The Evo 4G has been in my hands for 10 days now and I think I've had at least a million conversations about it. Everyone wants to know if it's living up to my hopes and dreams, which you could say were pretty high. Well I'm here to serve:
The review is broken into 4 Parts; Sprint & 4G, Software, and today's topic, Hardware:
Screen/Body: A seamless expanse of glass covers the entire face, a rim of red exposes an 8mp camera, and supple "soft touch" texture around back, come together to, well... let's be honest, to look and feel really fucking awesome. I love that this is not a fingerprint magnet. It's meant to be touched, even caressed. The screen, at 800x480, shows off websites in their full glory and displays text exceptionally clear. It may not be "Retina Display" clarity, but I guess I'll survive. ;) When I hit the power button for the first time, the screen's clarity transported me back into the shoes of the first color TV viewers.
Run a fingernail around the edges and the back cover pops off easily, exposing the full red interior of the phone. No practical reason for this - it's there for some subtle (and classy) style. It's got a removable battery (why don't all phones?!) and expandable storage (up to 32gb), all of which are nice and these days a must-have.
My biggest worry with the hardware is the flat, touch-sensitive buttons for Home, Menu, Back, and Search. I've never liked touch sensitive buttons, always preferring the tactile feedback I get from the <click> of a real switch. But HTC has changed my mind with their perfectly calibrated haptic feedback. It always lets me know the phone has accepted my command with a quick buzz.
Battery: Now, the greatest upside to the battery being removable is that, I fear, I'll need to swap it out with a freshly charged one sometimes... this thing eats battery. It being a powerful phone with quite a few radios on board, I was expecting it to be a hog and it's lived up to my expectations. With my iPhone having 2 years of battery degradation, I was getting about 18 hours of moderate use a day. With the brand new Evo... about the same. What this means in the real world: I unplug my Evo at 7:30am, mess around with it bit on the train, make no calls, and by 2pm, I'm usually at about 30% battery. I plug it in for an hour and I'll have plenty of juice to make it till I plug it in before bed at about midnight. I've had days where I use it quite a bit more so I have to plug it in a couple of times. It's only been 10 days, but the battery life has yet to prevent me from doing anything. As long as I don't forget to charge it midday, I'm good. This may be something that would annoy the piss out of you and for you, there are plenty of phones (most I'd guess) that'll do you better.
Size: Well...it's a bit bigger than I was expecting. I know that a 4.3 inch screen is 0.5 inches larger than my old iPhone, but I had not anticipated its extra width while holding the phone to my ear. It took a couple of days, but now when I pick up my iPhone (living out its retirement years as my bedside Clock/Radio) it feels itty bitty. It's all a matter of perspective. To enjoy a screen that size, the extra weight is well worth it. Zooming happens less on the web and in general, there's far less scrolling through apps, especially while texting. Also the soft keyboard is easier to type on given the larger keys, but I'll talk about that in detail later.
Camera: It films 720p video and takes 8mp snaps and has a flash. Great right? Well it's ok... just like every phone since my first with a camera, it sucks in low light. The LED flash isn't much of a help as it washes everything out within the 5-foot range. Yet, as with every phone since my first with a camera, I've been able to take a few decent snaps here and there. It's all about the right tool for the job. When capturing my little girl in a new outfit to send to her momma, it tends to work out quite well :) As for the video, same story. 720p seems a bit excessive on a phone, but this may be a way to take advantage of the HDMI out the phone features. Oh, it also has a front-facing camera for video calls. More to come on that in the Software section.
Performance: Being a functional designer, I know the duality, the joy and sadness of doing my job right. The HTC engineers who designed and built this phone did such a great job, I didn't even notice their fantastic work. I had almost forgotten to include this section on performance because I've not once had to think about how fast the Evo is. It just works. The moment my finger leaves an icon, that app opens. And for that, I'm happy to be carrying around a 1ghz processor...even if it means my new baby is a bit hungrier than some others... I'll gladly feed it however often it needs :)
Extras: I love its FM radio. For my long train ride to work, listening to NPR rocks. Also, it's got a solid metal kickstand, so you can prop the phone up as you enjoy video on its huge screen. Nice touch HTC.
Next Topic: Sprint & 4G
Images courtesy of Me.
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