The Incredible is pretty amazing out of the box but it can be significantly improved. I particularly like that the core features of the phone can be improved upon and the apps below (ALL FREE) make the Incredible user experience much better. I’ll link the apps to their respective AppBrain pages. This is a follow up to the post I wrote entitled, “HTC Incredible can be even MORE Incredible… replace HTC’s Sense UI and use these Widgets.”
- Keyboard: Swype (not in the market, try http://beta.swype.com/), runner up ShapeWriter. I’ve touted Swype before. It allows you to drag your finger key to key to spell words. It dramatically improves typing speed. ShapeWriter is similar but not quite as good at matching words with swipes.
- Browser: Dolphin Browser HD. While the Android browser is very good and roughly comparable to Safari, Dolphin Browser HD is substantially better. It includes support for add-ons and themes, multi-touch (of course), RSS feed detection, tabbed browsing, a slick UI, bookmark sorting, gesture commands and user agent control.
- Email: K-9 Mail. This easily beats the Gmail app and the lousy Sense UI mail app. It’s open source and supports search, push mail (via IMAP), multi-folder sync, message flagging and refiling, signatures, bcc-self, configurable alerts and multiple identities per account (so, for example, you can send from more than one address from within Gmail).
- SMS/Text Messaging: Handcent. This is a real winner. Handcent can be highly customized. I particularly like that it can be set so a long press on the search key brings up Handcent Quick Compose from any screen.
- Home Screen: LauncherPro. LauncherPro gets updated almost daily (which is sometimes an annoyance with apps) but it gets better each time. It clearly bests HTC’s Sense UI.
- Music Player: 3 (Cubed). The 3D graphics alone make this a better player but it also can retrieve album art and it has some nice widgets to go along with the player.
- Video Player: Meridian Media Player Pioneer. There are others in the market, but Meridian is my favorite. I like the UI and it’s easy to FF and RW.
- Market: AppBrain App Market. The AppBrain front-end is a must have app
- Phone: Google Voice. While it’s more like an add-on than a replacement, Google Voice is worth a mention. I’m a big fan.
- Search: Gesture Search. This app belongs front and center on your main home screen. It searches the phone by you swiping out letters.
That’s it. I think I successfully replaced everything that can be replaced on the phone with better apps.
I’ll also plug DropBox which allows you to share a folder between your phone and computer(s). It syncs everything up for you and you get 2 GB of free storage and more for each referral you provide. Shamelessly, I’m looking for referrals to boost my quota. Click here to join DropBox for free.
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