I'm SO glad to see this one has a removable battery and SD card. I'm getting so tired of every company following Apple's lead with their halo phones trying to squeeze $50-$100 out of you for a dinky $5 upgrade in flash memory or ~$80 to replace your battery a year from now when the li-on only holds a 50% charge. These little $$$ grab tactics are a plague to the consumer and getting more and more common. After owning an HP Touchpad which also has an inaccessible battery and no sd slot, I've made the decision to NEVER buy another device again without those two features. Even though the CPU runs at a slower speed, I'd take this version over a One X any day.
I was sad to see the Nexus 7 went the Apple route too. That's just NOT the way to start off in market so heavily dominated by Apple guys. You gotta one up the competition. If you've made the decision to sell the device for cost anyway as a way to break into the market, why get greedy and try to squeeze the extra $50 out for another puny 8GB?
Except by having a removable battery and SD card it impacts the form factor of the product you can make; and consumers have overwhelmingly been buying sleeker cleaner form factors over bulkier ones.
They cannot one up Apple on design by handicapping themselves with features most consumers don't really care about.
The One X has a removable battery unless I'm wildly mistaken, and honestly, you're going to have to get over this. Consumers make up the majority of the audience these companies sell to, and the less things customers can do to mess up the phone, the more profitable it is. If you know *how* to use a Li-Ion battery, it will last a very long time. If you run it to zero every day, then it doesn't take a genius to know it's going to stop holding a charge.
You are in fact wildly mistaken. Neither the One S nor X have removable batteries or microSD slots, the EVO LTE (One X offshoot) has the latter but not the former. Removable batteries aren't just about device longevity either, some users can easily blow thru a full charge in half a day and they'd rather swap batteries and get back to 100% in a minute than hunt down an outlet or carry an external battery pack and wait for a recharge. Im managing alright with my EVO LTE, but I do hope the non removable trend doesn't completely take over.
So, there's a lot to that question, but the water on these things is muddied by the price compression that living in a market ruled by contract subsidies. Is this, 25% less phone than the SGS3? Maybe, so. But you also lose the sleek form factor of the mini-tablet competitors. I'm a big fan of smaller phones, and have loved my OG DINC, but there's no doubt that US buyers have a much harder time telling the difference between a good phone and the best phone, because they are priced so close together.
For a lot of people the smaller size alone will make it a better choice, altho many of those would be women and the weird machinery esthetic design of the DINC is probably not popular with them.
I'm still rocking one of the original Droid Incredibles and it works like a champ. I'm not a poweruser by any stretch of the word so not having all the latest bells and whistles is no major loss. The thing is solid as a rock, its the *perfect* size (not a mini-tablet), its survived a couple dunks in the pool, daily battery life is still measured in hours (not minutes) and the camera is decent. So if this new version can maintain the same quality and improve on performance, resolution and battery life then its a BIG win in my book.
At almost half an inch THICK, they should have gone with a larger screen and spread the battery out with with and length instead of depth. This phone will feel like a brick.
Its about as thick as most HTC phones last year, hardly a brick... But considerably thicker than most of the current sleek designs (One X/S, SGS3, new EVO). I dont think it was the battery alone that lead to those dimensions, more like a combination of battery + thicker SLCD display instead of the One S's thinner AMOLED + memory slot + that over designed signature DINC battery Door.
Personally, I'd rather have a bit more depth than a lot more width and height. There's already a huge number of phones that are racing towards tablet dimensions, no reason for yet another.
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augiem - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
I'm SO glad to see this one has a removable battery and SD card. I'm getting so tired of every company following Apple's lead with their halo phones trying to squeeze $50-$100 out of you for a dinky $5 upgrade in flash memory or ~$80 to replace your battery a year from now when the li-on only holds a 50% charge. These little $$$ grab tactics are a plague to the consumer and getting more and more common. After owning an HP Touchpad which also has an inaccessible battery and no sd slot, I've made the decision to NEVER buy another device again without those two features. Even though the CPU runs at a slower speed, I'd take this version over a One X any day.I was sad to see the Nexus 7 went the Apple route too. That's just NOT the way to start off in market so heavily dominated by Apple guys. You gotta one up the competition. If you've made the decision to sell the device for cost anyway as a way to break into the market, why get greedy and try to squeeze the extra $50 out for another puny 8GB?
stm1185 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Except by having a removable battery and SD card it impacts the form factor of the product you can make; and consumers have overwhelmingly been buying sleeker cleaner form factors over bulkier ones.They cannot one up Apple on design by handicapping themselves with features most consumers don't really care about.
Impulses - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
MicroSD isnt that hard to pull off while maintaining a sleek design, most phones have microSIM slots anyway, so how's that any different?coder543 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
The One X has a removable battery unless I'm wildly mistaken, and honestly, you're going to have to get over this. Consumers make up the majority of the audience these companies sell to, and the less things customers can do to mess up the phone, the more profitable it is. If you know *how* to use a Li-Ion battery, it will last a very long time. If you run it to zero every day, then it doesn't take a genius to know it's going to stop holding a charge.aryonoco - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
You are mistaken, the One X doesn't have a removable battery.Impulses - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
You are in fact wildly mistaken. Neither the One S nor X have removable batteries or microSD slots, the EVO LTE (One X offshoot) has the latter but not the former. Removable batteries aren't just about device longevity either, some users can easily blow thru a full charge in half a day and they'd rather swap batteries and get back to 100% in a minute than hunt down an outlet or carry an external battery pack and wait for a recharge. Im managing alright with my EVO LTE, but I do hope the non removable trend doesn't completely take over.Syran - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
$50 less (AFTER MIR).JasonInofuentes - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
So, there's a lot to that question, but the water on these things is muddied by the price compression that living in a market ruled by contract subsidies. Is this, 25% less phone than the SGS3? Maybe, so. But you also lose the sleek form factor of the mini-tablet competitors. I'm a big fan of smaller phones, and have loved my OG DINC, but there's no doubt that US buyers have a much harder time telling the difference between a good phone and the best phone, because they are priced so close together.Impulses - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
For a lot of people the smaller size alone will make it a better choice, altho many of those would be women and the weird machinery esthetic design of the DINC is probably not popular with them.ewhite06 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
I'm still rocking one of the original Droid Incredibles and it works like a champ. I'm not a poweruser by any stretch of the word so not having all the latest bells and whistles is no major loss. The thing is solid as a rock, its the *perfect* size (not a mini-tablet), its survived a couple dunks in the pool, daily battery life is still measured in hours (not minutes) and the camera is decent. So if this new version can maintain the same quality and improve on performance, resolution and battery life then its a BIG win in my book.agent2099 - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
At almost half an inch THICK, they should have gone with a larger screen and spread the battery out with with and length instead of depth. This phone will feel like a brick.Impulses - Monday, July 2, 2012 - link
Its about as thick as most HTC phones last year, hardly a brick... But considerably thicker than most of the current sleek designs (One X/S, SGS3, new EVO). I dont think it was the battery alone that lead to those dimensions, more like a combination of battery + thicker SLCD display instead of the One S's thinner AMOLED + memory slot + that over designed signature DINC battery Door.KitsuneKnight - Friday, July 6, 2012 - link
Personally, I'd rather have a bit more depth than a lot more width and height. There's already a huge number of phones that are racing towards tablet dimensions, no reason for yet another.