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HTC Incredible S review

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Verdict

An unusual design sets the Incredible S apart, and it’s a quality all-round package too - at least until the dual-core wave arrives

Review Date: 23 Mar 2011

Reviewed By: Jonathan Bray

Price when reviewed: Free, on a £30.00 per month, 24 months contract.

Overall Rating

Features & Design
5 stars out of 6

Value for Money
4 stars out of 6

Performance
5 stars out of 6

HTC announced a whole swathe of new products last month and the first to surface is the firm’s new flagship Android phone. The Incredible S is initially available free on a £30 per month, two-year Vodafone contract exclusively through Carphone Warehouse, and it looks like a tempting deal.

You’re getting a lot for your money: a large, beautifully crisp 4in screen with a resolution of 480 x 800, an 8-megapixel camera with dual-LED flash, 1.1GB of built-in storage with 8GB supplied on a microSD card, plus the usual array of connectivity hardware, from A-GPS to 5.76Mbits/sec HSDPA and 802.11n Wi-Fi. Despite announcing the Incredible S with Android 2.3, our review sample was running Android 2.2, with HTC Sense 3 running on top; an Android 2.3 update has been promised in a matter of weeks.

In terms of size, the HTC Incredible S sits somewhere between the 3.7in Desire and the 4.3in Desire HD, and it’s the ideal compromise. The 4in screen offers better readability and makes using the onscreen keyboard easier than on the Desire, while avoiding the awkward bulk of its bigger HD sibling. It’s crisp, clear and bright, too – easily the match of the Desire’s original OLED panel.

The design won’t be for everyone (the matte-black rear panel features a raised panel some might call ugly), but the curved corners, narrow profile and rubbery casing combine to make this a comfortable phone to hold and slip in the pocket. One further design point to note is that the Incredible S ditches the optical trackpad of the Desire and Desire Z. To compensate, the four glowing touch buttons below the screen perform the nifty trick of rotating whenever the screen does, so they’re always the right way up.

Performance and battery life

Another advantage the Incredible holds over the Desire HD is better battery life. Our test involves an hour of audio playback through headphones, an hour of screen on idle time, a half-hour phone call and a 50MB podcast download, plus email checking via the phone’s default method throughout the day. The Incredible S had 50% remaining on the gauge after 24 hours of use, compared with a poor 30% for the Desire HD.

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Comments

User comments

This really should have been dual core.

By james016 on 23 Mar 2011

I'm confused

From what you've said about the user experience, including performance, this phone does well in all areas. In fact your only gripe seems to be that it doesn't have a dual-core processor, but isn't the apparent user experience what counts, regardless of what's under the hood??

Everybody gets hung up on tech specs and forgets that it's the user experience that rules. It would mean more to me if smartphones in this class could have battery life doubled rather than a dual-core processor that's not going to add a great deal of value.

By alvin on 23 Mar 2011

@alvin

Well said. I would also rate a better battery as far more important that a dual core processor.

By tirons1 on 23 Mar 2011

@James016

Why? Performance seems top notch according to the review - and battery life will be improved for it.

Just one point - no mention of the iphone throughout the entire review - odd. Is this a case of a phone that may well be a match for - if not better than - the iphone but PCPro dare not speak the words so not to upset SwissMac?

By everton2004 on 24 Mar 2011

How does it work as a phone?

Obviously it is reassuring to know that Angry Birds plays smoothly, but I wonder, how does this device perform as a phone?

My main gripe about the iPhone is poor reception, on the odd occasions when I use it as a phone.

By revsorg on 25 Mar 2011

priorities

For a smartphone I agree real user priorities are:

- Battery Life
- Call/Reception Quality
- Speakerphone quality
- Responsiveness in day to day use
- Toughness
- Portability
- Customisable
- Value for Money

What processor it has (and to some extent what screen resolution it has) is very low on my list of important features.

By adetri on 28 Mar 2011

A silly review.

I hate to say this, but this is a silly and irrelevant review.The phone performed well in every respect and met and exceeded its design parameters, yet you castigate it because it doesn't have a dual
core processor, which is irrelevant. You seem to be more interested in proving your "trendy geekiness" rather than carry out a proper review for the benefit of those who actually want to use the phone. Silly.

By Snecma on 29 Mar 2011

A silly review (the flip side)

You have basically said this is an incremental advance over the original desire without making it clear, there is nothing on offer that gives it any significant advantage over anything else in the current lineup. And one major step back the lack of hardware buttons and optical trackpad are simply a cost saver for HTC. Anyone who has used both will not move away from the original desire.

By aryehsc on 29 Mar 2011