Why I love my Droid Incredible

And why I think it's a better phone than my iPhone

Why do I love my Droid Incredible over the iPhone? It has very little to do with the network. By the way, I've been a loyal iPhone user since the original, and loved it up until very recently. Even when I switched to Android, I was worried about what the experience would be like. I was worried I'd hate Android.

But that didn't happen.

NOTE: Some of the the features I talk about here may only apply to HTC phones, or to Verzion-based phones.

Main Reasons why I love my Droid

Speed. This isn't a "better" but the common misconception is that Droid is clunkier than the iPhone. I never owned an iPhone 4 or GS, but the speed of the Incredible, even before Froyo, is amazing. The Incredible is about the size on an iphone 4, but runs noticibly snappier than the (larger) Android EVO. The smoothness of the UI and multitouch is just as good as the iPhone. This may be a hardware-specific thing, since I used an EVO and it seemed a bit slower and not as smooth as my Incredible.

Syncing. It's embarrassing that it's 2010 and I had to dock my iPhone in order to get my contacts synced. The droid incredible did this seamlessly, out of the box, for free (no subscription service needed). I didn't (and still haven't) installed any custom software only my pc for syncing. All I did was supply my gmail log in. Presto. And it's constant. Add someone to contacts in my phone? when I get home, it's in Gmail. Add something to Google calendar? it's there on the phone. Add a contact in google voice? Presto. On the phone.  It seems the only real reason to ever connect the Incredible to my laptop is for music but there's a 3rd party app that will do this over wifi.

Social services. This is the killer feature. Just about everywhere, in every app (even out-of-the-box apps) there's a share button. This lets you post to facebook, twitter, flickr, send to email and texts. Everywhere. It's in the default camera app. it's in the calendar. It's in the web browser. No need to switch to 3rd party apps to get this. The phone remembers your login info and shares without switching apps or asking you to log in. Not sure if this is HTC-specific or in every Android, but it is so tightly integrated, it's one of those I-can't-go-back features.

Can you do this stuff on the iPhone? Not exactly the same way. You need to [1] find 3rd party apps that integrate with the services you like (and pay for them if they're not free), [2] set those apps up with your facebook, flickr, and twitter credentials, doing this again and again for every app, and [3] remember to use these new apps instead of Apple's default apps. With my Droid, I set it up with facebook, twitter, and flickr as part of the welcome-to-droid setup, and sharing was built into all the apps from the very first second I started using the phone.

Contact merging with Facebook & Twitter.  Right out of the box. This is a bit more of an extension of the above. The Incredible's default contact list matches up your facebook and twitter friends and assigns photos to the contacts from Facebook. No need for a 3rd party app. It  pulls status updates from these sites and puts them right in the contacts list and it other relevant places. I was shocked to see within minutes of firing up my Incredible for the first time that not only did it have all my contacts, but pictures for them. And status updates. Plus the Incredible comes with a widget that automatically generates a merged friendstream of your facebook, twitter, and flickr friends. No exta setup or downloading needed.

Widgets.  Yes, they can ugly-up your home screen, but I use them correctly and it became obvious to me why Apple's approach of making my home screen nothing but a grid of app launchers is near-sighted. Put a list of your top contacts right on your home screen. Put a friendstream of twitter there. There's no need to launch an app.

But being able to see today's appointments right on my home screen without having to open the calendar? Priceless. It actually makes the calendar useful now. I never used my iphone calendar because I'd forget to check it, and it became a negative feedback loop. With widgets I never have to launch an app for my most common functions. they're all there in the home screen already.

Google Maps: Way better than Apple's version. Mainly because you can pull up custom maps designed on Google Maps. If you've not used My Maps on maps.google.com before, it goes way beyond "dropping a pin." You can draw on it, add annotations, add icons and paths, and even add HTML and links to locations. These maps sync seamlessly with my phone.

If I read about something in my home town that I want to check out, I'll add it to my custom map. When checking my map on my phone, I've noticed I'm close by to things I want to see. Combine that with being able to speak the location I want to look up, and this maps just blows the iPhone map app out of the water.

Voice to text: the keyboard has voice-to-text built in, and I've ended up using it a ton. I thought it was a gimmick at first but it has proved very easy, fast, and accurate. I've composed many text messages and twitter updates using voice. I'm shocked at how well it does this. And becuase it's built into the keyboard, you can use it everywhere there's text input. Genius.
 
Openess. Or rather, Apple's in-first-place-but-reluctant-to-lead stance. I use Unity to make games. Despite the legal TOS change that happened recently, Apple is still completely silent regarding whether the Unity engine will continue to be allowed on the iTunes store. What scares me isn't that it might not be allowed as much as Apple has the balls to simply not clarify, and leave developers in the dark. Apple, you're an industry leader. Time to start acting like one.

Other things I like about my Droid Incredible

These are all things that I truly find more useful on Droid, not just a mindless bulleted list.

But the other features I listed just blow the iPhone out of the water so much so that I can easily give up those three other bullet points.

Summary

I didn't know what to expect when switching from iPhone.  I was kinda scared that I'd wish I'd stayed with Apple. But I am so happy in so many ways that i switched to Android. I was never a huge Apple Fanboy (anyone who reads my blog knows this) but I have quite accidentally found myself in fanboy love with my Droid. I am so happy I made the switch and at this point it would take Apple some serious next-gen killer feature, in addition to some good old fashioned catching up, for me to want to switch back.

Note: I worked at Google on Google TV -- before it was Android-based -- but I personally don't feel any bias I may have towards Google or Android is a factor here in this review.

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