By Rachel Andrade
The new line up of HTC S Series Smartphones has officially been unveiled at this year Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. 
The Incredible S is the first of the 3 Android devices to hit the shelves in Europe & US on T-Mobile and is dubbed the master of all the devices with the Desire S and Wildfire S catering to the mid range and low range customers respectively.
Let’s dig dipper into what puts the Incredible S so high on the pedestal and if it can live up to its name.
Specifications:
Nothing out of the ordinary here as most of the high-end smartphones has similar spec’s or are even better under the hood:-
- 4-inch WVGA Super LCD touchscreen;800 x 480 pixel display – big screen yes but no improvement on the resolution here
- 1GHz Qualcomm MSM8255 CPU backed by 768MB of RAM and powered by a 1450mAh battery- single core processor
- 8-megapixel camera with dual flash for low light imaging and autofocus – capable of 720 pixel HD video recording- becoming a standard these days
- 1.3-megapixel front-facing webcam for video chats- Really nice to have
- HTC Sense v3.0 UI -provides a unique customer focused user experience
- DLNA support for sharing your pictures and video on larger screens
Highlights:
Now where the Incredible S really stands out is in its looks and feel. It sports a 4 inch screen and contoured body that highlights the internal hardware components of the phone with absolutely no buttons anywhere. The Touch Sensitive controls with rotating icons provides one very neat feature which when you rotate the phone, the little touch buttons at the bottom will rotate with the phone as you switch from portrait to landscape modes.
Lows:
The imminent arrival of the Incredible S to the European,& Asian market closely followed in the US and almost for sure in Canada thereafter, may explain why it’s running Android 2.2.1 (Froyo) instead of Android 2.4. However, it is upgradeable to 2.3 (Gingerbread) once released.
Also, interestingly none of the devices will have near field communication (NFC) integration, which was introduced to smartphones by the Google Nexus S and is said to provide consumers with applications such as secure payment-on-the-go, mobile transactions and convenient access public transport.
The surprising of all is the fact that the Incredible S only has a single-core 1GHz processor, which will likely put it behind Samsung’s Galaxy S-II in terms of speed and power and certainly strike a few stars of that incredible list of must haves.
Conclusion:
The Incredible S doesn’t break any new ground overall. HTC is taking a bit of a risk not making the leap to dual-core, losing out on speed and power, which figure to be two of 2011’s mobile buzz words but it has sure made up for it in looks and style. The exact pricing of the Incredible S is not known, though it will likely be in the ballpark of competitor’s equivalents. Look out to see which carrier(s) will bring this device to Canada and as always do your research before you buy.
Rachel Andrade is a reviewer for MyCellMyTerms
