I was a VIP guest of LG at a red carpet Hollywood bash celebrating the Revolution this week. In spite of promo posters featuring raised fists on the walls, this revolution is not a movement — it’s an Android smartphone and a speedy one at that.

To test the LG Revolution I livestreamed videos via the UStream app over the slick Verizon LTE data network.

The party was packed with industry types, well-dressed Hollywood party hoppers and perhaps some marginal celebs. Instead of having a celeb DJ or band this event featured something that I had never seen before — solo instrumentalists playing over music Rock Band style. At one point a violinist accompanied “Sweet Child o’ Mine,” a drummer played over a stripped down version of another song and as seen above, a guitarist played (and emoted) the “Don’t Stop Believin'” solo.

Good times! The revolution is now…

Disclaimer: I was provided with an LG Revolution and a few tasty tequila bevvies for the purpose of this post.

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.

Oh yeah, the data coverage is fine. I’ve been spoiled by AT&T’s 3g data coverage since 2006 and never turned back. Did it bother me to only have nine keys and #0* on my LG CU500 and a small screen? No. It was 3g. Did I at least use T9 predictive text or would I actually make 10 entries on the keypad just to spell “s-h-i-t?” Hell no, I became the fastest texter in town. Why? Because no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t hear more than scratchy sounds and broken words coming from the other end of the handset. Didn’t matter where or how I stood in the house or on the block. I was in a black hole. AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile. You can’t NOT lose. It’s 2010, and I still find myself going to the mall just so I can have a coherent phone conversation with Mom.

Read the full article at LAist.