HTC brings its HTC Evo 4G black color smart phone which is one of the top Android devices. The HTC Evo 4G gives 4G speed and provides the features to connect up to eight devices. HTC Evo 4G, smartphone is having a front facing camera that lets you play around with the video chat feature.
Back in November of 2007 Google announced their Android operating system and the game was supposed to change. A year later T-Mobile and HTC released the platform’s first handset, the G1.We had high hopes, to say the least, but the impact was not immediate.The revolution grew slowly, but now it is coming to a head. HTC brought their Sense UI to Android with the Hero, but the first major blow across Apple’s bow was the Motorola DROID, followed by the Nexus One and most recently the HTC DROID Incredible. All this was a prelude to what’s next: say hello to the HTC EVO 4G.
The EVO 4G has specs that are unmatched by any phone before it: 4G connectivity, 1GHz Snapdragon processor, HDMI out, HD video capture, dual cameras including an 8 megapixel main sensor, 4.3” display, mobile hotspot, YouTube HD, kickstand…the list goes on. All of this is backed by Sprint’s growing 4G network which gives users up to 10x the speed of 3G. This, finally, is a phone that can go toe-to-toe with the iPhone and beat it. Handily. It’s fast, it’s personal, it’s glorious. Included with the EVO 4G you’ll get an AC adapter and data cable, as well as an 8GB microSD card.
Design:
The HTC EVO 4G is very similar in design to the HD2, but when you have a 4.3” screen there isn’t much else you can do with the phone. Instead of physical buttons as on the HD2, the HTC EVO 4G has four flush capacitive buttons: Home, Menu, Back and Search. These buttons work flawlessly, unlike the Nexus One which gave us problems and had to be touched just so. At the top is the silver earpiece grill, and to the right of that is the small front-facing 1.3MP camera. The rest of the phone is equally simplistic: a volume rocker resides on the right side, the top houses the 3.5mm headphone jack and power button and the bottom features the microUSB and HDMI ports. The side buttons all offer good travel, and while the volume rocker raises more prominently from the housing both it and the power button are easy to operate on feel alone.
The back of the HTC EVO 4G houses its 8 megapixel camera near the top, with the dual LED flash to the camera’s left and the phone’s single speaker to the right. Near the bottom is the aluminum kickstand. The spring-assisted hinge is very smooth and solid, and we don’t foresee any issues with it loosening up as time goes by. The microSD slot is placed under the battery and has a unique latch mechanism that makes it pretty difficult to remove, but with an 8GB card most users won’t be taking it out and the ones who do probably will do so only once. Unlike the HD2, the battery door covers the entire back housing and is coated in soft touch paint. Underneath is Ferrari-red, but this only slips out around the camera and when the kickstand is deployed. Earlier prototypes had a red earpiece grill, but unfortunately this has been replaced with silver- likely because the DROID Incredible features a red grill. In any case the EVO 4G is a good looking device; it blends the sheer masculinity of the DROID with the graceful lines of the iPhone to create a look all its own.
Then there is the 4.3” capacitive display, which absolutely takes over the HTC EVO 4G. It is bright and crisp and reading text on the EVO 4G is a dream. While it has received some flack for not being AMOLED we didn’t notice a real difference from the Nexus One, and the EVO’s TFT display was more usable in direct sunlight. Our complaint is that HTC continues to only use 65K color displays. With devices like the iPhone, Pre and DROID sporting 16M colors we don’t think that at least 262K is too much to ask for. You won’t look at the HTC EVO 4G and lament the display, but we’d bet if shoppers put it side-by-side with the Pre the difference would be noticeable to a discerning eye.
At 6 ounces the EVO 4G is undoubtedly on the heavy side, but feels surprisingly good in the hand. The weight is well distributed and it feels more solid than the Nexus One did when holding it one-handed, though the EVO feels most comfortable when held two-handed. The size will obviously be a drawback for those with petite hands, but the phone didn’t overwhelm our medium-sized mitts. It is thinner than Sprint’s Hero and feels surprisingly similar in the pocket. The build quality is top notch, and with no moving parts the EVO 4G is definitely one of the most well put-together phones we’ve ever reviewed. There is no brushed aluminum or unibody, but the EVO is without a doubt a premium device.
Multimedia:
While the multimedia options of the HTC EVO 4G remain unchanged from other devices, the 4.3” display make it a veritable multimedia powerhouse. The new YouTube app automatically goes to HD when in 4G coverage, and side-loaded videos look amazing on the huge screen. The EVO blurs the line between tablet and phone well. True, the iPad offers a much bigger screen, but it’s not something that you can slip in your pocket easily. The EVO is a true portable multimedia device. Even over 3G, SprintTV looks better than ever, but is not available over WiFi. The HTC EVO 4G handled all of our MPEG-4 test files just fine, but has no support for DivX or XviD, something we’d love to see corrected in future releases.
The HTC music player remains unchanged, and several options are available from the Market. The HTC player has been good enough for us, and in fact we’ve given up our iPod touch in favor of the Hero a few months back. There are several streaming services such as Pandora, Slacker Radio and Rhapsody which further enhance the music experience on the EVO 4G and Android in general. We used our Plantronics Backbeat 903s to listen to music and were quite pleased with the quality of both streaming and side-loaded music. The EVO 4G ships with an 8GB microSD card and can support cards up to 32GB. The addition of an FM radio makes the HTC EVO 4G all the more capable, though the wired headset is required as it serves as an antenna.
Camera and Video:
The HTC EVO 4G has two cameras, a main 8 megapixel shooter capable of recording videos in 720p and a front-facing 1.3MP cam for self-portraits and video chat. HTC has been good about upping the sensor size, but their picture quality has not always been top-notch. The EVO 4G is very good, but we’ll hold off on saying great. All-in-all images were well reproduced; colors were natural, graining was minimal and details were sharp. When viewed at their full 8MP resolution some distortion came into play, but on our high-def monitor pictures looked really good scaled down, and on the EVO’s display they looked downright fantastic. Another fantastic aspect is the shooting speed: we were able to cold start the camera and snap a shot in under 3 seconds. With the review turned off we were able to snap a second shot in under a second. The auto-focus is lightning quick as is the shutter, which is a great feature to have. The one issue we have is that the front-facing camera takes reverse pictures, much like Apple’s iSight. We’re not sure if this is intentional (with Apple it is) or if it will be addressed in a future update.
HD videos were also good, but not great. We took the EVO 4G out for a spin in our test cemetery and there wasn’t significant blurring, but the color did have issues adjusting at times throughout the video. All-in-all we were impressed with the EVO 4G’s video capabilities, it is a phone after all. Starting a recording was just as quick as snapping a photo. We will say we’d prefer a dedicated camera key however.
HTC EVO 4G sample video at 1280×720 pixels resolution.
HTC EVO 4G sample video 2.
HTC EVO 4G sample video 3.
HTC EVO 4G sample video 4.
In terms of options you’ll find a number of goodies. You can adjust the brightness, contrast, saturation and sharpness and set the metering mode and flicker adjustment. The ISO can be set to auto, or manually set to 100, 200, 400, 800 or 1250. There is a face detection option, but not anti-shake. Images can be geotaged and timestamped. All of our photos were snapped with default settings, we’re sure a professional photographer could get slightly better results than we were able to achieve.
We did run into one potential serious problem when attempting to use the camera: there were multiple times that it would give us a memory card error and not allow us to save any pictures. When trying to send pictures the EVO automatically scales down the size for MMS, but at times we also got a could not resize error and so were unable to send the image. These issues were fixed via a soft reset which leads us to believe it is all software related, but hopefully these issues will get resolved quickly because obviously it was frustrating, especially since pictures can’t always be retaken.
Performance:
Call quality on the HTC EVO 4G was acceptable but not mind blowing. We didn’t really have any complaints as callers sounded loud and clear, with natural voice reproduction. On the other end things weren’t quite as good. While callers said there were no issues understanding us they sound we sounded a bit hollow and nasally and gave us a 7.5-8/10. They did make a point that the connection was good however, they could consistently hear and understand what we were saying it was just a matter of voice quality.
Similarly to the Hero, the HTC EVO 4G uses a 1500mAh battery. However, instead of being rated at 4 hours of talk time, the battery on the EVO is rated 50% higher at six hours. We were a bit skeptical, especially with such a large display, but lo and behold we were able to achieve 18 minutes more than the rated time when we put our unit to the test. Most people are going to be using the EVO 4G for things other than talking though, and under heavy use we definitely had to charge our unit mid-day. This shouldn’t come as a surprise however and is in-line with other smartphones, as the newness wears off and we’re not fiddling with it every 40 seconds the battery should be plenty ample to last through the day for most users. Sprint will be selling a case with an integrated battery however, not a bad pickup in our opinion.
High-end Android devices are coming fast and furious these days, but the HTC EVO 4G still manages to be in a class all by itself. Save for 4G there aren’t any features of the EVO we haven’t seen on other phones before, it’s just that we’ve never seen them put together like this. The EVO 4G offers just about anything the avid user could ask for, and it does it with style. In the meantime, it has a blazing fast data network to back it up. Android is coming into its own and we can now pronounce it a heavyweight mobile platform competitor. The HTC’s Sense UI on the other hand is the definitive Android experience. The EVO 4G is a premium device in every sense of the word and down to the last detail. This is the showcase device not only for Android, but for the wireless industry as a whole.
