HTC Evo Review

Posted by landoman - 28/06/10 at 07:06:11 pm

A little over a month ago I decided that I was in the need of a new gadget to play with. Since the mobile phone world was in a buzz over two new Android offerings — the Evo and the Incredible — I figured now would be a perfect time to give the seemingly impressive Evo a shot.

Hardware
Make no mistake, the HTC Evo is an incredibly powerful little machine. Featuring a 1Ghz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor and 512MB RAM, there are very few tasks that can’t be handily chewed through. Browsing, multitasking apps, 720p video — none of them give the Evo a problem.

Speaking of video, the Evo comes equipped with a video camera capable of recording 720p video and features two cameras: a standard 8MP camera with dual-flash and a front-facing 1.2MP camera. It should be noted, though, that the video quality is only technically 720p; it’s compressed too much to be true HD quality. But the camera takes very vibrant pictures for what it is.

Also to to be found is an 802.11b/g wi-fi connection, HDMI-out, an 8GB MicroSD card (expandable to 32GB) and the capability for the Evo to function as a wi-fi hotspot allowing up to 8 devices to connect to the Sprint network ($30/month…technically…).

But what stands out the most with the Evo is the fantastic screen. Looking at a 4.3-inch 480×800 TFT LCD screen all day is an absolute delight. No matter what you’re doing, everything looks so crisp and clear. And the extra screen real estate adds to all the other awesome that this phone has. Screen brightness isn’t any worse in daylight than any other phone and it simply looks beautiful at all other times.

Voice and Data
The Sprint network is known to have some of the fastest data speeds of any cellular provider. During my use, I traveled up and down the East Coast and had 3G speeds ~95% of the time. Combined with the power of the Evo hardware, apps and browsers load and display content very quickly.

Voice quality is equally impressive. Coming from an iPhone, I was used to a high level of quality in both the headset and the microphone. Voices sound clear though there is occasionally a bit of buzzing at certain frequencies. Listeners observed outgoing quality to be clear.

Reception didn’t appear to be an issue with Sprint’s network. No calls were dropped, no distortion or degradation, and random signal loss (like what plagues AT&T) appears non-existent.

4G
One of Sprint’s biggest selling points is the 4G capability. Simply put, Atlanta supposedly has a 4G network but I never found it. Therefore no testing. All I know is that enabling 4G drained the battery.

Battery Life
Here’s where the review turns a bit dark. The Evo is a beast of a phone and, as such, drains the battery faster than Twilight drained my will to live. That’s not necessarily unexpected, but it’s certainly not any more likable. People randomly report the battery life to be either significantly better or far worse, but for how I use my phones I was able to get only ~10 hours of moderate use. And I use that term sparingly as I was in class training from 8:00-5:00 that week and couldn’t use the phone for half the day. Expect 4-5 hours for calling, 2-3 for data, less all around if you’ve got 4G enabled. Not exactly a phone for heavy use which is ultimately one of the big reasons I returned it.

Android
The HTC Evo is one of the newest phones in the Android army. Google’s open platform offers an incredible amount of functionality and customization. Combined with HTCs Sense UI, the Evo rocks an awesome OS. This is what I miss most after having returned the Evo.

Once equipped with the full range of Google apps, you can scan barcodes and instantly have a list of prices for items, aim your camera towards the sky to see which stars are where, take a picture of something (landmark, item, logo, etc…) and get info on that item, or use Maps’ new GPS navigation functionality for the best directions possible. The Google suite is a serious selling point to any Android phone.

But ultimately, what’s holding Android back is the lack of quality apps in the Android Market. Compared to Apple’s App Store, Android apps are lacking the sort of polish and discretion that makes the App Store so nice. On the flip side, the Android Market offers the potential for way more apps to be developed overall. But at the same time, the iPhone is one platform with uniform hardware across each generation. Compare that to Android phones which offer a vast array of candidates for your cellular delight, and you have a very fragmented market with apps that do/don’t work or work better/worse on different phones. When Android catches up and solves the fragmentation problem, it’ll be game on. The app situation is, mainly, the singular issue that caused me to return the phone.

So there you have it — my review of the HTC Evo. It’s nice but the battery life is poor and the Android Market is lacking.

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