The dock for the HTC EVO 4G smartphone from Sprint will be made available in time at Best Buy retail stores according to the retailer’s advertisement for the smartphone.
The dock features two prongs–one for the micro HDMI and the other for the micro USB connector–to charge, synchronize, and output to a HDMI TV source for a larger picture experience. The Sprint HTC EVO 4G will be among the first smartphones on the market to take advantage of the new HDMI 1.4 standard, which allows for the micro HDMI connection.
Micro HDMI cables are virtually impossible to find for purchase right now, but Best Buy will be selling a special dock for the Sprint EVO 4G coming soon. The new HDMI 1.4 standard (which established the micro connector Type D) was recently introduced and the EVO is one of the first smartphones to include it.
Devices based on the HDMI 1.4 standard are supposed to be fully backwards-compatible with existing HDMI devices, but users could run into some issues. Early testing done by PC Mag revealed mix results and they were “quite disappointed with the HDMI experience on the Sprint EVO 4G.” Select TVs would only recognize the signal as 480p (instead of 1080p) and certain apps like Sprint TV refused to play.
At this point it is unclear if the issues were being caused by software problems, the HDMI cable, or the TV set. Older HDMI (v.1.0 – 1.3) devices cannot be firmware-upgraded to take advantage of the new features introduced in HDMI 1.4 because most require a new HDMI chip to enable them. We do not believe the Sprint EVO includes any new HDMI features (other than the micro connector) so it should work with most existing TVs.
Although the dock is reported as “coming soon,” pricing was not disclosed at the time.
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