Today I'm returning the Droid HTC Incredible back to Verizon (News - Alert) and feeling pretty glum about it. You see, this smartphone was sent to one our TMCnet staff editors about a year and a half ago for evaluation. The editor, having fulfilled her job, passed it on to me for a technical opinion and the truth is that I got hooked on the Incredible and just didn't return it. Of course I always knew that some day it had to go back to its original owner and that sign came about a month ago when the voice and data services went dark on the smartphone and the fun was over.

So what did I like about the HTC (News - Alert) Incredible?

- Verizon service is ubiquitous within the US. During a number of trips around the country and some hiking in not-so-remote wildernesses the service was always available. Google (News - Alert) Maps and Navigation got me out of jams numerous times. In Europe though, there was no service.

- The Incredible's form-factor is just right, not too big, not too small, not too light, and not too heavy. It fits comfortably in my jean's front or back pockets and it's pretty rugged too. It had been dropped a number of times on various surfaces including asphalt. It sustained some nicks and scratches on its surface and its sides, but it kept on going.

- I'm not a big Apple fan so the Android (News - Alert) OS and the integration with Google account as well as Gvoice and Gmail was welcome. So was ActiveSync with Exchange to keep up with work-related emails. This particular Incredible device made it to Android version 2.3, aka, Gingerbread.

- I have a Samsung (News - Alert) Galaxy now but there are couple of minor features i'll miss about the Incredible. I liked the 'Home' button on the extreme left, it was more intuitive to me. On the Galaxy, the 'Menu' button is on the left and the 'Home' button is next to that. Also, the Incredible's keyboard was more feature-rich. The letter keys also doubled as symbol keys on long holds and there was a '.com' button when inputting urls or emails, not so with the Galaxy's keyboard.

While it's goodbye with this particular HTC Incredible, I can always get another one. The Incredible was discontinued back in March 2011, but there's plenty of them for sale on sites like eBay.