Fancy Droid Incredible Costs $163 To Make [HTC's Droid Phone For Verizon Costs About A Third Of What They Sell It For, Says iSuppli]

Posted on TFTS by Kevin Schram on Thursday, 29. July 2010 under: Mobile/Cell Phones

The good folks at iSuppli have done a tear down of the Droid Incredible, the sexy Android device on Verizon, made by HTC. They found that the device is very similar to the Nexus One/HTC Desire. That makes some sense considering Google’s reaction to the Droid Incredible when it came out.

Remember, there was a point when Google was going to release a Nexus One for every carrier in the US, including CDMA versions for Verizon and Sprint. When the Verizon “Coming Soon” information disappeared from Google’s Nexus One store, a Google spokesperson told us that the CDMA Nexus One was being dropped in favor of the Droid Incredible. Now – we know the phones are very similar. (If you’re curious, the Sprint CDMA Nexus One was dropped in favor of the – you guessed it – EVO 4G).

According to iSuppli, the Nexus One and Droid Incredible use the same 1GHz Snapdragon processor as well as using the same touchscreen controller, from Atmel. The Snapdragon processor from Qualcomm is the single most expensive part on the phone, it costs a whopping $31.40! Hopefully, competition from the Samsung Hummingbird chips may cause some of these prices to do go down.

The OLED screen on the Droid Incredible, made by Samsung, was barely less expensive than the Snapdragon chip. OLED screens are notoriously expensive (remember when Sony made those 15-inch OLED TVs that cost $4,000+?) and the 3.7-inch one on the Droid Incredible costs $31.20.

While the phone’s total cost of $163 may seem high – remember that the phone is being sold without a contract by Verizon for $530.

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