HTC EVO 4G first impressions

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We got some one-on-one time with the HTC EVO 4G today, and let us succinctly sum up our experience for you: wow. We’ll start with the screen… it’s gorgeous. 4.3 inches, enormous, easy to type on, responsive… it’s everything you want out of a touch screen. How’s the phones speed you ask? The product manager from HTC kept saying: “this isn’t the final software build, so there could be some lag” but to be honest, we couldn’t really find any. Opening Google Earth with 5 applications running in the background produced a tiny lag (3 seconds) but once Google Earth was up and running we were flying again.

The 1GHz Snapdragon processor really flexes its muscle in the EVO 4G. We pressed the product managers about a realistic battery life with 4G on, but all they could muster up for us was, “it’s good.” Bollocks. If you love HTC’s Sense UI, you’re really, really going to love this phone. The enhancements to Android’s UI are done with great detail and add minimal overhead to the phone’s resources (arguable, we guess). Widgets provide easy access to social media content, bookmarks, and other phone resources. You can update your “status” on several social media sites using HTC’s social widget. The EVO is a “with Google” phone and supports Exchange, Gmail, POP, and IMAP email accounts — although you can only have one Exchange account configured to the phone. We prefer having support for multiple Exchange accounts, but for most users this won’t be the end of the world.

Want more good news? The video camera is awesome. You can choose your desired resolution — we know you’re going to be keeping it in 720p — record, using either the front or rear facing camera, and upload to your favorite social media site, send via email or even transfer via Bluetooth. The quality is great and watching your videos play back on that screen is a real treat. We could go on and on about this phone but you get the idea. Great screen, very responsive, and, currently is in a class of it’s own as far as Android (and dare we say all) devices go. All Sprint and HTC will give us for a release timeline is “summer.” We’ve got June 21st circled on our calendars. Hit up the gallery for images!

UPDATE: The screen is not AMOLED as I originally wrote, I’m low on sleep.  Sorry for the confusion!

 

HTC Evo

A growing number of phone roll-outs with Android operating systems have been season in the last year or so as HTC put together what is arguably the best iteration of Android yet (although this moniker seems to follow most new Android phone releases). The Evo is the world’s first Android 4G mobile phone with a heavy-duty array of features including a large tousch-screen display, 8 MP camera, HD video capture and HTC Sense. A similar version of the phone known as the HTC Legend in Europe has already been released to some rave reviews. The phone will debut later this year, exclusively on Sprint.

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