Got my HTC Incredible last week and have been in smart phone heaven ever since.
As soon as I turned it on, it synched with my Google account and therefore, picked up my Google calendar and all my contacts. I can continue to manage my contacts via Google rather than tapping contacts into my phone – which can be fine in a pinch, but not something I would opt to do if I had access to my laptop. A simple input of pop and smtp info synched my outside webmail and voilà, I was basically all set.
The cool thing is that my husband got a new iTouch last week super cheap. He’d wanted a smart phone but didn’t want to pay for a data package, so an iTouch was ideal for him. Unlike me, his phone is not an essential work tool. For him, his phone is purely to call friends and family. He can use his old sturdy work-horse LG 8200 clamshell phone which fits nicely into his pocket and can take a beating and have all the funtionality of an iPhone via the iTouch. Of course, he’s tied to wi-fi connections, but that’s OK with him. The reason I mention this is that his acquisition of the iTouch coinciding with my own acquisition of the HTC Incredible – I’ve been able to do an almost side by side comparison of my phone to the iTouch (or an iPhone by proxy).
File Transfer Made Simple
One thing I like about the Incredible is that it isn’t tied to iTunes. I can connect it to my computer and it acts as an extra hard drive. I can transfer photos and music directly between my computer and phone quickly and easily. I tried connecting the iTouch and it connects – not as a manageable drive in itself – but as a ‘Scanner/Camera’ and doesn’t allow me any funtionality in that respect. I think I have to do everything via iTunes. Not sure how the phone operates under these conditions, but I suspect that all Apple products have to work via iTunes. If this is different, it’s not obvious and I don’t want to waste time researching how to do things… it should be evident to the user.
There’s an App For That… but First…
The other thing I liked was that because my phone is tied to my Verizon account, any app I decide to download is processed onto my account which, of course, is already set up. I don’t plan on purchasing a whole lot of premium apps. I’m quite content with the free ones. I’ve downloaded a few with little hassle. In fact, it was ‘two clicks and download complete’. So far, I’ve downloaded Evernote, Sudoku, Toss it, and a few other functional and fun apps – all free. With the iTouch, you need an iTunes active store account – which my husband doesn’t have and doesn’t really want. Even to download free apps, the account has to be there. Since he hasn’t set it up yet, he hasn’t been able to download anything.
Out of Synch?
The other thing is that now that he has his iTouch, his old Nano is no longer synched with his iTunes. If he wants to continue to use his Nano (because sometimes, you just want to carry something a bit smaller to listen to music…), he pretty much has to create another user on his computer and set up another iTunes application… it just seems like a lot of excessive nonsense to me. My iTunes is set to my iPod and that’s that. I don’t really care about listening to music on my phone, but I’ve transferred over some tunes onto my Incredible and that’s just fine too.
Speed
Finally, I did multiple tests opening up various sites and on average, my Incredible opened up sites in 5 seconds or less while the iTouch took up 9 seconds to open up each site. Just opening up the App Store on the iTouch took about 8 seconds while on the Incredible, it only took about 3 seconds. Yes, I’m talking seconds… and yes, it may be splitting hairs, but there is a difference in this day and age – like the 6 second website download rule.
Sure, I’m not actually comparing my phone with an actual iPhone, but the basic gist is there… and I’ve got to say, I see no real difference. In fact, I really prefer the HTC Incredible. Granted, my phone doesn’t have the front facing camera like the iPhone4, which I must admit is pretty cool – although if I really wanted one of those, I could have gotten the Droid X… but otherwise, Idon’t feel like I’m really missing anything other than having the ‘perception of cool’ for having an Apple product… big whoop de do. Aside from my iPod Nano, the last Apple product I had was an Apple IIc in 1987. I’m OK with that.
The Conversion Has Begun…
Off the subject of the iPhone/iTouch. We had dinner with some friends the other night and I showed them my new phone. Now, he has an HTC Imagio or something like that with a Windows operating system. He’s had several smart phones in the past with the Windows OS and was fairly pleased with it so he stuck to it with his current phone. He took one look at the browser speed on my phone and shook his head in disgust at how much faster it was than his own. Then, when I told him how much I paid for it, he looked even more disgusted. He’s not up for a new phone for another year or so. I assured him that by the time he’s up for a new phone, mine will probably look like an obsolete piece of junk. (But I think I sold him on the Android operating system!)
By the way, my husband is primarily using his iTouch to watch TV shows… the small size not seeming to bother him one bit. Right now, he’s hooked on some sit-com out of Canada about, as he described it, “a bunch of scum bags living & scheming in a trailer park…” Isn’t technology great?
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