NEW DELHI: In best HTC touchscreen phone tradition, the Incredible S looks very compact in spite of the 4-inch display, and at 135 g is actually on the light side.
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he front is dominated by the 480 x 800 super LCD display, with the now-familiar four HTC touch buttons beneath it for home, menu, back and search. And in a very neat touch, these buttons actually rotate with the screen.
There is also a front facing 1.3MP camera for video calling and self-portraits . The back houses an 8.0-megapixel camera with dual LED flash and speaker. The innards of the Incredible S are impressive too—a 1 GHz processor, 768 MB RAM, surround sound, support for micro-SD cards, and every connectivity option that springs to mind, including Wi-Fi, GPS, 3G and even the option to stream pictures and videos to a television using DLNA (provided your television supports it, of course).
And running on top of all this is Android 2.2, over which, in turn runs HTC's Sense interface, which makes most tasks a snap and is by far the best looking and most functional 'skin' over Android. As a smartphone, the Incredible S excels, handling social networks, mail & web browsing with ease, even when all are running at the same time (the RAM helps!).
The big screen comes into its own when you are viewing video or browsing the Web. And unlike some of its competitors, it actually has an onscreen keyboard that is easy to use. In terms of pure phone functionality , call quality was excellent. Music through the headsets was very good indeed.
Best of all, this has got to be one of the smoothest operators we have seen in a while in terms of pure performance. It does, however, disappoint a bit in the camera department. While the 8.0-megapixel shooter performs adequately in sunlight, the quality of snaps and video dips discernibly when one shifts indoors. And then there is Android's albatross—the battery life.
The Incredible S does better in this department than the Desire HD and the HD7, but it still is nowhere near BlackBerry or Symbian territory.
In short, be ready to charge it once a day, especially if you are making the most of the Sense interface's ability to park everything from mail to social networks to news updates on your home screens—and it does make sense to do so.
The back panel of the phone is also a bit too thin for comfort as you can at times feel the battery heating up through it. All said and done, the Incredible S is a very good device indeed. There will be those who will crib about the absence of an AMOLED display, a dual core processor and the latest version (2.3) of Android.
We will content ourselves with being very satisfied with its performance. Yes, the 28,900 price tag does seem to be a bit on the higher side, when you consider that other devices with competitive configurations, including HTC's own Desire HD are available for less, but if you are looking for a big-screen Android that performs without looking too bulky, you could hardly do better.
–Nimish dubey