The Sprint EVO 4G makes history by being the first 4G Smartphone available in the U.S and it is arguably very attractive for many reasons. Its design is great, it has a sharp high-resolution LCD display, a powerful processor, and an uber-fast internet connection that can be shared with other devices. What's not to like? Well, maybe the weight or the fact that you have to pay an extra to benefit from 4G, and also pay another premium to create WiFi hotspots. This is a question of balance and compromise, so let me tell you how the HTC EVO 4G worked for me over the past couple of weeks. Ready?
*Context*: usage patterns vary as much as fingerprints. We all have our own way to use the electronics that makes our lives better, that's why it is often impractical to write a dogmatic review that says "buy or not". However, I found it much more useful to tell you what I do with these devices and how it worked for me. From there, I sincerely hope that you can extrapolate how it will work for you. I typically check my email often with Exchange<http://www.microsoft.com/exchange/2010/en/us/overview.aspx>, and I reply moderately because a virtual keyboard is not as productive as a physical one. I browse the web several times a day to check on news sites, but I rarely watch movies or play music. I don't call much - maybe 10mn a day. This usage pattern will affect battery life and the perception of what features are important or not. *Technical Highlights* *Droid Incredible**EVO 4G* Android 2.1 + HTC SenseAndroid 2.1<http://developer.android.com/sdk/android-2.1.html>+ HTC Sense <http://www.htc.com/www/press.aspx?id=124748&lang=1033>3.7" AMOLED 480x8004.3" LCD 480x800Qualcomm 8650 SnapDragon, 1GhzQualcomm 8650 SnapDragon, 1Ghz512MB RAM512MB RAM8GB of internal storage + microSD slot4GB microSD card8 Megapixel camera8 Megapixel camera3G, Wifi b/g, BT 2.1+EDR, aGPS4G, 3G, Wifi b/g, BT 2.1+EDR, aGPSFM RadioFM RadioTV Out (microUSB)TV Out (HDMI)Carrier: Verizon, 3G speedsSprint4.6 x 2.3 x 0.47", 4.6oz4.8 x 2.6 x 0.5", 6oz1300mAh battery1500mAh batteryDroid Incredible Review<http://www.ubergizmo.com/15/archives/2010/05/droid-incredible-review.html> Physical Design *Body*: The HTC EVO 4G is a very solid phone that is well built. The front is made of one piece of glass, while the back has a texture that feels leather-ish. The volume button is the only one on either the left+right side, so there's no accidental button action while you hold it in your hands (that used to be an issue with HTC phones). The four tactile buttons at the bottom work well - no problem there. I like the fact that the USB port is at the bottom instead of on the side. It is just easier to use the phone while it is charging. Now, the big display/body does add some weight: at 6oz (170g) it is significantly heavier than the 3GS or the Incredible (4.7oz/133g) but in practice, the excessive weight doesn't feel so bad, possibly because it is spread out on a large surface. However, this is pretty the limit of what I would accept to carry in my pocket. Finally, I really like the little rest arm in the back to use the phone as a TV, or as an alarm clock. The arm seems really solid. You can check our photo gallery to see for yourself, but I'll tell you what you can't feel for yourself: HTC has used quality materials. *Display*: One thing that I often point out is how thin (in width) many phone designs are. The phones look good and all, but it is a drag on keyboard interaction because the keyboard keys are smaller. Well, the EVO 4G has a very comfortable 4.3" display (800x480), and I love it, even if it is not perfect: the colors pop, and the contract is very nice ... when you are indoors. Outside on a sunny day, it can be really hard to read, even at full brightness. The glass makes the display very shiny, which only adds to the problem. Overall, the phone still is usable, but it can be frustrating at times. *Update*: a previous version of this post said that this was an OLED display. This was a mistake. I've fixed it. Thanks to our eagle-eyed reader who promptly put me back on track. *No optical trackpad*: Unlike many recent android phones, there's no optical trackpad on this phone, and quite frankly, I don't miss it. When I try to place the text cursor in between two letters of a word, the arrows at the bottom of the virtual keyboard do wonders. Basics *Dial a number*: Dialing a number is easy: the phone app is launched via a dedicated button at the bottom of the homepage and upon launching it, you will be presented with a dialpad and the last few numbers that you interacted with. If you want to search for a contact, you will have to use the dial pad, instead of a keyboard to enter the first few letters of the name. It doesn't sound very sexy, but I found it to be very effective. *Wireless reception*: In the office, we got 2/5 bars on the Sprint Network. My advice is to forget all the "best coverage" talks, and do some homework. Ask your friends & family how good the Sprint network is for them. This is totally dependent on where you live/work. *Calls audio quality*: I found the sound to be decent, but a little soft on the volume. Unlike the Droid Incredible, I doubt that the EVO 4G can be heard in a noisy restaurant, and even less in a club. *Virtual Keyboard*: Thanks to the 4.3" display, the keyboard is very comfortable and my rate of typos has gone down big time (from the Incredible). I can type as fast or faster than I would with the iPhone, but overall, this is obviously slower than typing on a real keyboard (the Blackberry 8900 being my ultimate reference). The HTC Sense keyboard is different from the original Android keyboard because it is a little more fancy. You can press and hold a key to select an alternate character (numbers, special characters...) which is great, but the "hold" period is too long (2 sec). Also, the additional info is a bit of a visual pollution. If there's a way to choose between the HTC keyboard and another one, that would be great. *Copy/Paste*: Back in the Nexus One days, the Copy/Paste was ridiculous at best. You could only copy from an edit box, and stuff like emails or web pages were outside of the copy/paste realm - and that's probably where you would need it the most. Well, this works now, pretty much in the same way that the iPhone has introduced it: click and hold to make delimiters appear. Move them around to select your text, then click on the "Copy" icon. Click&hold... and paste. Easy. *Flash (Nop)*: Flash is not supported at all in this phone, and even stuff like flash banner ads don't seem to work. You'll have to wait for the Android 2.2 update before getting something new on that front. Now, even with partial Flash support on the HTC Incredible, I didn't feel like it was helping. Performance issues are still plaguing flash, so we'll have to wait for 2.2 and the most recent version of Flash 10.1. Email / Account Sync *USB Sync*: Most people would think that it should be possible to sync their computer emails with a smartphone. Well... no. Android relies on an internet connection to synchronize emails from popular web providers. If you are using Outlook Express, you are a bit our of luck for now. GMail is not surprisingly the best supported service, but Yahoo, Hotmail and others will work with POP. Note that it is possible to sync contacts and calendar items via USB. *Push-Email*: once connected to the internet (via 4G, 3G or WIFI), the phone can receive emails "as they arrive", aka "push email". This is great if you want to use emails like SMS message (except cheaper) -- it works just as advertised. I'm personally using Exchange, but GMail should have this capability as well. POP3 account can't push email, but IMAP could get closer to that. Take a look at what your provider supports. Overall, the email experience is good, with the exception of the email search, which is part of the universal search instead of being embedded in the Mail app (Mail, not GMail!). If you want to search for an email, click on the "search" button at the lower right of the phone and type a search phrase. The search results will show contacts and other things first, then you should see a "Mail" option at the bottom. It's not very convenient, but believe me, it's a whole lot better than no search at all. *Accounts Sync*: This phone can synchronize with many types of accounts. Right now, I see Facebook, Exchange, Flickr, Google and Twitter. That's not a bad start. If your favorite service isn't in there yet, chances are that it has an Android app. If not, well... there's the browser. Thanks to the sync, you can have a unified feed of what's going on with your friends. I found the Friend Stream widget to be "so-so" - the design could be better, and there's not enough information displayed at once. I have removed it. Computer Sync (Basic, simple) *4G*: as its name indicates this phone connects in 4G, which is in this case WiMax.With WiMax, the EVO 4G can reach real-life speeds of around 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up, it will blow away 3G any day of the week. The downside is that 4G is not deployed everywhere yet, and in cities like our beautiful San Francisco, it will come "sometime in 2010" - there are pockets though. *Simultaneous voice and data*: With 4G, you can download stuff and talk on the phone at the same time. This seems like a "duh", but CDMA networks like Sprint or Verizon always had that problem. Well, WiMax is Not CDMA. That said, if you connect back to 3G because 4G isn't available, the simultaneous voice+data becomes an issue again. 4G is a $10/mo plan upgrade. *Videos*: I was a bit surprised to see a 720p video option in the camcorder menu, so I went for it. Obviously, this is not the 720p that you will see in HD trailers. Instead, the 720p video is a little choppy. Instead I much prefer the 800x480 resolution that manages to get a consistent 30fps frame rate. There is also a 640x480 4:3 format if you are so inclined. Again, videos taken in broad daylight will fare better. For this test, I went to shoot a few videos early in the evening when light is more dim. Check our EVO 4G video samples in our Flickr account<http://www.flickr.com/photos/ubergizmo/sets/72157624206209810/> . *Front Camera*: Fring <http://www.fring.com/default.php> is currently the video-chat application of choice on the EVO 4G. It works OK, although I noticed that there was some noticeable lag, may be a couple of seconds. It reminded me of when MSN messenger just got video. But, one has to start somewhere, and it's free. Performance *Linpack*: 6.5-7Mflops the EVO 4G is comparable to the Droid Incredible or the Nexus One in terms of raw performance. Again, this is a software issue as Android 2.2 and its Just In time (JIT) compiler will provide many times (2-5X) the raw performance of Android 2.1. That tells you that recent advances in hardware were partially dampen by the virtual machine used to run the apps. Now, we need to sit and wait for the HTC Android 2.2 update. Linpack page <http://www.greenecomputing.com/apps/linpack/> *UI Performance*: I don't have a good way to measure how fast the user interface (UI) is, but it seems a little less responsive when compared to the Droid Incredible. I'm pretty sure that the larger display size is not creating any optical illusion here and scrolling from one homepage to the next is perceptibly slower (to me). That's not a real problem, but Android in general has been lagging the 3GS or the Zune HD when it comes to super-fluid UI. Google needs to catch up on that. *Gaming performance*: Gaming performance was similar to what I have seen on recent Android high-end phones, although I'm tempted to say that the frames per second in that racing game looked lower than what I had seen on the Droid Incredible (see video below). Overall it is doing OK, but on smartphones, casual gaming is the name of the game, but I would be surprised if people really go after FPS numbers for now - the games aren't really there and the user interface has not completely be worked out for gaming. Evidently, Android is very good at multi-tasking, so if you want to leave that GPS tracker in the background or another apps that need to stay on like an IM client, no problem (take that iPhone). That said, I would advise you to be mindful that it also lets apps that don't "need" to be in the background because there's no convenient way to tell Android that you want to “quit” the browser instead of switching tasks. If you don't pay attention, it is easy to have a dozen apps running and sipping away battery life and system performance (check the web browsing video - it shows how many apps can slow down things to a halt). To avoid this, I recommend using one of the many task-killer apps available on the Android Market. I personally like to setup an auto-kill of all non-essential apps every 10mn or so. In practice, it works well, and you can also setup exclusion lists for apps that need to stay alive. Having the option of getting true multitasking is great - but not completely worry-free. HTC Sense I keep saying this, but while I prefer that all Android phones have the exact same interface, it is fair to say that HTC has done a good job at improving critical details like copy/paste or pinch&zoom, the calendar, the homepage leap etc... there's no denying that all these additions make HTC phones a little easier to use than their "plain Google" counter parts. But in the end, Google should really fix all the basic stuff (and most of that stuff is basic!) so that all Android users can benefit, and so that all developers know what they can rely on. Entertainment *Photos gallery*: The photo gallery is fairly fast, but still not as fast as the iPhone 3GS and the Zune HD. We are getting there however... Other than that, it works fairly well. I have had issues with video files that could not be played back (compatibility issues): they did tend to lock up the user interface. *YouTube videos*: High-quality videos look very good and while my first choice is not to watch a movie on a phone, I might want to do it because I'm bored to death. When that happens, I the EVO 4G is my phone of choice, more so than any other phone that I have tested. The little backrest makes it possible to drop it on a flat surface and the screen is large enough to make the video interesting to watch. *MP4 videos (compatibility issues)*: Just like the Droid Incredible, a PSP video that I have used for previous Android reviews does not work on the EVO 4G. What's more disturbing is that a video that I created especially for the 800x480 display - and that worked on the Incredible - does not work either (??). Again, this is not a grave issue, except for users who have built a library of movies. Hopefully, this is something that can be solved with an update. If you're curious: the 720x480 video was encoded in H.264 at 30fps with an AAC audio codec. The 368x208 PSP one is also a H.264+AAC video. Within the current state of things, I don't have a reliable place to find content. Misc The effective battery life of the Sprint EVO 4G is very good and much better than other Android phones that I tried recently, except for the Droid Incredible (well, they use the same software and have comparable battery capacity). Since I'm heavily using the power management widget (see next paragraph), you could argue that I artificially prolong the battery life, but I think that this is fair game as it reflects my real-world usage. I'm not trying to beat any battery life record here, just make my life better. So, how are the numbers? Quite remarkable. With my usage (see "context" at the beginning), I first charged the Evo 4G on a Friday at 11:20pm. It needed a new charge on the next Monday at 5:45pm. In a second instance, I charged it on a Tuesday at 2:15pm and it died on Thursday at 12:28pm. So that's about two days of moderate use and I think that it's just great. Some of the credit has to go to the power widget, so let's check it out: *Power Management Widget*: The Android power management widget is one of the most useful tool that Android has to offer. It is simple, but it put you in control of how much energy the phone will consume. I tend to put it right on my home page so that I always know if Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS are on. As a result, I tend to disable Wifi, Bluetooth and GPS most of the time. If I need any of them, I can turn them on with a tap. -- Salam, Agus Hamonangan http://groups.google.com/group/id-android http://groups.google.com/group/id-gtug Gtalk : agus.hamonangan Follow : @agushamonangan E-mail : [email protected] -- "Indonesian Android Community [id-android]" Join: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android/subscribe?hl=en-GB Moderator: [email protected] ID Android Developer: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-dev ID Android Surabaya: http://groups.google.com/group/id-android-sby ID Android on FB: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=112207700729
