Last spring I bought a Droid Incredible to replace my beloved BlackBerry Curve that I had dropped under running water. Yeah, that's not a good thing to do. I switched from the BlackBerry because I wanted a phone with a better browser. I've been more or less happy with the Droid, but I've had two problems with it from the get-go.
The first and most annoying problem is the battery. I don't make many phone calls, but I use it mostly for browsing. The browser itself is excellent, but the battery isn't. I end up having to charge the Droid at least once a day and sometimes multiple times during a day. I've found that reducing the screen brightness helps extend the battery life, but I'd like to be able to have the screen be sufficiently bright and not have to run the battery down while browsing for an hour or so. Besides, constantly charging the battery shortens its lifetime.
The second problem is that the Incredible's browser didn't support animation of radar. As long-time readers know, I am a severe storm enthusiast and I recently became an official National Weather Service storm spotter. One of the things I wanted to use the Droid for was to help me get in place to spot severe weather. Having animated radar, among other things, shows me storm motion, something I need to determine so I don't accidentally get caught in the middle of a storm. But the browser wouldn't support radar animation. I was left with downloading an app called Radar Now which worked OK, but I prefer a radar that allows me to see animation as well as graphics showing me where watches and warnings were placed.
Well, it seems that the animation problem has been solved. This morning I got a notice on my phone that new software was ready to be installed and that one of the things that was being fixed was support for Adobe Flash animation. I installed the update and now the radar that I prefer, Wunderground's, now animates. Yay for me.
Here's some more detail about the software update. Apparently the Incredible now supports tethering, but I'm not sure what that means. iPhone users can tether their phones to their laptops and use the phone's cell service to access the internet from anyplace that has a signal. As I understand it, the Incredible supports tethering, but my carrier, Verizon, charges $30 a month. Whether "supports tethering" means that I don't have to pay the $30 is something I'll have to find out.