A Mind is a Terrible Thing

I know the Kindle's been available for Droid-equipped phones for a while now.  Barnes & Noble has finally jumped on the bandwagon with an Android app — essentially 'Nook for Android.'

It installed on my HTC Incredible without a hitch, synced up with my B&N purchase list, but doesn't download the actual books unless you tell it to do so.  It has 8 different fonts for reading and 5 different sizes, but the defaults worked well for me, other than making it one step smaller.  I didn't even need to read the instructions to guess that page turning was with a single finger-flick one way or the other.  If you tap a page, a slider comes up that lets you move quickly through the book, and tells you what page you're on.  To bookmark a page, touch the upper right corner and it folds down just like a dog-ear.  From the menu, you can go anywhere in the contents or your bookmarks.  It appears the program remembers your last position in a book when you go back to it (need to test this some more).

The page-turn animation is kind of cool — it looks as if the edge of the page is under your finger or thumb, and you can partially view both the current and next/previous one.  Or, if you do a quick flick, it just jumps by.  (For those who don't like this, you can change it to a slide, but from the library view, not while reading a book.  I like the animation better.)

The Nook Droid reader also supports automatic portrait/landscape viewing.

The only lack I noticed was the inability to add other non-B&N books, as I can on the actual Noon device… and with that one, I still have to say that segregating my two libraries has been a less-than-desirable aspect.  Of course, my phone came with Adobe PDF reader software already installed, and it was easy enough to get FBReader and WordPlayer free from the Droid Marketplace to read ePub books.

After a couple weeks worth of use, some more observations on my new HTC Incredible smartphone:

• Although the 1300 mAh OEM battery is way underpowered for a phone with these capabilities, it did hold up a little better than I'd expected (or feared).  Two Sundays ago, I took it on a long hike with the GPS and tracking functions turned on (using the My Tracks app from Google and it didn't run out; on the other hand, at the halfway point it was under 50% so I hit it with a portable USB battery pack I happened to have with me.
• Today, I received a 3rd party battery upgrade from Seidio, a 3500 mAh extended battery which, if it works as advertised, should give me more than 2.5x as much juice.  The only downside is it does add some heft to to the phone, but they did a good job with the replacement back cover.  I might even photograph my left index finger less often, as it gives me more to grip when holding the phone horizontally.  We'll see if it actually does the job, power-wise; the instructions advise several charge/recharge cycles to get maximum function.  (On update: I went on a 4 hour hike with GPS and Tracking on, used it normally (but not heavily) the last few days, played a couple YouTube videos, checked weather radar, taken maybe a couple dozen pictures, have not turned off WiFi, BlueTooth, network synchronization, or GPS — and after about 48 hours, I still have 39% charge.  I'm planning to let it get down to about 20-25 before I recharge.  Update-update: I'm consistently getting more than 4 days per charge on the new battery.)
• Noticed that while at home the phone battery actually lasts longer if I leave the WiFi turned on.  Probably this is because I'm in a marginal cell reception area and so the phone has to run through more power to stay connected that way and to access the 3G network.
• Another minor complaint others have noted is that in direct bright sunlight the display can be difficult to see, but I never found it impossible.  Still, other than the old plain black LCD displays of yore, I've never seen a color LCD that worked well in total sun.  And a little shade isn't that hard to find.
• Speed.  Oh yah, this thing is fast.  No matter what I'm doing with the phone, whether browsing or using the GPS functions, I have never noticed it slowing down the least bit.  The only time it gets slow is when I'm someplace where the reception is poor and I'm trying to do things like download GPS maps or upload map tracks or messages.
• Played a few YouTube videos on it — they look great, and the sound out of the little speakerphone speaker is surprisingly good.  Even better with headphones.
• Many devices like this come with a little bit of available memory and an empty additional memory slot.  I really like the fact the Incredible started with about 6GB internal RAM free and an extra 2 GB microSD card.  That said, I've upgraded the card to 8GB Class 6, which was dead cheap to do at about $20.  I could've gone higher but don't really need it (yet) and the 16 GB price jumps to $60 which seemed excessive.  A shame iPhones aren't upgradable at all, and require a factory return to change the battery.

HTC Droid Incredible.  I haz one.

I might post a more formal review later, but for now–

Pros:

• Droid operating system (meaning the phone can be updated)
• Super fast and responsive
• More apps than you can shake a stick at
• Great camera (8 megapixels)
• Amazing how clever people have found ways to integrate the camera, accelerometers, compass and GPS into mega-useful applications.
• User-replaceable battery and microSDHC memory
• Simply fun to use and operate, and highly customizeable

Cons:

• Display is nice, but a little difficult to read in full sun
• Battery life, as many others have noted, is poor (but not insurmountably so)

Favorite apps:

• Google Maps, Goggles, NightSky, and My Tracks
• Instant access to weather info (including radar)
• Tricorder — an actually functional application that uses all of the phone's sensors

Overall impression?  Total geek-gasm.  I keep finding neat things this smart-phone can do.  As for the battery problem?  I've a couple solutions.  One is I have an expanded-capacity battery on order, since the OEM original 1300 mAh is way too underpowered for a device like this; it really ought to have been 2000 mAh.  The other is an external battery pack — and I happen to have a nifty $20 one from Tekkeon which uses rechargeable AA batteries.  Finally, it helps to be smart about having certain features turned on, such as the GPS, WiFi and/or Bluetooth, but fortunately there are tools and widgets that make turning these things on and off very easy.

Finally, I take back some of the bad things I've said about Verizon Wireless in the past, issues having to do with billing and their unwillingness to let me back out of a contract when I was going to be living overseas for several years.  However, there just weren't that many choices on carriers, and there's little question that Verizon has the best coverage, especially here in New Mexico. 

We have a pre-paid AT&T SIM-card account and the signal quality has always been lousy at best, especially any distance away from metropolitan areas.  When we were down visiting Carlsbad Caverns, there was no coverage at all.  I eliminated Sprint and T-Mobile for similar reasons.  I've taken that AT&T registered phone on hikes and could count on it getting a signal only about 50% of the time.  Yesterday, I went on a long hike deep in the Sandias and although sometimes the signal was weak, I never lost it entirely.

The other reason is only Verizon had the Droid phone I wanted.  I might've been willing to settle for the newer Motorola model, or maybe another HTC…but the Incredible had the specs.

So anyway, the reason I take back at least some of my criticism is because when the new phone arrived via FedEx, I had issues getting it initialized and registered.  So that resulted in my spending over half an hour on our land-line phone with Cornelius, the Verizon customer service rep.  The upside is I was able to get a really sweet & memorable phone number, and they reduced my two year commitment to just one, with eligibility for a new phone in 10 months.  Not sure how that last part works, but what the hey.  Thanks Verizon, your attempts to improve your customer service have been noted and appreciated.