The HTC Droid family is rapidly growing, but so far there has been little to disappoint us. The combination of the Android OS and brains alongside HTC’s excellent build quality and distinctive UI have delivered one great phone after another.

The HTC Droid Incredible is the latest to arrive and brings a few tweaks to the formula, some quirky looks and the typically excellent hardware and software.

Look and Feel

Although we have a lot thanks Apple for, as without the huge success of the iPhone, it is unlikely that we would be seeing the explosion of quality smartphones we’re getting at the moment.

Unfortunately though, the success of the iPhone has lead to the ubiquity of iPhone clones out there which mimic either the look or feel of the iPhone with little innovation. If you look at the front of the Droid Incredible, you would be able to say with confidence that it has ‘been inspired’ by the looks of the iPhone, featuring a sleek, shiny, black, minimalist fascia.

However, HTC have decided to depart from the usual template in the back of the Droid Incredible, which more resembles a work of modern art than your typical smartphone. The best way to described it would be as a sort of layered plastic effect, but it is pretty much impossible to explain, so here is a picture:

Now with the distinct lack of creativity in phone design department accross the market, I feel a bit bad for complaining about the Droid Incredible, but you can’t applaud originality unless it’s improved on things. Unfortunately the back of the Droid Incredible just looks rather ugly, and detracts from the slick and slim design elsewhere on the phone. Also because of the materials used for the back design, the overall feel of the Droid Incredible is very cheap and plasticy. Normally it would be a plus for a phone that it feels light in the hand, but while the Droid Incredible is lighter than most phones I’ve held, it isn’t in a good way, as it just doesn’t feel like a good, solid high quality design.

Apart from the ugly rear, the Droid Incredible is a triumph everywhere else. It has nice flashes of red color spread around, which help to highlight various aspects such as the camera lens and speaker. The screen is extremely bright and vivid and responds very well to your touch, with just enough tactile feedback to make it feel like you’re really interacting with your phone.

Functionality

The first thing that you will notice about the Droid Incredible is just how…incredibly fast it is. Even though it has the same 1Ghz snapdragon processor that is found in many smartphones, it is by far the quickest handset I’ve used. When you scroll through homescreens, there is no noticeable lag and it all flows extremely fluidly.

This speed of the Droid Incredible makes everything you do on it a pleasure. The navigation through the homescreens of the HTC Sense UI has been augment with the ‘leap’ feature, which allows you to pinch zoom to display all of your homscreens as icons on one screen. You can then jump to any screen you wish, which saves having to always scroll from one end to the other in a great timesaving little feature.

All of the other usual suspects in HTC’s UI package are all there, with a new addition of the ‘Friendstream’ widget, which aggregates all of your social network updates into one place.

The Android marketplace may be growing, but it still lags well behind the App Store for choice, quality and ease of browsing. If reports are correct and developers are flocking away from Apple though, you may be playing the wiser long term game if you decide to go for an Android-powered phone such as this.

The headline of the features on the phone is the excellent camera. Rather than packing the standard HTC 5 Megapixel camera, the Droid Incredible comes with an 8 Megapixel, dual flash one that offers decent if not outstanding quality. The UI for the camera offers plenty of customisation though, and with features such as touch-to-focus, you will get more than enough service out of this camera to keep your inner photographer satisfied.

In terms of storage, the Droid Incredible comes with 8Gb of internal memory and the usual SD card expandability. Impressively, the SD card slot is hot-swappable, which is one of those features that you can’t imagine you really need, but once you’ve used a device with this capability, going back to not having it is a real drag.

The overall functionality of this phone is very impressive, with some nice little upgrades to the UI and camera and an extremely quick processor. You will still get a kick out of the speed that you can scroll through your homescreens every time you boot up your phone, and regular tasks such as browsing the internet are made a real pleasure on such a fast handset.

Verdict

Overall, the HTC Droid Incredible delivers the complete package. Some of you out there may like the guady design of the phone’s back, but even if you aren’t a fan, the rest of it looks great and it more than delivers in usability. Immense power and a slick UI contribute to an overall user experience that will have you turning to your phone to undertake even the smallest task, just because it’s that much fun to use.