I’ve had Verizon for 10 years. Satisfied. Went through many phones with family plan, three kids.
My son and I will probably get the Verizon “Incredible” this week. Any reason not to? I need a phone which has internet capability, and he likes it also.
I’m aware the iPhone is coming. I don’t care.
I just purchased a droid incredible not too long ago. I think it is a fantastic piece of equipment, but if I could do it all over again, I would buy the droid X. Techno-snobs will argue ad infinitum about various minutiae that don’t matter to every day consumers, and as such phone comparison websites tend to include a lot of information needlessly. The big factor for me is that the incredible’s battery life leaves something to be desired and the droid X lasts about 40% longer. The screen is also larger, but that may or may not be attractive to you.
OTOH, the droid incredible costs 1 buck down with a plan extension, while the droid x costs a cool 200. For something as important as a phone, I would shell out the 200.
With ANY phone, don’t get distracted by all the features and doodads. Step back and take a hard look at 'What am I going to use this for?". I have a very simple phone, because that’s all I really want to use it for, and since I’m on the phone all day for my job, I don’t use my personal phone all that much. Are you going to be using the internet much on it? Will a larger screen be better for what you might use it for? Are you going to be texting or emailing on it a lot? Then you might want to consider the keyboard or touch screen and how well that will work out for you. Are you going to be plugging it in every night, or in the middle of the day, or is it going to sit in your pocket for days at a time before you remember it? If the latter, then battery life is going to be extremely important to you and all the other features that drag battery life (large, bright screen, wifi, bluetooth, etc) may be negatives for you.
A phone is only a tool. Forget brands and shiny features you won’t use. Get the tool that is going to do the job you want it to do.
heavyarms553 is right about the battery on the Incredible. Depending on how much you use you may find yourself charging it every night if not in the middle of the afternoon. The Incredible does have the Sense UI on it which a lot of people like. Have you ever used a touchscreen phone before? Many people like to have a physical keyboard on their phone which the Incredible is lacking, but in my experience after a week or two using the touchscreen keyboard becomes second nature.
I personally prefer the Incredible over the Droid X, but I’m biased against Motorola phones. In case you’re wondering I have a Samsung Galaxy S (Verizon calls it the Fascinate).
I have an Incredible and I like it a lot. I considered the Droid X but I prefer the HTC Sense UI customizations, and the size of the Incredible was more to my liking. I don’t have any real issues with the battery life but I’m not a real heavy user of the thing.
CNET is reporting that many think Verizon will announce their own iPhone on Tuesday.
…
It’s supposed to be a rather nice phone, I hear. It’s been covered, but the only better phone is the Droid X on Verizon.
Also OMG IPHONE IPHONE IPHONE.
There. That should help.
I use the SO’s Incredible once in a while and it’s a good phone. He got the phone right when it was first released and it’s still working very well almost a year later. As far as the battery goes, I’ve talked to people who needed to charge their Incredible several times a day, but these are people who are checking their phone every other minute. The SO’s phone gets charged once every 2-3 days with light use. He checks the weather every night, chats on the phone on average 10-30 minutes a day, sends several texts a day, and uses Google Maps daily. On the other hand, I borrow the phone to play Angry Birds* every once in a while and a good 40 minute session will drain about half the battery.
*Those frickin’ pigs are assholes.
I got the Incredible (it’s the HTC Incredible, btw) in October. It was free because Best Buy was running Free Phone Fridays, and offered that one the last Friday of the month. I like it- it’s my first smart phone, so I don’t have much to compare it to, but I’m really happy with it. The auto-complete ‘feature’ takes a little getting used to, and there are still a couple things I can’t figure out about the address book/contacts list, but overall I think it’s great. Battery life isn’t bad enough to really affect me- I charge it next to my computer as soon as I get to work in the morning, then unplug it when it’s done and keep it in my pocket the rest of the day. By morning, I still have about 50 charge, but plug it in anyway just out of habit.
On a regular basis I use it for personal and work email, texting, a phone, a GPS, Angry Birds (agreed,** Tako**), a clock, a camera, web, notes for shopping trips…
Size is good, fits in my pocket comfortably. Anything larger would be uncomfortable.
The HTC Droid Incredible is an excellent phone.
My wife has an HTC Droid Incredible. I have a Motorola Droid X. Each of us likes his/her phone better than his/her spouse’s phone. She find’s the Droid X to be too large for her to hold comfortably. I like the Droid X because it’s SO BIG!!!
(Also the Droid X comes with Swype - a technology that I’ve gotten mortally addicted to - and the Incredible doesn’t.)
My brother-in-law has the Verizon Motorola Droid X, I have the Verizon Samsung Fascinate, my wife has the Verizon HTC Droid Incredible, and my brother has the Verizon Motorola Droid 2.
The Droid 2 has a slide out keyboard while all the others are on-screen.
The differences between the other 3 are fairly minimal besides screen size.
Droid X is largest, then the Fascinate, then Incredible, and Droid 2 the smallest.
While various specs may be different (battery life, camera megapixels, etc.) they all operate the same way.
Also note: These are all 3G phones and require a Verizon data package so your monthly bill will go up!
Also,
no matter which phone you get, those overpriced Zagg screen protectors are actually worth their inflated price.
We had to choose between the HTC Incredible and the Droid X last summer. The good news is that there’s no wrong choice – they are both excellent phones. We ended up going with the Droid X for the larger screen and longer battery life, and we’ve been very very happy with it. Of course, it’s our first even-remotely-smart phone, so part of the excitement is just being able to use Google while we’re out and about.
Here’s a really useful list of useful apps for whichever Droid phone you end up getting, compiled by the goons at Something Awful:
I want to thank each and everyone who’s responded.
My son still thinks he’ll get the incredible. I’m conviced now that a Droid X will be my choice.
Giraffe–thx for the list.
I held a Droid X once. I thoguht “Gee, this makes my hands look small.”
Nobody should EVER build anything that makes a guy’s hands look small.
Jus’ sayin’. 
jz78817, it is hardly sporting of you to have read the OP. Of course that’s going to make you look clever. It shouldn’t count.
Around here, Droids are on a buy-one-get-one free sale. That’s why my sister got a Droid X–her friend (who shares a phone plan with her) got one for himself, and thus she got one for free.
And, yes, the battery life is amazing.
Thanks for starting this thread, samclem. I’ve had the Droid X for a little less than a week and am absolutely hooked. I love, love, love being able to dictate emails instead of typing them. In fact, I love that there are so many features on this phone that allow one to speak instead of type.
It took literally two minutes to set up Corporate Sync. Now I have all my work mail, contacts, and calendar on my phone, completely synchronized with my mail server. It is wonderful. I’m a former BlackBerry user and was a little concerned that I’d lose some of the vaunted BlackBerry email features, but I’m not missing a thing. I’m able to set up as many email accounts as I need and they’re all easy to manage.
Google Navigation is amazing, and more accurate than my $200 Magellan. I’ve also been playing around with Google Shopper and ShopSavvy. They’re pretty cool, although not as useful as they could be, but I attribute this to the limited number of items in their databases.
I find voice quality to be excellent on phone calls, and the phone component itself is very easy to use.
Swype is somewhat of an experience, but I’ll keep at it. It is good that Swype is not the only way to type in text. Also, the landscape keyboard is extremely usable. I never hit a key I don’t mean to hit anymore, as opposed to on my BlackBerry Storm.
The only thing I don’t love is how the phone locks automatically when the screen goes to sleep. There may be a way to disable that feature, but I haven’t found it yet.
Battery life is nowhere near as good as on my BlackBerry Storm, which lasted three or four days with heavy use. Contrast this with the Droid X, which lasts a day, if I’m lucky. But I’m sure my expectations will adjust as I continue to use the phone.
HTC Incredible
This weekend, I let my wife play around with my Droid X after getting it in the mail last week. She likes it a lot, but said the phone was huge, and way too large for her. So we took a drive down to the local Verizon store after looking at a few models online. She made a bee-line to the Citrus, primarily because it is not much larger than the phone she uses now, which is just a standard LG non smart cell phone. The Citrus runs a very stripped down flavor of the Android OS. It is the most basic of smart phones, but it is a smart phone. However, after playing around with it for a few moments, its shortcomings became quickly evident, e.g., slow interface, poor camera, limited features, etc. But what sealed the deal against the Citrus was that the HTC Incredible was right next to it, and there’s simply no contest. The Incredible is larger than the Citrus, but pretty significantly smaller than the Droid X. The UIs on both phones are very similar, but one thing I noticed right away is the icons on the Incredible are slightly crisper, sharper, and less pixelated than on the Droid X, even though the screen is smaller.
After playing around with the Incredible for about ten minutes, my wife decided that was the phone we wanted, so we went home and ordered it online. Why not at the store? Because at the store they charge $100 more for the phone and give you a rebate form, which you have to send in, which I find ridiculous. Her HTC Incredible should be sitting on my porch when we get home from work this afternoon.
She already knows she’s going to love it because, for her, it will replace so many of her other devices, e.g., phone, GPS unit, music player, movie player, email application, schedule, Facebook, etc…, and she’s already salivating over Google Goggles after playing with it on my Droid X. The only challenge I think we’re going to have is somehow getting her songs from her iPod Touch into her Incredible.