The HTC EVO 4G is not the best Android mobile phone out there but Sprint is the only carrier that gets reception at my house. Six months ago I began a rather extensive trial of a few different phones and carriers and balked at the EVO after a 30-day trial.
Certainly Verizon would have service in my area, everybody raves about VZW and after all it’s been 5 years since I last did my trials and found that I live in a cell service black hole, in spite of living roughly 3 miles from downtown LA and just over the hill from Dodger Stadium. This was not the case. Verizon service was equally as non-existent for voice calls as was AT&T. The difference being that AT&T offered me a femtocell signal booster (the 3G Microcell) for free whereas Verizon wanted me to pay $250 for their extender. In fact, when I talked to their technical department, I learned that my area is a known trouble zone and that NO TOWER upgrades were scheduled — it would be at least two years before there was any [better] service.
So why didn’t I stick with AT&T? I waited for the release of the Samsung Captivate, the AT&T version of the popular Samsung Galaxy S Android phone, but wasn’t satisfied with it. I am a user and abuser of mobile devices (as far as apps and internet are concerned) and my experience with the Captivate was a bit too laggy and buggy. I felt that perhaps the stock AT&T “bloatware” may have been bogging it down.
But EVO is not the best phone out there? I felt the Motorola Droid X, available on Verizon, edged it out for one reason: the major difference between the two phones is that DroidX boasts a 16GB internal memory while the EVO has a mere 512MB onboard storage. This shouldn’t make a difference to the average user and ostensibly more and more apps will be built to migrate to the external micro SD card (expandable to 32GB). But as a heavy user with 100 or so apps downloaded to my phone, I often get low storage warnings.
Battery life? The EVO will run all day if it’s used gently — primarily for voice or text. But for users like me — and I use it like it’s a second computer — a full charge can be depleted within 4 hours. My workaround was to purchase a backup battery, available for under $10 on Amazon.
I’m happy with the EVO. I’m in love with Android. I highly recommend that you get your hands on a device and check it out — at least for a 30-day risk free trial.
