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Ok i have been playing with my incredible for more than a day on request of several members , here is a detailed review of the handset HTC incredible Before i begin writing the review let me tell you that i am highly impressed with the device , it has almost everything you can ask for , and for the first time in so many months i have finally come to love a Verizon device I will try to cover the review in different sub headings Packaging The handset comes in a sleek packaging , its one of slimmest packaging boxes i have seen since palm pre and iphone what u get in box is The beast HTC Incredible Red coloured battery Charger and micro usb data cable The charger in itself is a beauty its a small black coloured charger with HTC logo on it sadly Verizon hasnt included micro sd card or pouch or any other accessory , sadly i feel that a 500$ phone deserves bit more in accesories 1) Build Quality and physical dimensions. Ok , its a premium device , i must say that verizon has put in a lot to make this device look like a premium device . The phone feels very solid in hands , no creeks or squeaks nor does it has the cheap plastic feeling to it The phone has red accents , if u remove the battery cover it reveals the completely red back of the phone the battery is also red in colour , too everyones suprise , it does look and its pne of a kind phone to have these red coloured accents The back cover has matt colour finsh and it provides a solid grip for phone To ones suprise this phone is thinner than HTC hero and as light as hero Its easily pocketable and u wont find this phone to be in anyway difficult to carry around 2) Gorgeous AMOLED screen Ok this is my favourite part the htc incredible has 3.7 inches AMOLED screen To people who dont know about amoled , in lehmann terms amoled is based on different technology than standard lcd that we see on most phones like htc hero Its more sharper and colours appear very sharp and vibrant on AMOLED screen than on lcd The screen of incredible is made up of glass and is scratch resistant The screen has 800*400 WVGA display Its sharp , and pixels are distrbuted properly , images appear great on it The touch sensitiveness is much better and smoother than hero 3) HARDWARE HTC INCREDIBLE has 4 touch sensitive buttons with haptic feedback , they are right under the screen In place of trackball it has OPTICAL TRACKPAD and centre of trackpad also is used as ok button The side has volume rocker keys On top u will find the power switch on left side and 3.5mm headset jack on right side On left side u have the micro usb port for charging as well to connect to pc The back has 8mp camera and the dual led flash with beautiful HTC logo , which shows off the world that its a HTC premium device The phone has led for notifications , though its small point like It has the proximity sensor that we missed on hero and also the ambient light sensor. 4) ANDROID 2.1 The phone comes with stock android 2.1 with sense ui So u get all the standard features of ECLAIR , without need of custom roms Once u put in your google account details all your gmail , gtalk and google contacts are synced automatically The phone has inbuilt 8gb on board memory It has 750mb available for android apps and remaining 7gb available for phone storage , besides you have micro sd slot which can support upto 16gb cards 5) User Interface is as fast as it gets The incredible runs 1GHZ snapdragon processor , and its blazing fast apps open and close on incredible 200% faster than they did on HTC hero the difference in processing speed is clearly visible There are no or little lags even if u run multiple apps The amoled screen makes the experience even more worthwhile 6) Messaging / contacts / other PIM functions ITS all google here and you dont have to worry a bit after loading your google account details The default IM application Gtalk allows flawless IM communication you can switch between multiple chat windows by horizontal scrolling Contacts have multiple feilds , u can sync all ur contacts back and forth between google servers and the phone There is a calendar widget for all ur reminders and important entries events for which you need to be reminded of 7) On screen keyboard and typing on 3.7 inch screen The on screen keybaord is the default HTC one its iphone like and its very easy to type on the 3.7 screen with auto rotation feature which allows you to type in horizontal mode The auto correction feature works well , and after a few days you will get accustomed to using it 8) 8MP camera with dual led flash , first time in india for a cdma phone The 8mp camera of incredible does well for what it is meant for , point and shoot the dual led flash is strong It does video recording as well though the framerate is 25 The camera is fast , thanks to snapdragon 1ghz The time taking from shooting pic to saving and processing image is very short It can take snaps very quickly and clearly Unlike HTC HERO which lacked the ability to take pics in dark , the dual LED flash works here for taking pics in poor liht condtion I will post some sample pics soon 9) GPS The incredible comes with agps YOU get satellite locks in just few secs in a blink of an eye , much faster than others Google maps is standard application and using google navigation u can find your way using the incredible Its going to replace your gps device 10) Battery Life The incredible has 1300 mah battery now the phone has amoled , which saves more power than lcd after using it very very heavily on day 1 i could get 18hrs out of it , which means you can expect it to last anywhere around 2 days with normal usage and around 1day with very heavy usage like mine Overall not bad for a phone of its calibre. 11) Music The phone comes equipped with Fm radio i was able to get all fm stations in mumbai in stereo mode The phone has 3.5mm for headphones so u can plug any of your headsets and enjoy music The music quality is good and has good bass and mid to low tones can be discerned easily Plus the 8gb onboard memory plus the ability to use sd cards will surely make u want to use incredible as ur portable music player . 12) Call quality Its a phone afterall, it should be able to make and reciece calls without any issues the call qquality is great , no hiss or background sounds , no call drops People on other side heard me properly without any complaints . 13) Connectiviity with Bluetooth and WiFi Now for all you disappointed Hero users , finally the incredible can send and recieve files over bluetooth without any issues No problems in pairing at all There are rumours that incredible has wifi n ,though its still to be confirmed but mostly it has same wifi radio as nexus one , and i know for sure that this beast has WiFi N in addition to b/g 14) Applications The market has over 30k applications and more available on this forum You will never run out of apps and there is app for your every need 15) Conclusion So after so much do i need to say more This is an awesome handset , HTC and VERIZON have learnt a lot from past and they have given it all with this handset It feels solid , its built well and it has enough horespower to keep you to stay with it for another year The 8mp camera makes it even better , especially on reliance network were we dont have good handsets , shock ur gsm rivals by this beast and they are sure to get envy of u . Guys get it and enjoy !! I find it to be match for EVO , and those who want a better andrid experience this handset should be tried once . post reserved

This thread is for people who have been wanting or trying to shift to Linux - but needed advice on the best option. The easiest way to shift to linux is to start with a dual boot system - booting windows 7/XP and a good Linux distribution and configuring both the operating systems to be identical in terms of everything - from applications to preferences, bookmarks cookies - everything. This will ensure that you get the same experience whether you boot into linux or windows at any time. I recommend using PC Linux OS 2010 (twitter) as its one of the only distributions which is newbie friendly but at the same time very powerful and always updated to the latest apps and is also a rolling release so you don't need to re-install every 1 year or so like Ubuntu or Fedora as entire system keeps getting updated slowly over time. I'll explain the configuration in the later part of the post. First I am giving below some screenshots to convince you that my Win7 and PCL10 systems behave identically with the same browser profiles, same lotus notes (or outlook if you prefer) profiles, same my documents/music etc folder and nearly identical applications. OK, here's my win7 & pcl10 desktops side by side: Lets look at the applications in pcl first and see how the shared profiles with win7 imply the same browser/lotus/etc experience: Browsers - firefox on pcl & win7 (with same profile), chrome & Lotus Notes (can only get screenshot of splashscreen for some reason) Media Players: 3D desktop effects, Cover Flip alt-tab like Mac OS X & real transparency (3d effects are extremely fast on linux unlike win7. transparency is real, not alpha blending so if you are working in a translucent shell you will keep seeing a moving video beneath. In alpha blending, the background screenshot is just dimmed and displayed to give an illusion of transparency - you won't even see you desktop icons beneath let alone video etc.) Some more apps: Google Earth, Google Desktop, Picassa, VMWare/VirtualBox, Media Editing Suites etc. Now lets see how easy it is configure things or to install apps - linux has repositories which have all the applications in the universe. You don't need to search on the internet, download and install. Just click/select the apps in the repo client like Synaptic and click apply. Some repos will be already configured while others like google etc. you can add anytime. Start menu options - classic or searchable like win7: File manager has not just Tabs but also splittable views, Wifi & EVDO/3G modem support, Huge 3d effects options OK, end of screenshot fiesta as post attachment limit reached. There are over 20,000 apps in the 2 repos i have selected so there's no shortage of apps. In fact its the opposite - it takes time to find out the good ones. You can download CD iso from the pcl site and try it without installing as its a live cd. If you like it you can then install by clicking on the install icon on the desktop. The Live CD will have default root/guest password mentioned on the wallpaper itself as its a read only and doesn't have security issues. Install is straightforward with only 2 things you need to do: 1. Select a partition where you want to install PCL. If you have a single partition on you hard disk (only C:) then check that you have at least 10-15 GB free for PCL and defrag your disk before booting pcl livecd. Then select option for PCL to shrink you windows partition and create a new partition for pcl. Alternatively, you can manually shrink you partition either in windows 7 (not in XP) or using ntfsresize command in linux or gparted. There's no need to give separate home usr etc partition just one partition for / and if you have less than 2GB give 1GB for swap space else say no swap. 2. After install it'll come to the boot manager screen (GRUB) Keep only the windows and the top linux option which you can rename to PC Linux or whatever. The other options are for system recovery etc and aren't needed as you can just give the kernel boot options during boot to achieve the same things. Once its installed use your reliance/tata modem or any other modem/wifi/lan to get on internet. Ask me for queries on proxy or route if it doesn't do something automatically or if older reliance/tata 1x modems don't get configured. To connect through these modems you need to run kppp from internet menu and then select new connection. Device is /dev/ttyUSB0 number to dial is obviously #777 login/pass is your number etc. just give any name for connection and device. Multiple devices and multiple operators are supported in kppp very easily. You can also install to a USB pendrive/hard disk as well as use a pendrive instead of liveCD. Ask if you want to know how to do the latter. Former can be done by just inserting usb pendrive before installation and selecting that device for install (usually it'll be /dev/sdb.. while sda will be you hdd. CONFIRM by seeing the size etc before installing on wrong disk/partition any blowing your data away. specially if you have more than 1 HDD - then sdb will be your second drive while sdc would be the pendrive) If you have any problems/confusion ask here, also if you want any linux iso or s/w ask. Lotus Notes is a tough cookie as IBM has not made their installer in the usual linux way but with some binary blobs. Not many people use it so I am not giving details but if someone wants I'll explain as well as upload the LN 8.5 Beta RPMs and some libs required to some site. I am forced to use because we use it in office. While the openoffice version is quite good for 99% of word/excel/powerpoint/project/access work, ifyou need you can install office 2003 or XP (2007/20010 still have some issues ) with wine and it'll work perfectly. I've gone overboard with screen shots as i had a few hours to kill. Also unless people are able to see how good some linux systems work they are not motivated enough to try. So... For more details you can go to PCL forum which is very helpful. I'll explain sharing profiles/my documents/mail storage etc. in later posts once some one installs or needs the info.