Hands on with the HTC EVO 4G with Sprint
by n3rdg1rl
Aug 25, 2010 12:34 AM –
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Battery Compartment
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EVO 4G Back Cover
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EVO 4G Front View
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Home Screen on the EVO 4G
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Kickstand Up from the Back
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Kickstand Up from the Front
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Text on the EVO 4G
This review is slightly different. Two days after I received this phone to review my personal phone, the HTC Droid Eris, refused to hold a charge any longer. With my personal phone out of commission I turned to the EVO for the next 3 weeks as my standard phone. This is beneficial to you because most reviews are based off of the reviewer playing with a phone for a few hours over a week or so. This one is based on real world everyday usage.
General
- Formfactor – Candybar
- Colors – Black
- Network – 3G / 4G / CDMA / CDMA EV-DO
- Service – 800 / 1900 / 2000
- Operating System – Android 2.1 immediately upgradable to Android 2.2
- Processor – Qualcomm QSD 8650 1GHz
Really, what a gorgeous phone! Right out of the box, my first impression was, “Holy bejubus, it’s huge. And oh look! A kickstand!” Yes, a kickstand. At first it was just an amusing thing to see on the phone, but after taking some videos and wanting to show them to a group, I see where it can come in handy. Of course if were to view videos of any sort or a picture slideshow it comes in handy too.
The next thing I noticed was the detail put into the phone. The fact that when you remove the battery cover it’s a vibrant red with a matching battery shows that a lot of thought went into the design. It is all together a streamlined phone that just looks impressive from any angle.
With it’s 1 GHz processer this phone flys no matter what you want it to do. When the upgrade to Froyo came through I was completely blown away. (You can read my review on the update here.) I have several programs running with a live wallpaper active and never saw as much as a hiccup out of this thing! I am very impressed.
Size
- Dimensions – 4.8″ x 2.6″ x 0.5″
- Weight – 6 oz.
Yes, this phone is big. It doesn’t weigh nearly as much as it looks like it should, but it doesn’t feel flimsy either. This phone is comfortable to talk on and work with in your hands. Being only a half inch thick, it slips easily in a pocket or bag without feeling bulky.
Display
- Type – WVGA TFT LCD capacitive multi-touchscreen
- Colors – 65,000 colors
- Dimensions – 4.3″
- Resolution – 480 x 800
It’s just beautiful! No matter what I was looking at, text, images, data, video, it all looked clean and crisp. I never felt like I had to strain to see anything and if for one moment something seemed to small, the multi-touch screen allowed for easy resizing of images and webpages. Even the back light was strong and even in bright sunlight the screen was easy to see. All of this is to be expected with a 4.3″ screen!
Sound
The speaker on this phone is amazing! It never crackled when it was at it highest volume and music and speaker phone sounded excellent. With recording, however, the built in microphone was sub-par. When I would record a video the audio playback sounded crackly. (View the video taken with the phone embedded in the upgrade report.) However, in calls, I never had someone complain of quality be it on speaker or regular voice calls.
Memory
- Internal – 1 GB ROM / 512 RAM
- External – Up to 32 GB / 8 GB microSD card included
With Android 2.1, 1 GB of internal storage for apps is impressive on current models. However, with the upgrade to 2.2, the ability to have up to 32 GB of storage for apps, music, video, pictures, etc. is amazing! Even the 8 GB card that it comes with will keep people happy until the price of those huge cards comes down a bit!
Data
- Bluetooth – v 2.1 with A2DP
- Infrared – No
- Wi-Fi – 802.11 b/g / Built in WiMax Mobile Wi-Fi
- USB – MicroUSB
- Fax / Data – Yes
- GPS – GPS / aGPSH
- HDMI – Mini HDMI Out
Bluetooth connectivity with my headset and even my Bluetooth printer went smoothly. It never dropped a connection, as long as I was in range it quickly auto-connected when it found a paired device.
The fact that this phone doesn’t have wireless-N built in suprised me. It seems so advanced with it’s features, but as I’ve said before, 90% of the places you are going to connect to Wi-Fi are not going to have wireless-N at this point anyway.
Sending, receiving, and syncing was made easy with the microUSB and HTC Sync. I have a HTC Droid Eris and have loved this feature since day one.
The GPS in all of my tests was spot on! I was actually surprised at the quality of the GPS on this phone and would tell anyone that this can easily replace the GPS you currently have in your car. It’s that good! I actually had it going next to a few other phones during some errands I had to run one day and it was just so accurate I was shocked!
As far as the HDMI connection, all I can say is it’s a good start. I would love to see it able to do more than just show your videos and pictures you’ve taken with your phone. I have heard reports that it can play YouTube as well, but I was not able to get this to happen with it connected to my Vizio 1080p HDTV.
Camera
- Megapixel – 8 MP / 1.3 MP Front Facing
- Focus – Automatic
- Flash – 2 LEDs
This is the one place where I’m going to say the phone is meh! Meh is my nice way of saying it’s just okay. The colors on both the video and the pictures seemed washed out regardless of the lighting. I’m sure with some apps you could find a way to make it look sharper and more vibrant, but right out the box the picture quality was just…meh. This is on par with the audio quality of the videos I mentioned earlier.
With Android 2.2, the ability to use the built in LEDs for the videos did of course help. The light from these could possibly be used as a search beacon if looking for someone in the ocean from a helicopter. It’s THAT bright!
Features
- Friend Stream
- HTC Sync
- HTC Sense
- Amazon MP3
When I get rid of my Eris and most likely go to a non-HTC phone the thing I’m going to miss most is the HTC Sense. HTC and Android work so well together that it makes me want to hug the developers at HTC. It is just another thing that makes the EVO so wonderful!
Battery
People have been complaining about the battery life of this phone. Honestly, I have to say with all of the power this phone puts out I didn’t see that shown in the life of the battery. Even with all of the apps I would run and playing with the flashlight to blind my friends and send emails and make phone calls and send texts I could go EASILY a day and a half without charging even before the Froyo update. I honestly have no idea what these people are talking about. The battery life, like most of the features of the EVO, is fantastic.