HTC Evo 4G review – 4G is here baby!
For:
Good 4G speeds, you can connect about eight devices through mobile hot spot, on the front there is a 1.3 megapixel camera for video chats and on the back an eight MP camera for HD video recording, the phone comes with YouTube’s HQ video player, HDMI port and Android 2.1 OS, big 4.3 inch touch screen and 1 GHz Snapdragon processor.
Against:
Limited coverage for 4G network, you have to pay $10 as a data add on, it is mandatory. 4G eats up battery juice quickly, no support for Bluetooth voice activated dialing.
The Whiz Kid Speaks:
HTC Evo 4G is based on CDMA 2000 1X technology. It has a candy bar design. Wireless interface options include IEEE 802.16e, IEEE 802.11, and Bluetooth. The handset has Integrated digital compass. The preinstalled OS is Google Android 2.1. For data features, there is Android Market, Sprint TV and YouTube. The camera has a eight megapixel camera. Organizer features include alarm clock, reminder, calendar and calculator.
The display is 4.3 inches big and has a resolution of 800×480 pixels. Supported audio formats are MIDI, WAV, AMR, AAC, MP3, WMA, and AAC+. Connectors include 3.5 mm headphone jack, micro-USB port. The phone is powered by 1500 mAh lithium ion battery.
Razzle Dazzle:
This phone has striking similarities with HTC HD2. The handset is 2.6 inches wide, 0.5 inch thick and weighs about six ounces. We were also impressed by the fact that HTC managed to keep the phone thin, in spite of all the hardware and features that are packed in to it.
Inside Dope:
We first saw the HTC Evo 4G at CTIA 2010 and since then we were waiting in anticipation for this phone to arrive at our labs since there was so much hype surrounding it. This handset will be available for purchase from June 4th and will be America’s first 4G smartphone. We have high expectations from this phone and it deliver to the promises. This is a good handset but we have a couple of complaints too. Overall, we think that this is the best Smartphone seen to date and is also one of the finest Android phones right now. It is very powerful and is packed with features. 4G promises are delivered quite well. We expected better speeds from 4G but still it lives up to the claim that this technology is better than 3G. Sprint hasn’t rolled out the 4G carpet all over yet, so only a limited number of people will be able to exploit all the features of this phone when it launches in the market. You also have to shell out $10 extra for the mandatory Premium Data add-on. We are not complaining about the fee but the fact that you have to buy this, feels like forced upon.
Display
The sexiest part of HTC Evo 4G is the 4.3 inch capacitive touch screen. This display is massive and has a resolution of 480×800 pixels. The extra space on the screen will be apparent when you read Web pages or text documents. Just like iPhone, you can pinch to zoom through the pictures. The phone also comes with built in light sensor which automatically adjusts the screen’s backlighting according to the ambience light. We could read the screen well in all the environments, but in bright sunlight, screen got a bit washed out.
Navigation array and keyboard
There are touch sensitive buttons below the screen which make up the navigation array. They are search, back, menu and home. Pressing the home button for a while gets you the recently used apps list. The big display gives you a spacious keyboard that is as good as iPhones in terms of comfort. We could punch the alphabets quite easily even in the portrait mode. In the landscape mode, the keyboard is roomier but you will be fine even in the portrait mode.
Phone book and PIM features
Some important features worth mentioning here are speed dial, speakerphone, smart dialing, conference calling, voice commands, visual voice mail, multimedia and text messaging, along with threaded chat view. 3G, Bluetooth, GPS and Wi-Fi are also integrated and you can used data and voice at the same time if you are in 4G covered area.
Camera
On the face, the HTC Evo 4G has a 1.3 megapixel camera and on the back, there is an eight mega pixel camera which can shoot HD quality video clips. The phone also has Qik app for making video calls. Now we have had video calling phones in 3G but in 4G, video calling will work fine even if your friends on the other side don’t have a compatible phone.
Performance
HTC Evo 4G is based on 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon QSD8650 processor and it has 512 MB of RAM. This makes the phone quite fast and it will easily meet your speed requirements. It wasn’t as fast as Droid Incredible but we could still work in applications and launch them with very less delay. We are not saying that this phone is spectacular with regards to performance; we had to reset the phone twice while testing.
Call quality
When tested for call quality, the HTC Evo 4G performed impressively. Our friends could hear our voices loudly and clearly and there was no background noise. On their side, our friends said that the quality was great, the volume was loud enough and there was no voice distortion. Calls made through speaker phone were decent but they are not as good as handset calls. Volume was loud enough and we could talk comfortably even in environments with high noise levels.
Battery life
HTC Evo 4G is powered by 1500 mAh lithium ion battery but Sprint hasn’t given disclosed rated talk time or standby time for this device yet. We are conducting tests and we will update this section as soon as we are done with it.
Verdict:
This is arguably the first 4G smartphone in the US market and it is also Sprint’s best handset to date. But we will recommend you to wait a bit till 4G spreads all over the country. We also didn’t like that you have to pay a mandatory fee for the data add on offering.
