Mustank in Technology

The HTC EVO 4G, the nation’s first WiMAX phone, the Internet has more than any phone in America today. The Internet has more than the HTC Droid Incredible and the iPhone 3G. All the Internet takes a toll on the battery of the EVO’s, so you’ll often have to recharge when using 4G. But if you live online, the EVO has a large, beautiful and powerful window on the world, and one of our 10 best touch-screen mobile phones.

We have seen in the U.S. for WiMAX handheld devices. But the Samsung Mondi and Nokia N810 WiMAX Edition  were not fully 3G phones, limiting their appeal. EVO begins with a world-class 3G smartphone and adds 4G as a “Turbo Boost” option. If you are an intensive user of the Web, you’ll like it even without 4G.

The EVO is a big black plate, superficially similar to the HTC HD2 for T-Mobile. Like the HD2, the EVO has a 4.3-inch, 800-by-480 LCD. The reflective screen is terrible, it’s useless outdoors. Inside, though, it’s beautiful, even better than the 3.7-inch OLED for HTC Incredible and Droid Nexus One. Making it slightly larger screen makes it more readable and clickable icons no longer visible jagginess.

The phone is not a physical keyboard, so you have to rely on the touch screen of HTC’s keyboard. Although visually appealing and more accurate than the standard keyboard Android, it’s nowhere near as easy or accurate as the iPhone keyboard, I found myself making more mistakes than me, either on an iPhone or on the physical keyboard a BlackBerry.

Another great physical feature: there’s a kickstand on the back. You’re probably going to see much video on this phone, and the kickstand props it up at a comfortable angle.

The EVO is a 4G phone but can not (yet) calling over 4G. Call quality on this phone with Sprint’s 3G CDMA network is not so great either. The sharp edge of the phone was not very comfortable against my ear, and calls sounded rough and hard. It is hard, but not clearly. The speakerphone is loud, but sound is a stringy and hollow. Voices from the microphone of the EVO sound hard and flat on the other side. The phone easily paired with an Aliph Jawbone Prime headset, but I could not use voice dialing with the headset. I have 7 hours and 24 minutes speaking about the EVO in 3G mode. That’s pretty good, but the story is very different on 4G WiMAX.

The phone runs the Google Android OS 2.1 with HTC’s Sense UI extensions. HTC rewrote the dialer, contacts, calendar and home screen (among other apps) to make them more usable. Most notably, the phone comes pre-populated with a bunch of useful widgets such as time, weather, and the music player (you can lose them if you like) and various social networking links into your address book. Google, Facebook, Twitter, Yahoo and Microsoft Exchange all contacts with each other, if you have a friend you will find her Facebook photo to see, and you can get her card on her Facebook updates leaping call.

There is a ton of useful software here. HTC packs desk clock and auto-mode options, along with an FM radio, a Twitter client, two GPS navigation options (Google and Sprint), a combined social networking client called “Friend Stream”, Microsoft Office and PDF readers, and streaming Sprint TV, NASCAR, NFL and applications. Third party apps run fast on the 1-GHz processor, benchmark scores were in line with the comparable Nexus One Incredible Droid and HTC phones.

The HTC Evo has flaws. I am rating a 4 star instead of a 4.5 for his rough voice quality, especially as 4G does not cover many cities. I’m not in love with its touch-keyboard. But it is so far ahead of other Sprint phones in so many ways, it is in a class that contains only the HTC Incredible, Nexus One, iPhone 3G, and themselves. The EVO is Sprint’s “super phone”, the ultimate handset for its network. Modern Android OS 2.1, beautiful design, power and 4G easily gets the crown of the HTC Touch Pro2.