Hanson
Senior HTF Member
- Joined
- Nov 1, 1998
- Messages
- 5,272
- Real Name
- Hanson
I have been with HTC and Windows Mobile since 2007, having gone through the Mogul, the Touch Diamond, and the Touch Pro 2. I have always liked the way HTC designs their phone other than the lack of memory. And after using Palm devices for two years, I really, really loved the developer community for WinMo. There was no app store, but there were thousands of bright people who made the programs (almost always for free) that made WinMo so customizable. I just assumed my next phone would be from HTC running WP7, but alas, MS decided to adopt Apple's walled garden approach with zero backwards compatability, and that pretty much killed any enthusiasm I had for WP7. Which is how I found myself jumping head first into Android. I had never been that impressed with Android, but the ugly design of the G1 made me cringe enough to not even bother delving into it. I didn't keep up with the updates, and was actually surprised and a bit impressed when I played around with 2.1. It did a lot more than I thought (escpecially Exchange activesync), but the browser -- wow! The browser was incredible! Full web pages loaded in the same time or faster than Opera Mini did on my TP2. Flash lite supported video in many pages. When someone released an all purpose media player for Android that played avi files without the need for conversion, I was sold. And I didn't even need to shop around for a phone -- the Evo was calling, whispering, beckoning me to own it. I'm gonna be honest -- I pretty much bought the Evo based on the screen size alone. If I were on Verizon I would have gotten the Droid X for the same reason, but I've experienced all four carriers, and while T-Mobile is actually a easy to deal with, their coverage sucks. Sprint has been the best carrier I've worked with, so I was very happy go with the Evo. Note that Samsung is releasing the Epic later this year for Sprint (and variants for all carriers are coming with the AT&T version already out). Spec-wise, the Evo cannot hold a candle to it except for the screen size (4.3" vs 4"). But 4" is not gonna cut it for me. Not when there's a 4.3" monster out there. The box seriously looks like a container of instant noodles. It's very conspicuously environmentally friendly -- it looks like it was recycled from egg cartons.
Sprint is seriously, seriously cheap with the accessories as of late. My Touch Pro 2 only came with a wall charger, cable, and battery. The Evo is no different -- only those four items, no holster, not even headphones. But that's a slick looking transformer for the wall adapter. It looks like I have to finally move from mini to micro USB. And just when I had all the mini USB cables I would ever need...
I am going to baby this thing by trickle charging via PC before turning it on. This process will take hours, but I still have a working phone and I can be patient for today. One hour later and it's fully charged from the PC! This is unheard of! I know it was half charged out of the box, but I thought this would take a few hours at least. The Evo is wider but thinner than my previous Touch Pro 2, but that had a slide out keyboard. I can reach all four corners with my thumb without needing to readjust my grip on the Evo. While I don't have very big hands, I think I have the minimum hand size for one-handed operation. The screen is absoutely beautiful. Compared to my TP2 screen, it is brighter and whiter, very sharp and so freakin' HUGE! Love it! The keyboard is a easier to use in portrait after getting used to the smaller keyboard on the TP2, but there are weird things that slow me down like pausing in between if you hit a letter twice. I suppose this was done to prevent typos, but it's actually causing some for me. However, the landscape keyboard is amazing. It's huge, the virtual keys are luxuriously big, and I think I'm about as fast with it as I was with the TP2 slide out keyboard -- it's that great. And the screen rotation lag is a fraction of the time WinMo took to right itself, so I may be using the landscape kayboard a lot more than I ever used the slider. After four hours of solid use (downloading and installing programs, transferring 6GB of music and videos, surfing the net, and taking phjone calls), the battery needs a recharge. I am not too concerned at this point since a) many users report significantly better battery life after a few weeks, b) I was doing a lot of transferring and downloading as a part of intial setup and won't be hitting as hard with normal use, and c) as it turns out, the battery from my TP2 is interchangeable with the Evo. So it looks like I have a spare battery after all. Internet performance is not as impressive as it was on my co-worker's phone, although I am in NYC today whereas my co-worker is in Harrison NJ. I think the network is much less congested in NJ, so the speeds are that much faster. I ended up downloading Opera Mini again for quick web surfing in NYC. Also, I am annoyed that some websites force me into the ghetto of mobile sites. I really want to surf the desktop site. The great thing? There are other browsers I can install until I find one that does what I want. Speaking of which -- LOVE the app store. Found every program I needed for free. And can I tell you how happy I am to ditch the buggy crap that was Beyondpod for WinMo? That sucked so hard on the TP2. And it was the best thing I could find! GBA and SNES emulation run beautifully on Evo, and the on-screen controls work surprisingly well. Rockplayer friggin' rocks! It plays all of the avi and flv files on my memory card. I'll have to feed it some mkv files when I get home. Now for the downsides. Videos that scaled to full screen on the TP2 look fuzzier and washed out on the Evo when scaled to full screen. This is mostly because the source file is lower resolution compared to the screen, but the video artifacts were invisible on the 3.6" TP2 are easily seen on the Evo. And I think that Coreplayer for WinMo simply produced a better picture than Rockplayer to begin with. This is nowhere near a dealbreaker for me, but it's the same kind of GIGO problem that large screen TV adopters faced with SD cable material. If I want some reference material, it looks like I'm going to have to convert some files closer to the native screen resolution. Fingerprints galore! After a few minutes of usage, it looks like the Evo was hosting a snail orgy! I hope the glass is as tough as they say, because I'm going to be cleaning it off on my shirt a lot. A LOT. The battery cover is kind of dodgy for me. You have to insert your fingernail in a gap and then work off the cover bit by bit. I'm used to sliding off the back covers in one motion with my previous HTC phones, so this design is a big thumbs down for me. It's one of those things where I feel like I might break something the entire time. Remote desktop without a HW keyboard and stylus is NOT pretty. I'm going to have to play around with this a lot. Best feature -- The Screen! Worst feature -- Hmm... it would seem that the battery life would be a no-brainer, but I will revisit that in a few weeks after the battery "breaks in" (if in fact that's an actual thing). For now, I'm going with difficult to use RDP, since I use that a lot. This may be the most painful thing in the long run.