This review is from: HTC EVO LTE 4G Android Phone (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
I’ve been anticipating the launch of this phone for what seems like forever now, and I can now say that it was entirely worth the wait. Unfortunately, I myself am not yet up for an upgrade, but my husband was – so I opted to take full advantage of the situation, and we pre-ordered the LTE the day it became available. Thanks to a customs delay, it arrived a few days late, but this allowed me a nice long weekend to hijack it…um, I mean “put it through its paces.”
What you’ll like:
-At just 4.7 ounces and just .35″ thick, it is incredibly light and thin
-1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. In other words, FAST. Some may gripe about the lack of quad core, but I haven’t noticed a single bit of lag thus far.
-A 720×1080 pixel, LCD display makes everything look crisp and clear. Sporting nearly as many pixels per inch as the iPhone, some have argued that the LTE’s display looks just as good, if not better, than Apple’s behemoth. As an owner of a 3rd Gen iPad, I can say it’s pretty darn close.
-Sprint is including an upgraded, 2000 mAh battery (7 hours quoted talk time) in their model of this phone, and it makes a big difference. It is built in – which is usually not my preference – but after three days of use, it is consistently only draining a little more than 50% of power by the end of the day, with moderate use (And we roam. A LOT). If you’re going to have a phone with a non-removable battery, this is the one to get.
-Lack of bloatware. Previous Sprint Android phones included such annoying apps as Sprint NFL, Sprint Nascar, Telenav, et cetera – all practically useless, and completely non-removable, taking up valuable space on the phone. This phone only includes the SprintZone app, which is actually kind of useful for checking usage and diagnosing network problems. Yay for Sprint getting the message!
-SD card slot. Departing from the rest of the OneX line, Sprint opted to include a removable SD card slot in the LTE. An SD card card itself is not included – and is probably not needed for the average user, with 16GB of internal storage on board – but being able to pop in up to 32GB of extra storage if needed is a great feature.
-Call quality is great, and Beats Audio offers pretty impressive sound.
What You’ll Love:
-Camera = AMAZING. 8MP rear facing, 1.3MP front facing and shoots 1080P HD video. Dedicated shutter button for snapping shots, and the “burst” feature is great for snapping a barrage of pictures of those children and pets that always seem to be running everywhere. You can easily select the best shot of the bunch to save afterward, or just keep them all. Image stabilization and face recognition are also standard, and a range of effects can be added before or after snapping shots. In short, I can’t really find a thing wrong with this camera – it’s the best of any smartphone camera I’ve ever handled.
-Ice Cream Sandwich. One of the few Android phones shipping with (or even running) this operating system, it is intuitive, beautiful and a lot of fun to use. The experience is not quite “stock” ICS, but it comes pretty close.
-Sense 4.0 – light, easy to use, and includes some gorgeous widgets and live backgrounds.
What (May) Bug You:
-Physical button configuration. ICS is moving away from hardware buttons, but this phone includes three – the Back button, Home button, and an App Switching button for switching between open apps, and closing them when you are done. A dedicated Google button is omitted, which is something that’s been rough for me to adjust to. HTC would have done much better to either include it as a fourth button, or omit the app switching button to include it. I view the App Switch button as pretty much useless, as my current phone includes the same function when the home button is pressed and held. The phone is capable of performing the same functions using the Google search widget on the home screen, but it does not lock, and the necessity of leaving an app, navigating to the page with the widget, THEN selecting it for use kind of defeats the purpose of instant access to voice commands. There isn’t even a smaller widget I can add to the locking shortcut drawer at the bottom of the home screen. Eventually, I’ll find a workaround, but for now it’s a bit annoying. To be fair, this is going to be a problem on all ICS phones going forward, so HTC was just the first after the Nexus to exclude this.
-Lack of 4G network. This is the major knock on this phone right now – although it is 4G capable, Sprint’s LTE network is not yet live pretty much anywhere. The phone does not include a WiMax radio to utilize Sprint’s previous “4G” technology, so essentially you’re stuck on 3G until Sprint’s network starts rolling out next year. That said, I am not anywhere WiMax, so I wouldn’t be using…
This review is from: HTC EVO LTE 4G Android Phone (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
I’m not your typical user, I tend to be very particular about little details that not everyone will care about, so I’ll try to only talk about these things in attempt to avoid saying what’s already been said in other reviews.
The Evo 4G LTE is not technically a part of the HTC One series found on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, but it has all of the same internals (including the screen) of the HTC One X on AT&T. What this has that the One X doesn’t have, though, is an empty microSD slot along with the 16GB internal storage, a dedicated camera shutter button, and an officially unlockable bootloader.
Yep, the Evo 4G LTE’s bootloader is unlockable by the official HTCdev method, (made easy by the folk at XDA Forums.) No hacks or exploits. You do get a warning from HTC saying that unlocking may void the Warranty in some situations, but if you’re an advanced android user looking to put different versions of Android on this phone, this will likely not be a concern for you. For new users looking to get a phone that’s unlocked easily and reliably, you’ll want to check this one out. I have a modified version of the stock ROM that ships with this phone. It has tweaks such as remapping the functions of the physical capacitive buttons. (Replacing the “App Switcher” button with the traditional “Menu” function allows you to free up more screen space since the “three dot” software menu button won’t be on the screen anymore. Then, remap the “App Switcher” function to the Back button when long-pressed. I find this as an ideal setup on an unlocked LTE.) If you root your LTE, I’d also suggest downloading Android Commander for your computer so you can easily edit system-level files such as unwanted Apps. I’d give the EVO LTE 5/5 stars if I never unlocked the bootloader for custom ROMS — but now that I have, I’d rate this phone something like 7/5 stars if I could. It’s going beyond my expectations.
Elsewhere, I have to say I’m absolutely drooling over the screen on this phone. I’m a digital artist, so I’m very perceptive of screen color casts and things. So when people say they think the Super AMOLED screens on Samsung devices still eke out the EVO LTE / One X in screen quality, I just can’t agree with them. Samsung’s AMOLEDs always have either a blue or green color cast (mostly thanks to usually having a pentile sub-pixel arrangement,) and the color, while vivid and “pops” with saturated colors, usually does so unnaturally. I’d rather take the neutral, natural, excellently calibrated IPS LCD screen of the EVO over an AMOLED any day. And when you look at this screen with all its size, brightness, and sharpness, it’s something you just can’t help but gawk at! I’m not really an iPhone user, but I have to admit, when the iPhone 4 first came out and I saw the Retina Display in person for the first time, I was awestruck at the quality and clarity of it. When I got the EVO LTE, I had the very same in-awe reaction, perhaps even more so when you take into account of the greater size and resolution. As David Pierce of The Verge said in his review of the phone, “More than once, I found myself just sort of staring at the Evo’s 4.7-inch display, for no particular reason.” I now understand where he’s coming from with that.
I’ve owned a first generation iPhone and two other HTC phones in the past. (T-Mobile G2 and Radar 4G.) During all that time, I’ve NEVER used them for watching video, TV shows, or movies, if only because of their smaller screen sizes and limited playback functionality. But the 4.7″ 720p screen here is absolutely a joy to watch video on, especially when you consider that it supports playback of HD .MKV files, and has expandable storage. Get MX Player from the Play store. It’s free and supports changing subtitle/audio. (Great for those of us who watch anime.) It’s a serious win.
I’ve been getting decent battery life. Some heavy usage will see me through the day with 30% or more left to recharge overnight. If I were more careful about disabling auto-sync and the wireless radios when not needing them, I’m sure it’d last even longer, but I’m really not complaining. I’ve begun using an energy-saver app that automatically shuts off certain functions/apps of the phone when idle for too long, or during certain parts of the day (like after midnight when you’re likely not to be using the phone as much anymore.) This helps out quite a bit since I don’t have to worry about manually shutting off these features to save power. The app will just turn them back on for me when I need them. I don’t need to get facebook and gmail updates throughout the night, so with the radios turned off, I’ve found being able to go for 2 days without recharging while maintaining same heavy usage. (Unplug on morning of day one, go through the night, plug in end of day 2.)
A quick word on Sprint network speeds. I live in Boston, MA. We’re going to be one of the first cities to get LTE when sprint…
This review is from: HTC EVO LTE 4G Android Phone (Sprint) (Wireless Phone)
Well so far I have had this phone for a little over 24 hours, and it is awesome. I read on one review on some unknown tech website about how this phone was the first phone on Sprint that can surf the web and make a phone call at the same time. Now I was under the impression that sprint and verizon’s cdma technology couldn’t handle this, so I was skeptical. But sure enough today I was on the phone having a conversation, I loaded up google maps, it brought it up with the current traffic and found my location. I still couldn’t believe it, so I went to the web browser and pulled up espn.com, yep it worked! And FYI I just tried it again to make sure I didn’t mislead people. Called my house, did a google search and then went to yahoo.com, worked perfectly! So far all the other reviews people rave about the other features. I just wanted people to know about the simultaneous data and talking that I didn’t even know about and no one has mentioned.
A couple other things, ICS is a huge improvement, there seemed to be a small learning curve for me coming from the evo 3d, maybe it’s just sense 4.0, I haven’t played with stock ICS.
The screen is great and extremely easy to read in sunlight, unlike other phones. People have complained that this phone is ugly, seeing pictures I agreed, it’s much better in person.
This phone is extremely light and thin, I went to bestbuy to activate it yesterday and the woman let me hold her iphone 4s up to it and I could not tell which was thicker.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Authors bio is coming up shortly. 
One Amazing Machine,
I’ve been anticipating the launch of this phone for what seems like forever now, and I can now say that it was entirely worth the wait. Unfortunately, I myself am not yet up for an upgrade, but my husband was – so I opted to take full advantage of the situation, and we pre-ordered the LTE the day it became available. Thanks to a customs delay, it arrived a few days late, but this allowed me a nice long weekend to hijack it…um, I mean “put it through its paces.”
What you’ll like:
-At just 4.7 ounces and just .35″ thick, it is incredibly light and thin
-1.5 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 dual-core processor. In other words, FAST. Some may gripe about the lack of quad core, but I haven’t noticed a single bit of lag thus far.
-A 720×1080 pixel, LCD display makes everything look crisp and clear. Sporting nearly as many pixels per inch as the iPhone, some have argued that the LTE’s display looks just as good, if not better, than Apple’s behemoth. As an owner of a 3rd Gen iPad, I can say it’s pretty darn close.
-Sprint is including an upgraded, 2000 mAh battery (7 hours quoted talk time) in their model of this phone, and it makes a big difference. It is built in – which is usually not my preference – but after three days of use, it is consistently only draining a little more than 50% of power by the end of the day, with moderate use (And we roam. A LOT). If you’re going to have a phone with a non-removable battery, this is the one to get.
-Lack of bloatware. Previous Sprint Android phones included such annoying apps as Sprint NFL, Sprint Nascar, Telenav, et cetera – all practically useless, and completely non-removable, taking up valuable space on the phone. This phone only includes the SprintZone app, which is actually kind of useful for checking usage and diagnosing network problems. Yay for Sprint getting the message!
-SD card slot. Departing from the rest of the OneX line, Sprint opted to include a removable SD card slot in the LTE. An SD card card itself is not included – and is probably not needed for the average user, with 16GB of internal storage on board – but being able to pop in up to 32GB of extra storage if needed is a great feature.
-Call quality is great, and Beats Audio offers pretty impressive sound.
What You’ll Love:
-Camera = AMAZING. 8MP rear facing, 1.3MP front facing and shoots 1080P HD video. Dedicated shutter button for snapping shots, and the “burst” feature is great for snapping a barrage of pictures of those children and pets that always seem to be running everywhere. You can easily select the best shot of the bunch to save afterward, or just keep them all. Image stabilization and face recognition are also standard, and a range of effects can be added before or after snapping shots. In short, I can’t really find a thing wrong with this camera – it’s the best of any smartphone camera I’ve ever handled.
-Ice Cream Sandwich. One of the few Android phones shipping with (or even running) this operating system, it is intuitive, beautiful and a lot of fun to use. The experience is not quite “stock” ICS, but it comes pretty close.
-Sense 4.0 – light, easy to use, and includes some gorgeous widgets and live backgrounds.
What (May) Bug You:
-Physical button configuration. ICS is moving away from hardware buttons, but this phone includes three – the Back button, Home button, and an App Switching button for switching between open apps, and closing them when you are done. A dedicated Google button is omitted, which is something that’s been rough for me to adjust to. HTC would have done much better to either include it as a fourth button, or omit the app switching button to include it. I view the App Switch button as pretty much useless, as my current phone includes the same function when the home button is pressed and held. The phone is capable of performing the same functions using the Google search widget on the home screen, but it does not lock, and the necessity of leaving an app, navigating to the page with the widget, THEN selecting it for use kind of defeats the purpose of instant access to voice commands. There isn’t even a smaller widget I can add to the locking shortcut drawer at the bottom of the home screen. Eventually, I’ll find a workaround, but for now it’s a bit annoying. To be fair, this is going to be a problem on all ICS phones going forward, so HTC was just the first after the Nexus to exclude this.
-Lack of 4G network. This is the major knock on this phone right now – although it is 4G capable, Sprint’s LTE network is not yet live pretty much anywhere. The phone does not include a WiMax radio to utilize Sprint’s previous “4G” technology, so essentially you’re stuck on 3G until Sprint’s network starts rolling out next year. That said, I am not anywhere WiMax, so I wouldn’t be using…
Read more
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|Unofficially Best of the HTC “One” series,
I’m not your typical user, I tend to be very particular about little details that not everyone will care about, so I’ll try to only talk about these things in attempt to avoid saying what’s already been said in other reviews.
The Evo 4G LTE is not technically a part of the HTC One series found on AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile, but it has all of the same internals (including the screen) of the HTC One X on AT&T. What this has that the One X doesn’t have, though, is an empty microSD slot along with the 16GB internal storage, a dedicated camera shutter button, and an officially unlockable bootloader.
Yep, the Evo 4G LTE’s bootloader is unlockable by the official HTCdev method, (made easy by the folk at XDA Forums.) No hacks or exploits. You do get a warning from HTC saying that unlocking may void the Warranty in some situations, but if you’re an advanced android user looking to put different versions of Android on this phone, this will likely not be a concern for you. For new users looking to get a phone that’s unlocked easily and reliably, you’ll want to check this one out. I have a modified version of the stock ROM that ships with this phone. It has tweaks such as remapping the functions of the physical capacitive buttons. (Replacing the “App Switcher” button with the traditional “Menu” function allows you to free up more screen space since the “three dot” software menu button won’t be on the screen anymore. Then, remap the “App Switcher” function to the Back button when long-pressed. I find this as an ideal setup on an unlocked LTE.) If you root your LTE, I’d also suggest downloading Android Commander for your computer so you can easily edit system-level files such as unwanted Apps. I’d give the EVO LTE 5/5 stars if I never unlocked the bootloader for custom ROMS — but now that I have, I’d rate this phone something like 7/5 stars if I could. It’s going beyond my expectations.
Elsewhere, I have to say I’m absolutely drooling over the screen on this phone. I’m a digital artist, so I’m very perceptive of screen color casts and things. So when people say they think the Super AMOLED screens on Samsung devices still eke out the EVO LTE / One X in screen quality, I just can’t agree with them. Samsung’s AMOLEDs always have either a blue or green color cast (mostly thanks to usually having a pentile sub-pixel arrangement,) and the color, while vivid and “pops” with saturated colors, usually does so unnaturally. I’d rather take the neutral, natural, excellently calibrated IPS LCD screen of the EVO over an AMOLED any day. And when you look at this screen with all its size, brightness, and sharpness, it’s something you just can’t help but gawk at! I’m not really an iPhone user, but I have to admit, when the iPhone 4 first came out and I saw the Retina Display in person for the first time, I was awestruck at the quality and clarity of it. When I got the EVO LTE, I had the very same in-awe reaction, perhaps even more so when you take into account of the greater size and resolution. As David Pierce of The Verge said in his review of the phone, “More than once, I found myself just sort of staring at the Evo’s 4.7-inch display, for no particular reason.” I now understand where he’s coming from with that.
I’ve owned a first generation iPhone and two other HTC phones in the past. (T-Mobile G2 and Radar 4G.) During all that time, I’ve NEVER used them for watching video, TV shows, or movies, if only because of their smaller screen sizes and limited playback functionality. But the 4.7″ 720p screen here is absolutely a joy to watch video on, especially when you consider that it supports playback of HD .MKV files, and has expandable storage. Get MX Player from the Play store. It’s free and supports changing subtitle/audio. (Great for those of us who watch anime.) It’s a serious win.
I’ve been getting decent battery life. Some heavy usage will see me through the day with 30% or more left to recharge overnight. If I were more careful about disabling auto-sync and the wireless radios when not needing them, I’m sure it’d last even longer, but I’m really not complaining. I’ve begun using an energy-saver app that automatically shuts off certain functions/apps of the phone when idle for too long, or during certain parts of the day (like after midnight when you’re likely not to be using the phone as much anymore.) This helps out quite a bit since I don’t have to worry about manually shutting off these features to save power. The app will just turn them back on for me when I need them. I don’t need to get facebook and gmail updates throughout the night, so with the radios turned off, I’ve found being able to go for 2 days without recharging while maintaining same heavy usage. (Unplug on morning of day one, go through the night, plug in end of day 2.)
A quick word on Sprint network speeds. I live in Boston, MA. We’re going to be one of the first cities to get LTE when sprint…
Read more
Was this review helpful to you?
|What?? This phone can make calls and surf the web simultaniously?,
Well so far I have had this phone for a little over 24 hours, and it is awesome. I read on one review on some unknown tech website about how this phone was the first phone on Sprint that can surf the web and make a phone call at the same time. Now I was under the impression that sprint and verizon’s cdma technology couldn’t handle this, so I was skeptical. But sure enough today I was on the phone having a conversation, I loaded up google maps, it brought it up with the current traffic and found my location. I still couldn’t believe it, so I went to the web browser and pulled up espn.com, yep it worked! And FYI I just tried it again to make sure I didn’t mislead people. Called my house, did a google search and then went to yahoo.com, worked perfectly!
So far all the other reviews people rave about the other features. I just wanted people to know about the simultaneous data and talking that I didn’t even know about and no one has mentioned.
A couple other things, ICS is a huge improvement, there seemed to be a small learning curve for me coming from the evo 3d, maybe it’s just sense 4.0, I haven’t played with stock ICS.
The screen is great and extremely easy to read in sunlight, unlike other phones.
People have complained that this phone is ugly, seeing pictures I agreed, it’s much better in person.
This phone is extremely light and thin, I went to bestbuy to activate it yesterday and the woman let me hold her iphone 4s up to it and I could not tell which was thicker.
Was this review helpful to you?
|