After almost 5 years, I finally upgraded my cellphone. I’m surprised that I stayed with my PPC-6700 for so long. But nothing really enticed me to upgrade until now.
I had considered the iPhone, HTC Incredible, and Droid X, but the HTC Evo won out. The deal makers are 4G, unlimited data, and tethering capability.
I can’t think of anything this phones does not have compared to all the other smartphones out there. It has a front facing camera, 8 mega-pixel back camera, HD video, HDMI output, GPS/compass, multitouch, accelerometer, huge screen, FM radio, replaceable battery, replaceable SD, Android 2.2, Adobe Flash, proximity sensor, and a kickstand.
The UI is well designed and works well. Response is fast and fairly intuitive.
I find that though it has 4G, I haven’t really seen the need to use it. 4G uses more power, and the 3G is good enough for streaming video and music. But it’s nice to know that it’s there if I need it.
Android integration with Google is great. Contacts, email, and calendar synching works flawlessly. Integration with Facebook is also very neat. All the contacts from Facebook are integrated into the phone.
Except to put music on the Evo, I don’t see any need to connect it to a computer. All apps are installed straight onto the phone. Synching is done through Google. And podcasts can be listened/viewed thru streaming.
Though there are few Android apps compared to iPhone apps, I find that the ones I need are available and, best of all, are free. Google has made some good apps for the Android (Mail, Goggles, Sky, Listen).
Streaming music (Pandora, Last.fm, Slacker) works well and I use it all the time at work now.
And the biggest plus is that I’m able to tether the phone to my Macbook using PDA Net.
One negative is that it is very power hungry. Even when I have 4G, wifi, GPS, and bluetooth turned off, it still uses a lot of power. So, I pretty much just leave it plugged in whenever I can. Even with a large screen, the keyboard is not really that great, but it’s usable. Also, I wished there was an app that allowed video chat with Google chat.