The Sprint HTC EVO 4G Review

The Network

I have a soft spot in my heart for Sprint. I had a great experience with the carrier when I bought my Palm Pre two years ago and I was shocked at how competitive its pricing plans were. For $100 per month I could get unlimited everything. While that’s still a silly amount of money, it’s cheaper than AT&T or Verizon and I don’t have to worry about keeping track of how many texts I’ve sent, minutes I’ve used or how many web pages I’ve loaded.

Raleigh, NC happens to be one of the cities where Sprint has already rolled out its 4G WiMAX network. I happen to live in Raleigh, NC. This remains one of very few times where a brand new technology actually favors my location and doesn’t punish me for not living in California. Sweet.

First, the rules. On Sprint’s 3G network you can send SMSes (but not MMSes) while you’re talking on the phone. You cannot browse the web, check email or use any other form of data while you’re active in a call. If you are on 4G or WiFi, the restrictions are off and you can do anything you want while you’re on the phone.

You'll get this error if you try to send an MMS or load a website while in a call on 3G

Now let’s look at 3G performance. A recent PC Mag article pointed out that Raleigh, NC was one of the slowest cities for cellular networks across the nation. Which means that on a good day I’ll get a bit over 1Mbps on my iPhone 3GS around town. That’s not bad by any means, but loading full websites over such a connection does feel tedious after a while.

Sprint’s 3G in my area isn’t much better, in fact it’s worse. I usually get 600 - 900Kbps. The one advantage however is that Sprint’s coverage appears to be better than AT&Ts. AT&T’s coverage is very discrete. It’s either great or absolutely terrible. Sprint and Verizon tend to be more consistent, but never spectacular. As a result despite the better performance I get on AT&T’s 3G network at my house, on average I tend to do better with Sprint and Verizon.

What about 4G? Well, here’s the thing - the problem with WiMAX is coverage. While Raleigh is outfitted with Sprint’s WiMAX towers, the coverage is horribly inconsistent not to mention the performance isn’t always what you’d expect.

Good 4G Performance in Raleigh, note the relatively low 4G signal but high speed

HTC outfitted the EVO 4G with two separate signal strength indicators, one for 4G and one for 3G. When connected to a 4G network with good performance I usually get 2.5 - 3.5Mbps on the EVO 4G. That’s fast enough to not only be noticeable but dramatically improve the web browsing experience on this phone. Note that if these numbers sound very low to you, it probably means you’re living in a city with far better cellular network performance than Raleigh. Yes it is that bad here.

4G and 3G Signal Strength

Unfortunately perfect 4G signal doesn’t always translate into great performance. There were a number of times where I measured down below 100Kbps on 4G despite having full signal on the EVO 4G. Oddly enough upload speed was usually better than download speed in these cases. My best speed test runs were with only one or two bars on the indicator. I’m guessing something is wrong with the way HTC is reporting signal strength.

Note full 4G signal, but horrendous download speeds

To make matters worse, 3G performance was often faster than 4G performance - not to mention that it’s more consistent. Sprint’s 4G coverage actually worked a lot more like AT&T’s 3G coverage - it was either great, or totally worthless.

3G Performance on Sprint

As long as it’s not on a tower with full 4G signal and poor performance, the phone is actually pretty good at picking the appropriate network to be on. It won’t linger too long on a weak 4G connection and instead switches back over to 3G pretty aggressively.

As big of a feature as WiMAX is, today it’ll largely go unused on the EVO simply because of the network at this point. Unfortunately regardless of whether or not you use it, there’s a mandatory $10/month fee on the EVO 4G to support WiMAX.