Can You Use A Verizon Droid Incredible Without A Google Account? Not Really!

Data Journalism Developer Studio 2012LX Blog

I recently got a Verizon HTC Droid Incredible phone. I wrote a review of it saying that it was pretty much useless without a Google account and a Facebook account. While you can use it without them, it’s not easy, especially Google.

So first, let me talk you through using a Verizon Droid Incredible without Google and Facebook. Here’s how to do a ‘cold start’ on the Incredible. Warning: if you’re going to do this, before you do, make sure your battery is fully charged and the phone is connected to power.

Ready? All charged up and plugged in? First, go to ‘Settings’. Select ‘Privacy’. Uncheck the ‘Use My Location’ box. Press ‘Factory Data Reset’. The screen you get will say:

‘This will erase all data from your phone, including:

• Your Google account
• System and application data and settings
• Downloaded applications

‘It will not erase:

• Current system software and bundled applications
• SD card files, such as music or photos’

Press the ‘Reset phone’ button. You will get another message that says:

‘Erase all of your personal information and any downloaded applications? It is impossible to reverse this action!’

Press the ‘Erase everything’ button. The phone will reboot.

Now, you need to set the phone up. The first screen is ‘Select your language’. I selected ‘English’, since I don’t know Spanish. Press ‘Next’. The next screen is ‘Activate your phone’. Press ‘Activate’. Bring up the phone keypad. Press ’1′ when instructed to do so. Wait. The phone will restart after programming has been successfully completed.

When the phone comes back up, you’ll need to perform a few more setup operations. First, you’ll need to tell it the language again. As before, I selected ‘English’. After selecting the language, press ‘Next’. Now you get a tutorial on ‘Using the onscreen keyboard’. Press ‘Skip’.

Next, you get ‘Internet connection’. Since Verizon requires a data plan with the Incredible, I’m assuming you subscribed to the data plan, so select the ‘Mobile network or Wi-Fi’ option and press ‘Next’. I have a Wi-Fi network, so the next screen was ‘Wi-Fi networks detected’. If you get this screen and the ‘Connect to Wi-Fi network’ box is checked, uncheck it. Then press ‘Next’.

Now it gets interesting. You must give your consent to enable Google’s location service. Here’s the text:

‘Google’s location service provides applications with your approximate location without using GPS.

‘You can disable location collection at any time by turning off “Use wireless networks” in Settings.’

Uncheck the box. You will get another message! It says:

‘Disable location service?

‘Disabling location collection will also disable use of the location service, which is needed for some applications to automatically update. Are you sure you want to disable the location service?’ In other words, you have to opt out of Google Location Service! Press the ‘Yes’ button. Press ‘Next’.

Next, you will get the ‘Set up accounts’ screen. Press ‘Skip’. Next, you will get the ‘Set up social networks’ screen. Press ‘Skip’. Your phone is now ready to use – as a phone. The home screen shows a clock and six icons: ‘Market’, the application market, ‘Camera’, ‘Internet’, ‘People’, ‘Messages’ and ‘Mail’.

What can you do with your device at this point? Well, you can make phone calls. You can take pictures with the 8 megapixel camera. You can use all of the built-in PDA applications, like Calculator, Calendar, Camcorder, Voice Recorder. Contact management? Ay, there’s the rub! You have to enter your contacts one by one, by hand!

Let’s continue. We have a data plan and a browser. Tap the ‘Internet’ icon and the browser comes up – pointing to Google! The first place I went is Wikipedia, to the page for Dmitri Shostakovich. Then I went to my own article about Shostakovich and Wikipedia. Yes, the Russian is readable in the browser. So at this point, we have a phone and a browser.

As you probably know, I’m a Twitter developer, so next, I went to Twitter in the browser. That’s pretty easy; just go to http://mobile.twitter.com/ and sign in. You can do anything with the mobile Twitter web application that you can do with the standard Twitter web site, http://twitter.com.

But Twitter just released a native Twitter application for Android phones. As noted at Mashable, the Twitter Android application runs only on Android 2.1 and later. The Incredible runs 2.1, so I decided to install the application. There’s a ‘Download Twitter for Android’ link to it on the Twitter mobile web site, so I just pressed the link.

And I was promptly dumped to a screen that said, ‘Set up your Google Account’! That’s right - in order to download the official Twitter Android Application, I need a Google account! Ay, there’s another rub! While I already have a Google account, I decided to set up a new one just for this purpose.

I won’t talk you through the process, though – my point is that you need a Google account to use the Incredible with the official Twitter application. And note that ‘By creating this account, you agree to the Google and Additional Privacy Policies.’ During the creation process, you will be presented with the Google Terms of Service to read and accept. They’re quite lengthy, but I urge you to read them.

Once you get past the Google Terms of Service, you also need to read and accept the Android Market Terms of Service. Those are also quite lengthy, and again, I urge you to read them. Once you do that, you are back in the Twitter mobile page, where you can download and install the Twitter Android application.

I’ll save exploration of the Twitter Android application the other social connection capabilites of the Incredible for later. But let’s review:

1. If you want to use the Verizon Droid Incredible without a Google account, you can use it only with the applications distributed with the device. It’s a phone, a PDA and a browser only. Contact management is manual.
2. Google Location Service is enabled by default. If you disable it, some updates may not work.
3. To install applications, including the Twitter Android application, you have to have a Google account, and you have to agree to both the Google and Android Market Terms of Service. Both documents are quite lengthy.