First Look at the Improved HTC Incredible S [Video]
Among HTC’s lineup of freshly announced Sense devices is the HTC Incredible S, successor to — you guessed it — the HTC Incredible. The phone keeps the original’s sculpted shape running around the back of the phone and highlighting where the handset’s internal hardware rests, but a 4-inch display gives it a bigger footprint. It remains instantly recognizable among HTC’s lineup, however.
It is the only member of HTC’s new set of Android Smartphones to feature a set of black-out capacitive buttons. This is the phone we saw leaked a few weeks back that we were calling “buttonless.” Turns out the feature was no more than an aesthetic design choice (though it does play a small role in conserving battery life). That same leak suggests that this as-of-now Europe-only device will be making its way to Verizon in due time.
As far as the experience goes, the phone features Android 2.2 with the updated version of HTC Sense first found on the Desires HD and Z. With larger screens becoming the norm, the phone feels pretty natural in hand and makes the Desire S seem a bit scrawny by comparison. An updated 1GHz Snapdragon and plenty of RAM with 768MB make it nice and snappy, but we would have liked to see something dual-core from HTC (even if it wasn’t this phone). An 8MP camera and front-facing camera tag-team on image and video capture.
As an update to the classic Incredible, we really can’t complain. It’s as good as the first and better in many ways. It should be out in Europe sometime during Q2.