Introduction
The unfortunate naming aside (seriously, didn’t anyone say it out loud before they announced it?), the Incredible S is a pretty great smartphone. You’ve got spotless connectivity, an exciting new screen, those cool rotating buttons and the proven power of Snapdragon under the hood.
HTC Incredible S official photos
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).
Key features
- 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)
Main disadvantages
- 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.
The HTC Incredible S live shots
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.
Pretty decent retail package
Just like every other HTC smartphone out there, the Incredible S comes in a compact, but well-stuffed box. You get the wall-socket plug, which you can couple with the provided microUSB data cable to charge your smartphone without a computer.
There’s a one-piece headset with music controls (play/pause/skip). The supplied headphones aren't your only option, since the Incredible S has a 3.5mm audio jack, but you will lose the remote functionality if you go that way.
The box is small, but well geared
Finally, there’s an 8GB microSD card that lets you boost the available storage straight out of the box. It makes up for the lack of a larger in-built storage, which most of the competition has.
HTC Incredible S 360-degree spin
The HTC Incredible S stands at 120 x 64 x 11.7 mm, which is pretty reasonable for a device with a 4” screen. Its surface is a bit smaller than that of the I9000 Galaxy S, for example, but it comes with a slightly thicker waistline. It’s also just about the size of the Apple iPhone 4, which is commendable, as it’s got a noticeably bigger screen.
Still 11.7mm is pretty slim and you will be able to slip the Incredible S in most pockets easily even though it’s not the slimmest smartphone around.
The Incredible S sized up against the Samsung Galaxy S and the LG Optimus 2X
We find the weight of 135.5 g to be a pretty good balance between solid feel and lightness. The HTC Incredible S is not going to let you forget that it’s in your pocket, but it won’t be terribly uncomfortable either.
Design and construction
We’re glad HTC finally moved on with the design theme. The edgy back of the Incredible S might or might not be your cup of tea, but it certainly won’t go unnoticed.
Opinions in the GSMArena team are divided too, but the fact remains that HTC had the courage to experiment this time, which is why we believe the Incredible S design deserves to get the benefit of doubt here.
The HTC Incredible S display was probably the nicest surprise that the device had in store for us. We haven’t been particularly impressed with the HTC screens recently because of their uninspiring image quality and sub-par viewing angles, but this one is just great.
We were really impressed by the Incredible S display
With good brightness levels, accurate colors and great contrast (by LCD standards) the 4” WVGA screen makes images pop. And the most impressive part is that there’s very minimal to non-existent loss of contrast and color distortion even when looked at from extreme angles.
Those viewing angles are, for all purposes practical, as good as the ones on the Retina and Super AMOLED screens.
Now the only issue of the screen that HTC hasn’t tackled just yet is reflectivity and in-turn sunlight legibility. The Incredible S screen loses a huge portion of its charm when there’s bright ambient lighting and, while it’s not unusable in bright sun, it’s not a nice experience either.
On the other hand, the sensitivity of the capacitive touchscreen is just great.
Starting with the HTC Incredible S we are introducing a new test to our regular reviewing routine. We will be publishing the measured contrast of the display for each device we review, along with its measured black and white levels.
The test is repeated twice for each of the handsets – once with it’s the display brightness set to 100% and once with the brightness reduced to 50%. Different units have different behavior when you reduce their brightness – some get an increase in contrast, while others do worse than they would at full brightness.
We’ll be adding a tutorial for those of you, who have no idea what the test is all about shortly. Now here's how the Incredible S measured against some of the other handsets we have tested so far.
| Display test | 50% brightness | 100% brightness | ||||
| Black | White | Contrast ratio | Black | White | Contrast ratio | |
| HTC Incredible S | 0.18 | 162 | 908 | 0.31 | 275 | 880 |
| iPhone 4 | 0.14 | 189 | 1341 | 0.39 | 483 | 1242 |
| iPhone 3GS | 0.84 | 134 | 160 | 2.51 | 504 | 201 |
| Sony Ericsson Xperia Neo | 0.05 | 68 | 1324 | 0.10 | 134 | 1295 |
| Samsung Galaxy Ace | 0.23 | 160 | 701 | 0.34 | 234 | 683 |
Above the display you will only find the earpiece, the secondary camera and two hidden sensors (proximity and ambient light).
The two sensors and the video-chat camera are between the display and the earpiece
It gets much more interesting when you look below the display where the four hardware keys sit. Those are capacitive touch buttons, rather than regular keys, which makes the transition between them and the display seamless. If you do prefer the tactile feedback of normal keys you are in no luck with this one.
The Incredible S touch-sensitive keys
The keys are (from left to right) home, menu, back and search. They also have the usual functionality on long press – the home key triggers the task switcher, the menu key brings up the software keyboard, while the search key triggers voice search.
The backlit icons make those keys special. They rotate to match the orientation of the phone. We investigated those and found out that the backlit icons are composed of tiny LEDs.
There’s a second group of LEDs that composes the alternative image for each icon. Learn more about those keys in our blog.
The rotating keys might not matter much to usability but certainly look cool
The HTC Incredible S’s left side features a long and thin volume rocker as well as the unprotected microUSB port. No cap makes that easier to use, but it’s got no protection against dirt and grime.
The microUSB slot and the volume rocker are on the left
The right side is perfectly bare, which makes the Incredible S yet another HTC device without a dedicated camera key.
Once again there’s no dedicated camera key
At the top we find the uncovered 3.5mm audio jack and the Screen Lock/Power key.
The 3.5mm audio jack and the power key are on top
As usual, at the bottom of the phone, you will see the mouthpiece.
There’s not much to see at the bottom
The HTC Incredible S rear features the 8 megapixel camera lens and the tiny loudspeaker grill. There is a dual LED flash in-between to boost the camera's low-light performance.
The 8 megapixel camera lens, the dual LED flash and the speakerphone grill
We really dig the material used on the back cover. The soft-touch might not be as premium as metal, but provides a nice grip and it looks pretty durable. It’s also not quite easy to get all messed up with fingerprints and smudges as the glossy plastic we’ve seen on some of the Incredible S competitors. On the downside it’s also a bit too harder to clean if you do manage to get it dirty.
Under the battery cover, you'll find both the microSD and the SIM card slots as well as the 1450 mAh battery.
The battery is said to last for 290 hours of stand-by or 9 hours and 40 minutes of talk time on 2G networks and up to 370 hours of stand-by or 6 hours and 20 minutes of talk time on 3G.
The microSD card slot is under the cover
Despite being under the cover, the microSD card slot is hot-swappable. It had no trouble handling a 16GB microSD card.
The general build quality of the HTC Incredible S seems good. We’ve had somewhat of a bad streak with the HTC high-end smartphones we’ve reviewed recently, but we are glad this one brings the things back to the right track – a novel design, good build quality and a superb display that is a match for the best in business.
The HTC Incredible S held in hand
Starting on the next page, we're in the user interface territory.
Sense UI on Android 2.2, again
The HTC incredible S runs Android 2.2 Froyo with Sense UI on top. It will get updated to Gingerbread eventually but HTC prefers to keep their users at the cutting edge through their own modifications rather than the latest UI change that Google came up with.
HTC however promised that it will be delivering a 2.3 Gingerbread update soon after launch and we have no reason not to believe them, though “soon” tends to be a rather loose term.
Still, HTC rehashed the hardware so it shouldn’t surprise you when we tell you they rehashed the software too. The latest iteration of Sense UI is pretty solid (as it should be after years of refinement) and since Android is open and flexible, you can always pick another launcher from the Android Market to replace it.
Here’s what you have to look forward if you decide to stick with Sense. On the outside, it is very familiar to the previous iterations though there are some refinements under the hood.
At the bottom of the screen there are three virtual keys and a scrollbar. The default looks of this panel are more rectangular now but it works the same way as before.
The left key launches the main menu. The middle key is a shortcut to the Phone app and the right key brings up the "Personalize" menu.
The lock screen • some of the homescreen sections
The scrollbar at the bottom is just an indication of which homescreen you’re on – it can't be used for actual scrolling. You can use the Leap view for that - tap the home key (while on the center homescreen) or do a pinch gesture to zoom out to display the thumbnails of all seven homescreen panes at once. With a press and hold you can rearrange the homescreens as well.
Leap View lets you quickly switch between the available homescreen panes
Seven homescreens is all you get though – there’s no add or delete option. With all those widgets (which are quite useful too) you’ll want to keep all of them anyway.
The HTC Sense UI however offers the so-called Scenes too – those are essentially six custom homescreen setups (Work, Travel, Social, etc). Each scene changes the wallpaper and the widgets on the homescreens. For instance, the Work scene has a stocks widget, while the Social offers a Twitter widget. Those can be customized, of course.
Scenes are selected from a fancy-looking 3D card interface but other than that, their functionality is mostly unchanged. You can modify existing scenes (older Sense versions prompted you to save modifications as a new scene) and you can get more scenes from the HTC Hub.
Preset scenes
Switching between scenes takes a couple of seconds but sure allows wide customization – the business and personal modes that some competing phones offer seem quite limited compared to the HTC Scenes.
Social scene and Travel scene • Two different themes
The main menu has the typical icon grid layout, but you can switch to a list. In the list layout, there’s an alphabet scroll, which makes locating apps faster. It’s similar to what you used to see in TouchFLO on older HTC WinMo phones.
The grid layout • the list layout • alphabet scroll
Tapping the Personalize button brings out a whole screen of things to choose from – for the display (scenes, wallpapers and skin), for the homescreen (widgets, shortcuts, folders, etc.) and even sounds (ringtones, alarms, notifications and Sound set, which is a sound theme of sorts).
In the widget section, both types of widgets (HTC and Android) are placed on the same page. There are so many of them you may find the seven homescreens short. You can download new widgets off the Market or the HTC Hub.
Plenty of HTC widgets • the Settings widgets are simple one-tap switches
When you select a widget you are prompted to choose between several versions – most widgets have at least two styles. The different versions typically offer at least two sizes of the widget and different skins. For example, there are twelve different clocks. That's right, twelve!
Some different styles of the Clock widget
Some widget styles even offer different functionality. The Twitter widget, for instance – one version shows updates for the people you follow and lets you tweet, while the other version is more compact but is for tweeting only. There's nothing stopping you from using both, of course.
The two versions of the Twitter widget are functionally different
The notification area features a list of recent apps, just like a task switcher. A press and hold on the Home button works too. Maybe some people will use the notification area as the easier way to switch apps, but we would have preferred some quick switches for Wi-Fi, GPS, etc. rather than duplicated functionality.
The new notification area doubles as a task switcher • the regular task switcher
Time for a quick performance test with the HTC Incredible S. It performed really well, beating single core competitors like the Google Nexus S and Samsung Galaxy S on most tests (it lagged slightly behind in Quadrant compared to the Nexus S but that’s without the Gingerbread optimizations including a new file system).
The Tegra 2 powered LG Optimus 2X came out on top with its dual-core CPU and powerful GPU, but the Incredible S results are still pretty impressive.
HTC Incredible S (Android 2.2 Froyo, 1GHz CPU, 768MB RAM)
Google Nexus S (Android 2.3 Gingerbread, 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM)
Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (Android 2.2 Froyo, 1GHz CPU, 512MB RAM)
LG Optimus 2X (Android 2.2 Froyo, 1GHz dual-core CPU, 512MB RAM)
The fast boot feature is present in the HTC Incredible S and will really come in handy if you have to switch your phone on and off quite often. It won’t work if you remove the battery though – it will do a regular slow boot.
It’s annoying that when you press down the power key, the phone won’t start booting until you’ve released the key, which is quite confusing the first few times.
Our guess is, HTC has used some sort of Suspend or Hibernate logic as we know them from regular computers to implement the fast boot.
Tabbed phonebook with social inclinations
The Incredible S features HTC’s all-knowing phonebook with heavy social networking integration. It manages to keep things neatly in order, even though it’s juggling everything from SMS to Facebook photo albums.
Selecting a contact displays the basic details: name and photo, numbers, emails and such. That’s just the first tab – the other tabs hold other categories of info and communication methods, like emails or a call log.
Viewing a contact
The second tab holds the text messages received from the contact – it would have been a lot more useful if it used conversation style view, but for that you’d have to go to the full-featured Messaging app.
The third tab holds a list of emails you've exchanged with the contact.
The next two tabs are what really turn the Incredible S into a powerful networking tool. The first holds Facebook contact updates, and the other called "Albums" pulls the albums that contacts have created on Flickr and Facebook.
Facebook updates • Facebook and Flickr albums
The final tab shows the call history for the contact.
The entire People app (the phonebook) is tabbed too and with more tabs than the stock Android. You have all contacts, groups (including favorite contacts there), as well as a call log and "Online directories". The latter holds information for all your friends’ online profiles.
Phonebook • groups • online directories
When editing a contact, you start off with just one of each essential field but you can easily add more fields, including other fields in case you want to write down every last scrap of info you have on a contact.
Editing a contact • Linking Dexter with his Facebook account
If you’re switching from another phone don’t worry – you don’t even need a computer to pull out your contacts, messages and calendar items from the old phone into your new Incredible S. The Transfer Data app supports many phones from major manufacturers and pulls the data over Bluetooth.
The Transfer Data app will easily copy your contacts from your old phone
It’s an old trick (Symbian-powered Nokias have been doing this for ever) and most people would probably go with syncing the contacts over the cloud, but still it’s a handy tool to have.
Telephony has Smart Dialing, clever tricks
The in-call sound quality of the HTC Incredible S is good and loud and the reception was pretty strong, only giving out when the signal got very weak.
The on-screen dialer features a keypad, a shortcut to the call log and a list of contacts beneath (you can hide the keypad).
The HTC Incredible S has both Smart Dialing and Voice dialing is here too – just press and hold the search key and say, for example, “Call Dexter”.
The alphabet scroll is an alternative as well and has an interesting change: it puts the Recent calls and Favorite contacts just before the contacts starting with A. This has consequences on contact ordering – if you’ve recently called Dexter, he won’t show up under “D”.
The Incredible S has three accelerometer-based tricks – turning the phone over will mute the ringer of an incoming call or putting it down can activate the loudspeaker automatically when you are in the middle of a call. The other feature is Quiet ring on pickup – once you move the phone, the ringer will quiet down (but not cancel the call).
Yet another option is pocket mode – the ringer volume will increase if the phone is in your pocket (the proximity sensor takes care of detecting that).
The dialer has smart dialing • calling Dexter
Another very handy feature is that when someone calls, their latest Tweet or Facebook update will show up – possibly reminding you what the caller has been up to or is after. We can see how that can be useful.
Here's how the HTC Incredible S fares in our traditional loudspeaker performance test. It scored a Good mark putting it somewhere in the middle among its competitors.
| Speakerphone test | Voice, dB | Ringing | Overall score | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | 66.6 | 65.9 | 66.6 | |
| LG Optimus 2X | 65.7 | 60.0 | 67.7 | |
| 66.5 | 63.6 | 74.9 | Average | |
| LG Optimus 7 | 66.6 | 66.7 | 75.7 | Good |
| HTC Incredible S | 66.5 | 66.1 | 76.7 | Good |
| HTC Desire HD | 69.7 | 66.6 | 78.3 | Good |
| Nokia N8 | 75.8 | 66.2 | 82.7 | Very Good |
| HTC Gratia | 73.2 | 73.6 | 83.5 | Excellent |
Effortless threaded messaging
Android and the HTC Incredible S are capable of all sorts of text messaging – SMS, MMS, email, chat and social networking messages. We’ll cover those one by one starting with basic messaging.
The notification area will display a line of an incoming SMS or just the number of messages if there’s more than one. You can set the notification light to signal unread messages too.
SMS and MMS messages use the threaded layout – you see a list of all conversations, each one is listed with the contact’s photo, name and the time of the last message, including a part of the actual message. Tapping a conversation brings up the entire message history with that contact.
Conversations contact photos too (yours and the contact’s photo), so the whole thing looks almost the same as a chat app. When viewing a thread, the most recent message is placed at the bottom.
To add recipients, just start typing a name or number and choose from the contacts offered – the phone will find the contact you want even if you misspell it (e.g. “drx” matches Dexter).
All threads • viewing a specific thread • Adding recipients works even if you misspell the contact’s name
The compose text box is big and along with the virtual QWERTY, it covers quite a bit of the screen. A tap-and-hold on the text box gives you access to functions such as cut, copy and paste. You are free to paste the copied text across applications like email, notes, chats, etc. and vice versa.
Text selection is similar to what Gingerbread uses, so you’re not missing out on much here. When you press and hold, a “magnifying glass” appears, enabling accurate cursor movements. Text selection works the same way.
Copy, cut and paste are very iPhone-like
The text input method that the Incredible S offers is an on-screen QWERTY. While it’s still not as good as a hardware one, it’s the next best thing – the 4” screen has enough real estate for big, well-spaced keys, which are easy to hit. The HTC software keyboard is excellent too. Going landscape makes the keys and their spacing even larger.
The on-screen QWERTY keyboard in portrait and landscape modes
Converting SMS into MMS is as simple as adding some multimedia content to the message. You can just add a photo or an audio file to go with the text, or you can get creative with several slides and photos.
Attaching a multimedia file turns the SMS to MMS
Email has combined inbox, conversation view
The HTC Incredible S comes with two email apps – the traditional Gmail app, which looks the same as usual, and the generic HTC Mail app, which merges all your email accounts into a single inbox.
Batch operations lets you manage multiple conversations
The Gmail app features the trademark conversation style view and can manage multiple (Gmail) accounts. Batch operations are supported too, in case you need to handle email messages in bulk.
The standard HTC Mail app features several tabs that let you filter the inbox: you can opt to display conversations, emails with attachments only, unread mail only or invitations. You can mark emails too – they will show up in the marked mail tab.
The conversation view tries to mimic the original Gmail client threaded view, which is otherwise missing in the generic inbox.
The standard HTC email app
The HTC email app can handle several accounts and not just from Gmail. When you add multiple accounts, you can view each inbox individually or go into the All accounts section.
Each account is color coded, so you can quickly associate each message with its relevant account.
Email sorting is possible (in either ascending or descending order) by date, subject, sender and size. The currently applied filter is displayed in the top right corner of the display.
The standard mail with new looks and features • Sorting email and viewing email folders
There's hardly anything the HTC Incredible S lacks in terms of email capabilities. The settings for popular email services are automatically configured. POP/IMAP accounts and Active Sync accounts are supported.
Image gallery can read pics over DLNA too
The gallery has the usual list-with-thumbnail structure. The Albums app automatically locates images and videos, no matter where they are stored. Images and videos stored in different folders appear in different sub-galleries that automatically get the name of the folder – which is an effective file management solution.
Each sub-album has a thumbnail of the latest image. There is also a camera shortcut, but it’s only available once you start browsing any of the sub-folders.
The Albums app works with Facebook, Flickr and DLNA too
At the bottom of the main album there are three virtual buttons – one for the actual folder list, another for Facebook and, one for Flickr. These two display images from either account or those posted by your friends.
And finally, the Connected media button lets you pull multimedia content from a DLNA-enabled server (your PC with Windows Media Player will do just fine).
Sharing a photo from the HTC Incredible S is very easy – tap the share button and pick your preferred sharing method. There’s everything from sharing via Bluetooth or email, to posting on Facebook, Twitter or photo sharing sites like Picasa and Flickr. Direct posting of videos on YouTube is also enabled.
Browsing the image gallery
In the HTC Incredible S image folders you can choose between grid and filmstrip layout (flip the phone horizontally and the accelerometer will take care of the rest). You are also able to mass delete images, but still no mass copy-and-paste options.
You can’t copy/paste images from folder to folder either – you’d need a proper file manager for that.
Sharing images is easy • Basic image editing tools
HTC Incredible S supports multi-touch and you can take full advantage of it while browsing your images. You can zoom to 100% with a simple double tap on the screen. The implementation here is extra smooth too.
Smooth finger-sweep browsing of images and pinch zoom
Video player does DivX/XviD but only up to D1 resolution
Video files can be accessed from the All videos subfolder in the Gallery or from the Videos shortcut in the menu, they launch the same thing.
The video files can be viewed as a grid or filmstrip and can be shared over MMS, email, or YouTube, Facebook and Flickr.
The Videos app is part of the Gallery
The video player interface on the HTC Incredible S offers a full screen toggle (stretch / crop video to fit the screen) and you can scrub through the video too. SRS sound enhancement is also available but there’s no subtitles support.
The video player does OK in general - 720p MP4 videos were no problem. D1 DivX/XviD videos at reasonable bitrate played just fine as well but 720p DivX or XviD clips were a no-go.
Playing video
The big screen with excellent viewing angles make the Incredible S a great solution for watching movies on the go. DLNA connectivity can make it useful at home too – like streaming the video you recorded straight to the TV (without a single wire).
Music player is SRS-ly good
The standard music library view is the Artists section, but you can easily switch to one of the other six tabs beneath, which are for Albums, All Songs, Playlists, Songs and Connected media (which handles DLNA).
The music library
The now playing interface is a Cover-Flow-like visualization of the current playlist – you can swipe sideways to skip songs or go back. You can opt to view the full playlist if you need to skip more than a few phones.
The new player interface is nice • Equalizer and SRS sound enhancement
The Incredible S offers SRS sound enhancement to boost the listening experience. If you plug in headphones, you can change equalizer settings too.
Player controls in the notification area • Cover-flow like browsing
Two shortcuts in the top corners act as toggles for shuffle and repeat. From the context menu, you can share a song (over Bluetooth, email or message) and you can look up the music video on YouTube too.
There’s a music recognition app – SoundHound. It easily recognizes a song from just a short sample. Or you can say the name of the artist and song and SoundHound will find it for you, including lyrics. The free version however only offers a limited number of uses (99).
The SoundHoud app
FM radio has RDS, is slow to start
The HTC Sense UI is also equipped with an FM radio, which has a pretty simple interface. It automatically scans the area for the available stations and allows you to mark some of them as favorite. It also supports RDS and allows loudspeaker playback.
The FM radio UI
One thing that annoyed us about the radio is that it takes quite a while to start and stop – about five seconds.
Audio quality not as good as we hoped
The HTC Incredible S audio quality is decent, but we feel that for that kind of cash decent equals disappointing.
The smartphone is pretty good when you plug it in an active external amplifier (such as your home or car stereo), save for the higher than average stereo crosstalk. So while not perfect the device is decent on those occasions. Plus its reasonably loud.
The good news is that plugging in a pair of headphones doesn't have as disastrous an effect on stereo crosstalk as we have seen on some other smartphones. So even with its relatively low starting position it still ends up acceptable after the slide. Still, the overall impact of the applied resistance is pretty major with frequency response, dynamic range, and signal-to-noise ratio all taking a hit and the distortion levels increasing. It's nothing more than a mediocre performance by the Incredible S in these conditions.
Check out the table and see for yourself.
| Test | Frequency response | Noise level | Dynamic range | THD | IMD + Noise | Stereo crosstalk |
| +0.03, -0.18 | -82.4 | 82.2 | 0.018 | 0.058 | -71.3 | |
| +0.61, -0.15 | -71.7 | 71.2 | 0.126 | 0.540 | -59.6 | |
| +0.09, -0.44 | -90.6 | 90.4 | 0.014 | 0.517 | -92.6 | |
| +0.09, -0.44 | -93.2 | 92.9 | 0.020 | 0.728 | -17.9 | |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S | +0.03 -0.04 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.014 | 0.019 | -90.6 |
| Samsung I9000 Galaxy S (headphones attached) | +0.40 -0.12 | -90.7 | 90.6 | 0.018 | 0.329 | -43.3 |
| +0.12, -0.58 | -84.5 | 86.9 | 0.022 | 0.172 | -85.4 | |
| +0.37, -0.15 | -87.0 | 90.4 | 0.026 | 0.400 | -52.3 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.5 | 90.6 | 0.0041 | 0.011 | -92.0 | |
| +0.01, -0.07 | -90.4 | 90.4 | 0.0036 | 0.092 | -68.4 |
HTC Incredible S frequency response
You can learn more about the whole testing process here.
8MP camera has its highs and lows
The HTC Incredible S packs an 8MP camera that snaps stills with resolution 3264x2448 pixels and records 720p@25fps video. There’s a dual-LED flash / video light to help out in the dark too.
The camera interface is very space efficient. Most of the controls are on the right side of the viewfinder, with the virtual shutter in the center. There’s a virtual zoom slider on the left. By default the viewfinder image is cropped so that it fills the entire screen, but you can switch that off (note that cropping reduces the resolution).
HTC Incredible S camera interface
The HTC Incredible S features touch focus and face detection; geo-tagging is enabled too.
The camera features continuous autofocus, which automatically adjusts the focus when you move the phone. This is very useful, since the Incredible S doesn’t really have a hardware shutter key to trigger the autofocus (you can’t do that with the virtual shutter key either).
The effects button brings out a panel on the left with the usual set of color effects (sepia, solarize and so on).
There are other image effects too. For example, Warp places a control point on the screen, which you can drag with your finger and see the result in real time.
Depth of field is another such effect – it adds a radius slider besides the control point and will blur everything in the photo that falls outside the circle.
The camera supports face detection too. It’s enabled in self-portrait mode too – you can set it to focus on 1 or 2 faces.
The HTC Incredible S is a decent 8MP shooter with good contrast and colors. The amount of captured detail is OK but the image processing has a tendency to smudge out things like foliage.
Still, the noise is kept under control and the photos are very usable – the Incredible S is not the 8MP king but it’s good enough most of the time.
You can judge the camera by the samples below.
HTC Incredible S camera samples
Photo quality comparison
The HTC Incredible S enters our Photo Compare Tool to join the other 8MP shooters. The tool’s page will give you enough info on how to use it and what to look for.
HTC Incredible S in our Photo Compare Tool
Buggy HD video
The interface of the camcorder is similar to the still camera’s and there are lots of customizable options with this one. You can set the video resolution, recording limit and add effects.
The new camcorder interface
Autofocus works here too, but only before you start shooting – then the focus is locked and won’t change even if you get closer or move back. Still, the Incredible S had no problems focusing at even very close distances.
Videos are shot in .3GP which isn't the ideal container for HD video but that’s not the video camera’s major problem. It had some sort of bug, which made all the videos extremely choppy – we tried several different players, re-recorded the samples but nothing helped. We’ve noticed other online reviewers got perfectly smooth videos out of their Incredible S’s so we guess it’s just another case of poor camera production quality control – an issue we’ve seen with many HTC phones in our office (and we get most from retail stores).
Videos don’t have much resolved detail but at least the contrast is good and so are the colors (though colors tend to be oversaturated).
The reality is much less impressive than the specs look on paper. Here goes an untouched sample 720p@25fps video clip (11MB).
Video quality comparison
We entered the HTC Incredible S in our Video Compare Tool database too and put it head to head with other 720p mobile camcorders.
HTC Incredible S in the Video Compare Tool
Extensive connectivity
The HTC Incredible S is a connectivity master. Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE is a given, and the dual-band 3G is blazing fast – 14.4Mbps downlink and 5.76Mbps uplink thanks to HSPA.
The local wireless connectivity has Wi-Fi b/g/n and full DLNA support (both client and server, for images, videos and music) and Bluetooth 2.1.
The Connected media app handles all sorts of DLNA interactions – it plays media to and from devices on the network with just a couple of clicks. Apps like the gallery have such functionality built in too.
The Connected media app flexes the Incredible S DLNA muscles
When you plug in the microUSB cable you’re presented with a long list of options - Charge only, Disk drive (mass storage), HTC Sync, USB tethering (use the phone as a modem) and Internet pass-through (the phone uses the computers Internet connection).
Selecting a USB connection type • Starting the personal Wi-Fi hotspot
Last but not least is the HTC Portable Hotspot. It can connect 1 to 8 devices (default Froyo app maxes out at 5), you can encrypt the hotspot with WEP, WPA or WPA2 and you can enable only “allowed users” to connect or leave it open for anything (unsecure, but the quickest setup).
You can set the app to power off automatically after 5 or 10 minutes of inactivity, saving your battery if you forget to switch it off manually.
Feature-full web browser with Flash
Android 2.2 Froyo was a hallmark in the Android web browsing experience. It brought performance improvements and Flash 10.1 and the HTC Incredible S is taking full advantage of both.
The user interface keeps mostly out of sight, which leaves the entire screen to the web page. The minimalist UI is still quite powerful – hit the menu key and six keys pop up.
There are back and forward buttons, adding and viewing bookmarks and managing the open tabs. Finally, the More button brings out yet more options – anything from finding on page and text selection (which works just like in the messaging app).
The Incredible S browser also supports double tap zooming and text reflow, which make it extremely easy to read even longer texts on the phone display. Without text reflow you will either have to zoom out until the text fits (but then it’s too small to read comfortably) or scroll sideways to read each line.
Once you select some text, you can launch the Quick lookup app (which offers Google Translate among other things) or share the text over a message or social networking.
Web browsing is a pleasurable experience on the HTC Incredible S
The bookmark list shows a thumbnail view of the bookmarked pages and you get a “most visited” list in addition to the regular history. Tabs are displayed as 3D cards too – a really neat trick is that if you pinch zoom out beyond the minimum zoom level you go straight into the tab selector.
The bookmarks and History lists • Text reflow in action • Tabs are supported
And to further sweeten the deal, HTC Incredible S has Flash support in its web browser. YouTube videos played quite smoothly so we decided to try out a few Flash games and they worked well. You can play the Flash content in full screen and landscape mode, which makes the most out of the display.
Say what you will about Flash, but still most video streaming and game sites use it – so it’s a major advantage for a browser.
You could use the YouTube app if you find navigating YouTube in the browser hard.
Playing Flash games in the browser • The YouTube application
Mind you, the Android 2.2 browser has support for HTML5 and its video tag but that is a few years (at best) away from becoming the norm.
A fine organizer on board, office doc editor included
The usual set of organizer apps are on board the HTC Incredible S but it does one better than most other phones – it’s got a mobile Office app that can both view and edit documents.
That’s the Quickoffice app, which has support for viewing Word, Excel, and PowerPoint, including the Office 2007 versions and it can create Office 2003 Word and Excel documents (but not 2007 docs).
There is also a PDF viewer to handle PDF files. The on-screen keyboard does cut down the available space in half but if you zoom out (using pinch zoom, of course) you can still fit a reasonable amount of text.
The Quickoffice handles .doc, .xls and .ppt files • Editing a Word document
When editing a Word document, you get plenty of formatting options (more than you get on Windows Phone 7). You get text effects (italic, bold, etc.), you can change the font and its size, color and highlight (from a color picker, not just 3 pre-selected colors like in WP7).
Editing an Excel document • creating a new Office document • Viewing a PPT presentation
However, when you tap Format, you get a long list with all the options in it – usable but not quite user friendly. You can’t create tables (or edit existing ones) or lists either. The situation with spreadsheets is similar – enough features, but not presented in the most user-friendly way.
The doc viewer integrates with the Gmail app, which makes viewing attachments a cinch. You can’t download them to the phone’s internal memory however. Attaching saved files (and we mean all kind of files) is possible though.
The PDF files are handled by the dedicated PDF reader
The calendar has four different types of view: daily, weekly, monthly and agenda. Adding a new event is quick and easy, and you can also set an alarm to serve as a reminder.
The HTC Incredible S organizer centerpiece – the calendar
The Agenda view shows a list of all the calendar entries from the recent past to the near future. It’s a very handy tool when you need to check your appointments for the next few days.
There is also a calculator aboard. It is nicely touch optimized with big, easy to hit buttons. Flipping it horizontally enables some more advanced functions like logarithms.
The built-in calculator
The HTC Incredible S features an alarm clock application, which can handle multiple alarms, each with its own start time and repeat pattern. The Desk clock app turns your Incredible S into a… well, Desk clock. It displays the current time and date and allows you to switch off the display backlighting to save battery power or not disturb at night.
The alarm clock and desk clock apps
The World clock app allows you to quickly check the time in different time zones, while the stopwatch and timer apps might come in handy if you plan to take the phone with you when doing sports.
World clock • Stocks app • Voice recorder • Flashlight app
The Stocks application gives you quotes from Yahoo finance. The Voice recorder might be quite useful for making audio notes and the weather app brings Yahoo’s weather forecast for your area a click away.
There’s an HTC-branded flashlight app too – it uses the LED flash and you can set it to 3 levels of intensity. Nice and all, but the Android Market is full of this kind of apps already.
Socializing with Facebook and Twitter
Facebook and Twitter fans will appreciate the preinstalled Facebook and Peep apps, which allow you to update your profiles on the world’s largest social networks.
The latest Facebook app is available, which enables things like Facebook Chat (yet another way to talk to your friends) and Facebook Places (which lets you to check into places, like Foursquare).
The Facebook apps let you update your Facebook profile
The official Twitter app for Android also came preinstalled – some might prefer it over Peep (they both integrate with the phonebook so you don’t have to use the app necessarily).
The official Twitter app is the latest version too – tweets can be geo-tagged, you can snap a photo to include in the tweet straight from the app (uploaded automatically to yfrog or TwitPic) and there are handy buttons to reply to or retweet a message.
The Peep app • Official Twitter app
There are two handy search apps Quick lookup and Search Anywhere. Quick lookup lets you enter a query and view the Wikipedia article (formatter for easy reading), search Google, YouTube, use Google Translate or look it up in Google Dictionary. The Search Anywhere app is a universal in-phone search that covers anything – from settings and messages to songs and videos.
Quick lookup is a handy research too • Search Anywhere really does search everywhere
Reading eBooks on virtual LCD paper
The Reader app is an eBook reader provided by Kobo. It comes preloaded with several classics (from A Tale of Two Cities to White Fang) and access to Kobo’s eBook store where you can buy new books (the store includes free titles too).
The Reader app comes preloaded with several books
The UI is fairly simple – it presents a cover flow like list of all and once you tap a cover, it opens up the book for you (with a nice animation). Alternatively, you can view your library as a list.
The reader formats the book to best fit the screen and you can change the font setting if it’s too small (or too big). You can add bookmarks, highlight sections of the book with different colors and even jot down notes – you can access those later from the context menu while reading the book.
Reading from virtual sheets of paper
The background is pure white, which means it glows with the full strength of the backlight, which quickly becomes a problem and tires your eyes. A choice of background colors would have been nice and some easy to reach control of the backlight.
Another thing we missed is the option to import e-books you already have – like classic books from Project Guttenberg for example.
Highlighting and notes • buying a book from the Kobo eBook store
Anyway, some will find the Reader app useful, others can just grab Kindle for Android from the Market or one of the other free eBook readers.
Android Market and HTC Likes
The structure of the Android Market is quite simple – featured apps on top and above them, three sections (Applications, Games and Downloads). There is also a shortcut up there for initiating a search.
The Android Market will give you access to hundreds of thousands of applications
The Applications and Games sections are divided into subsections (e.g. Communication, Entertainment etc.), so you can filter the apps that are relevant to you. Of course, there is also an option of displaying them all in bulk, but you’ll probably need days to browse them all that way.
There are all kinds of apps in the Android market and the most important ones are covered (file managers, navigation apps, document readers etc.).
HTC Likes is an alternative way to browse the Market, which might prove to be more convenient than the vanilla app. It has tabs for Featured and Popular apps, which are presented as 3D cards.
HTC Likes is an alternative to the Android Market
To view the rest of the apps, you can scroll down. To make discovering apps even easier, you can see what apps/games your friends have commented on, which is a great way to find recommended apps. Or you can use the HTCSense.com site to look for apps from the comfort of your computer and mark them. Later, you can find them in the Market items tab.
HTC Likes pulls apps from the Android Market, but each one comes with an HTC review. You can comment on apps, like and share them via texts or email, even over Twitter and Bluetooth (which just sends a text note with a link to the app).
You can check out what your friends have said about the apps
Not quite an app store, but the HTC Hub is a good source of widgets, wallpapers, scenes and skins and also sound customizations – ringtones, alarms and notification sounds and entire sound sets (a set is a whole package that brings together the other three categories).
The HTC Hub is your source of customizations
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