The Sprint HTC EVO 4G Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 28, 2010 6:04 PM ESTSprint Mobile Hotspot
True story. I was in line waiting for my iPhone 4 pre-order (for 6 hours) and we were too far from the Apple store to use Apple’s WiFi. Everyone instead had to rely on AT&T’s 3G. Everyone except me of course.
I pulled out the EVO 4G and with a couple of taps created a WiFi hotspot sharing my 4G connection with anyone who wanted it. The process was not only ridiculously simple but also made me feel like a benevolent ISP. It rocked.
 |
 |
You get full visibility of how many users are connected to your hotspot along with their MAC and IP addresses. You don’t have the ability to kick off specific users although you can always shut down the hotspot. There’s a timeout option that will automatically turn the hotspot off after 10 minutes of no activity.
It’s actually amazingly simple and works very well. You can host up to 8 simultaneous users on your hotspot although given the limited bandwidth I’m not sure you’d want to.
 |
 |
The obvious downside is the feature costs $29.99 per month, it needs to be added to your plan by Sprint. This is actually the most expensive tethering plan out of all of the major carriers. It is also the most capable. With this plan you get unlimited downloads over the 4G network and up to 5GB/mo of data transfers on Sprint’s 3G network. If you happen to venture on to a non-Sprint network you’re limited to 300MB/mo of transfers.
Sprint’s Apps
Sprint subsidizes the cost of the EVO 4G, dropping it to $299.99 with a new 2 year agreement. There’s also a $100 mail in rebate that will drop the total cost of the phone to $199.99. In exchange for the subsidy you’re required to pay your monthly fee for two years. As an added bonus, you also get a handful of Sprint apps installed.
The apps themselves aren’t very useful and honestly just take up space on the device by default. While I understand the desire of a carrier to be more than a pipe to the Internet, the right way to go about that is to acquire companies that are making killer apps and bundle those with your phones.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
97 Comments
View All Comments
DaveGirard - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
you're missing the iPhone 4 in the battery life and there is only one phone in the H.264 page.And I think you need to set your white point properly for the iPhone 4 pics. Saying that's the best picture you can produce is not accurate.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
The iPhone 4 review is next, and the white balance was actually a problem for the iPhone 4 - regardless of where I tapped to sample the white balance pretty much came out that way.More on this tomorrow...
Take care,
Anand
SandmanWN - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
"The size of the screen is really what sets the EVO 4G apart from the competition, and honestly I couldn’t think of a better phone for browsing the web. Loading full websites is a pleasure and the screen is large enough where you can actually read a lot of content, even while zoomed in. I’d be willing to go as far as to say that it is almost too small for the ideal web browsing experience."This whole paragraph is confusing and contradicting. You say you couldn't think of a better phone for web browsing. Then say you you can read a lot even while zoomed in, which I think you meant to say out there. Then you contradict the first sentence and say it is almost too small for web browsing.
I think that paragraph needs a mulligan.
Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
I've cleared it up a bit :)tipoo - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
It would be great if you could include Evo 4G benchies in the iPhone 4 review.rf40928 - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
Yeah, I guess u saw the Evo benchmarks.I have an Evo and Im considering a Iphone 4 ( my cousin got one )..
I posted above the following: ... funny how the Iphone 4 review that Anand did proves Iphone 4 on a "slower" 3g network is consistantly faster then the Evo on a 4G network when it comes to the web .. I guess 4G's Peak performance is theoretically better.. but are Sprints 4G average 4g Speed numbers better then ATT's avg 3g speeds?? ..it would seem not.."
yibrushn - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Sorry just gotta make 2 corrections. The front camera is 1.3 mp and the screen is TFT not AMOLED.Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Fixed and fixed :)Hmm that was actually a bit confusing, Sprint lists it as an OLED screen and it is very similar to the OLEDs we've used in terms of color calibration but all the data I can find points to a TFT display.
DigitalFreak - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
I thought the screen thing might have been a typo, until I saw there was an entire paragraph describing the "AMOLED" screen. :-/Anand Lal Shimpi - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
That was absolutely my bad. HTC appears to have calibrated the screen to mimic the other OLEDs, it's overly red. Combine that with the OLED listing here http://shopamerica.htc.com/cell-phones/productdeta... and it resulted in my mistake. I was wondering why viewing angle was so bad for OLED, I should've been more careful in my research there instead of just making an assumption. I will be more careful in the future.Thanks again for catching the error early on.
Take care,
Anand