Verizon has been incredibly successful with their Droid brand of Android phones. Verizon might carry many Android devices, but the Droid-branded ones receive the full force of Big Red’s marketing machine. Each Droid phone is equipped with special branding on the phone, most notably the Droid boot animations and wallpapers, plus they get special sounds, and all sorts of promotion. They also build on a multi-year history that goes all the way back to the original Droid (circa 2009) The next phone in the Verizon Wireless Droid lineup is the HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE. We got some hands on time with this phone at CTIA 2012.
In every way imaginable, the Droid Incredible 4G LTE looks and feels like the next generation of the Incredible-like of phones. The back of the phone sports the same rubberized coating with the rigid textures, even the camera is in the same place. The entire phone is wrapped in the red accents that have made the Incredible stick out in the crowd of Android devices before. And the only ways that this phone does not feel like the Incredible are positive, since the phone is noticeably lighter and thinner than the previous generations.
In a world of gargantuan Android phones that almost require two hands to use, the Incredible feels narrow, making it an absolute pleasure to use single-handedly. The back cover is removable, exposing a 1700mAHh battery and a microSD card slot for up to 32GB of additional storage. Owners of the previous Incredible or Rezound devices on Verizon will feel very much at home with the Incredible 4G LTE.
HTC placed a 4-inch Super LCD qHD display and a 1.2GHz Snapdragon S4 in this phone. The processor used in this phone is similar to the Snapdragon S4s we’ve seen HTC release recently, but HTC tells us that this is actually an entirely different chip rather than an underclocked variant of the 1.4GHz seen elsewhere. The Incredible 4G LTE has an absolutely brilliant display and is in no way slower than the other Android phones released by HTC recently.
The phone is running Android 4.0 with Sense 4, and comes pre-loaded with a handful of Verizon Wireless apps and the Droid branded wallpapers and ringtones. Finally, the Incrdible 4G LTE is packing HTC’s latest 8MP camera with a back-illuminated sensor, making it a terrific phone to take pictures with.
While no official pricing has been announced, it is anticipated that the Droid Incredible 4G LTE will come in at the $299 price point that has been seen for Verizon’s other high-end Android devices.
As an early hands on with the phone, it is a really impressive device and a worthy successor to the Droid Incredible branding.
