadays. You will also 8GB of built-in storage for media and the option slot for a microSD card to upgrade the storage an additional 32GB.

The battery featured in the Droid Incredible 4G is 1700MaH, which is pretty fair battery power. I was, however, dissapointed with the overall lasting of the battery throughout any given day. As the name of the smartphone suggests, the Droid Incredible 4G does support LTE 4G on Verizon’s LTE network. So if you live in a LTE capable area, you will certainly be able to take advantage of those powerful data speeds.

As mentioned previously, the Droid Incredible 4G’s display is sporting a resolution of 540- by 960-pixels, which isn’t the best in it’s class, but
even then watching videos and playing games on such a display is still fantastic in quality. As you may be aware, HTC has partnered with Beats By Dre for some time now to incorporate premium sounding speakers into their smartphones, which is also included in this particular phone.

On the top of the phone, you will find the power button and 3.5MM headphone jack and on the left side is a microUSB port, which is used for charging the device.

Software

The Droid Incredible 4G is running Ice Cream Sandwich (Android 4.0), with HTC Sense 4. HTC Sense 4 is an overlay on top of the standard operating system, and really gives it a custom feel. With there only being three touch capacitive buttons on this model, the lock screen and dock on the home screen of the phone get used quite frequently. HTC Sense 4 is much smoother in paging transitions, and user friendly than it’s predecessor. The Droid Incredible 4G comes loaded with the standard applications, but also comes loaded with a few extra goodies to get you started with such as, Let’s Gold 3, Real Racing 2, Amazon Kindle, Slingbox, and Slacker.

Overview

The Droid Incredible 4G is spot on when it comes to performance. Lagging was almost nonexistant during my use with the smartphone, especially when paging through different home screens, and switching between different applications. As I previously mentioned, don’t let the little size fool you, as it certainly packs a punch. The call quality was phenomenal. The sound was clear and crisp for both parties on the phone. This phone was perfect in all aspects for me, except the battery life. I found the battery very dissapointing in comparison to some of the other smartphone’s I’ve come across in the past.

For more information about the HTC Droid Incredible 4G, visit Verizon Wireless’s website here.

MSRP: $149.99 with a 2yr contract ($99.99 with $50 discount online), $499.99 without a 2yr contract.

PROS: Durability, Design, Performance

CONS: Battery Life