HTC Evo 4G LTE Review: Gorgeous, but No LTE for Now - brownharsecy

Sprint's original HTC Evo 4G was the carrier's very front 4G WiMAX phone. Two years (and a few other Evos) later, we have the HTC Evo 4G LTE ($200 with a late biennial contract from Sprint; price as of 5/10/12). Only despite the name, this smartphone is currently hardly a 3G phone until Sprint builds out its LTE web. Outside of this issue, the Evo 4G LTE is a solid phone. The expose, camera, intention, and multimedia features make it the trump phone currently coming from Dash. Dash will have the HTC Evo 4G LTE available on May 18.

Incompatible Design

The Evo's kickstand

The HTC Evo 4G LTE might share a lot of specs in common with the One X on AT&adenosine monophosphate;T, merely its purpose is totally different. With its black body and red accents, you might fault it for a Verizon earpiece; it looks an filthy band like the newly announced HTC Droid Incredible 4G LTE. It holds onto the Evo design legacy, however, with a bright red kickstand. You flip the kickstand out and circle your Evo on a table for any hands-free video watching. The kickstand is a footling difficult to exposed, however. You'll call for some nails to get it out. The kickstand divides the Evo's battery cover, which is part glossy black plastic and take off matte up, soft-touch arctic.

Measure 5.3-by-2.7-by-0.35 inches, the Evo is slightly smaller than the One X, which measures 5.3-past-2.8-by-0.4 inches. The Evo is an ounce heavier, at 4.7 ounces, than the Indefinite X (4.6 ounces).

The Evo has a 4.7-edge 1280-by-720 HD pel display with IPS (In Sheet Switching) technology. We loaded the Evo up with a few test photos we use crossways phones to test display character. These images include a colorscale test, a grayscale test, and photos of people. In our colorscale test, I could detect some oversaturation as the colors bled into one another (see sampling photo). In the portrait photos, shinny tones had a ruby look–some other sign of oversaturation. Details appeared distinct, however, as did text.

Android 4.0 with HTC Sense

HTC Sense–the manufacturer's interface over Android–has garnered a heterogenous response from consumers and tech journalists alike. And Humanoid 4.0 (Ice Thrash Sandwich) has, far and away, the best-looking interface of some variant of Humanoid. I understand why manufacturers slapped on overlays in the early days of Android: The basic interfaces were ugly. HTC Sense is undeniably pretty. But its animations and flushed widgets have a inclination to bog down down the in operation arrangement.

Perhaps my idea that manufacturers might leave Android 4.0 alone and just add a few customized widgets was just hungry thinking. To HTC's accredit, Sentience 4.0 is much subtler than former versions of the interface. The company has exculpated out many unnecessary icons and text that untidy older versions of Sense. You can all the same pinch the screen to see all seven of your homescreens, and you get that handy customizable lock covert that we saw with Sense 3.0.

Still, Android purists might take misdemeanor to a few changes. The Recent Apps UI has been tweaked in typical Sense fashion. Rather than displaying your apps or websites as a name with thumbnails, it displays them as pages that flip as you flick through them. The Sense widgets are a bit too labouring and garish for my liking, just you privy easily take away them.

HTC Sensory faculty besides makes extraordinary very basic tasks much difficult than they should be. For example, to change the phone's wallpaper, you undergo to compass done multiple menus in the Settings. Dynamic the paper in flavourer Android 4.0 is as simple as holding down on the homescreen.

The Evo 4G LTE comes with a significant amount of carrier and manufacturer-added software, but that seems to be the norm these years. You can disable about of these so they don't show up in your apps menu. Annoyingly, you tail't disable either the Dash Music Plus player or the Sprint Zona.

Camera

HDR Test Photo

Sprint and HTC unleashed a bunch of journalists in the city of New Orleans to test out the HTC Evo's camera in the field. Like the HTC Uncomparable serial of phones, the Evo 4G LTE has HTC's ImageSense camera package and the HTC ImageChip, which supports a which supports an f2.0 aperture and a smattering of divergent shooting modes, including High Dynamic Range (HDR), Macro, and Panorama. HTC too claims that One cameras have an nearly no-lag shutter speed. In my hands-happening tests, I found the no-lag claim to be pretty much true. My photos taken in automatic mode looked excellent, with practiced colors and crisp

details. Nigh of the shot modes worked quite well, too, especially the macro mode (see example photos).

HDR made my photos look a bit flighty–I prefer the HDR mode happening the iPhone 4S's camera. You can also add Instagram-like filters to your photos, but I don't think they look very good. A better bet would embody to add a third-company app ilk, well, Instagram operating theatre Pixlr, which has flush more filters.

Big examination photo

This Evo also has a very assuredness continuous shooting feature, which lets you take triple pictures at once. You can and so use the camera app's Best Photograph feature, which will automatically pick the cleanest photos out of the mathematical group. You nates use free burning shooting with some the onscreen shutter button and the physical key. It is a little sensitive, however. When I was snapping photos from a tour bus in New Siege of Orleans, I accidentally took multiple pictures without significance to.

The Evo has a dedicated camera shutter button, which is e'er a plus, as it helps stabilize the phone before you take your photo. Annoyingly, you force out't press the button when the phone is locked to start directly to the photographic camera app.

Multimedia

All HTC One phones have Beatniks Audio built in. Beats Audio automatically turns on when you play euphony, but you can prefer to turn it off. I could definitely take heed a positive shift in music quality, especially with rock-and-roll and metal medicine, when Beats was running play. Bass voice measured richer and the vocals fuller. Beats Audio also kicks in when you play a YouTube video.

Unlike the One phones, the Evo has a microSD slot so you can expand your phone's memory beyond the built-in 16GB, with photos, video, apps, and so connected.

The phone also comes with HTC Watch, which is the troupe's moving-picture show-streaming serve. If you indirect request to stream movies off your phone, even so, I'd Adam with Netflix, as it has a larger subroutine library than Sentinel.

Performance

Using the FCC-sanctioned Ookla Speedtest.net app, I tested Sprint's 3G network in two cities: New Orleans and San Francisco. In New Orleans, the HTC Evo achieved an average of 1.4 Mbps for download speeds and 0.52 Mbps for upload speeds. In San Francisco, Dash's 3G network was a spot faster, with an average of 1.69 Mbps for downloads and 0.90 Mbps for upload speeds.

These are okay speeds for 3G, but I've been spoiled away 4G. Videos started and stalled over YouTube and Web pages weren't loading as quickly arsenic I'm used to. Even T-Mobile's HSPA+ network seems very much faster than Sprint's 3G network. But until Sprint LTE comes to your city, you're stuck with 3G. Even if you have WiMax in your city, the Evo 4G LTE isn't compatible therewith network.

I ran both the Quadrant and Vellamo benchmarking apps to see how powerful the Qualcomm S4 1.5GHz twofold-core processor is on the HTC EVO 4G LTE. With Vellamo (which was industrial aside Qualcomm), the Evo had a score of 2392, slightly in the lead of the HTC One S, which has the same processor and achieved a hit of 2365.

Under Quadrant, the HTC Evo got a score of 5145, which put it slightly onwards of both the One S and the Galaxy Nexus. I also ran a few graphics-heavy games, like World of Slime and Osmos, and the Evo handled them flawlessly.

Spell we haven't yet completed our dignified battery tests, I victimised the EVO 4G LTE for an afternoon exposure outing. After 2 hours and or so 50 photos later, I detected a large drop in battery life. You might not utilise the camera as heavily in a myopic time span as I did for this review, but 1 of the main selling points of this phone is the camera. I besides ran a 26-minute video over YouTube with the barrage fire starting at 76 percent charged. After the video was up, the Evo had a shelling life of 67 percent. We'll update the Evo's shelling life results one time we finish our formal testing.

We experienced uneven yell quality with both the HTC One X and the One S, but the Evo sounded good on some ends of the line. My friends same my vocalism sounded fair and natural, and they didn't hear any crackling or static as they did on the Unitary phones.

The EVO 4G LTE will be the first handset on a U.S. carrier wave with HD Voice. Sprint's demo of HD Vocalization at the EVO 4G LTE's launch in New York City showed how it significantly decreases background signal noise.

This is ready-made possible by the Snapdragon processor, which uses double-mike stochasticity suppression and earpiece busy noise cancellation. IT also relies on Sprint to finish its upgrades to its 3G network so we were unfortunately impotent to test this feature. Likewise, HD Voice will lone work if some people on a call are using an HD Voice-dependent smartphone on an HD Voice-supported meshwork.

Tooshie Line

The Evo phones have always been Dash's strongest offering, and the Evo 4G LTE is no exception. From its beautiful design to the versatile camera to the fast performance, this is Sprint's best phone–and indefinite of the top-grade Android phones available. Simply without LTE, it feels as if it is non quite an living up to its electric potential.

That Sprint is emotional LTE phones (the Evo, the LG Viper, and the Galaxy Nexus) without an actual 4G LTE net in situ is a bit frustrating. Patc the company has revealed the initial six cities for launch (Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City and San Antonio), information technology has not aforesaid when these networks testament turn connected. And unless you sleep in one of those cities, you'll find information technology hard to get excited close to LTE. Sprint's 3G meshwork feels sorely slow, too, especially when you compare IT to new carriers' 4G networks. Sprint has announced that it will release 15 more 4G devices, most of them handsets. Unless you are 100 percent committed to the Evo legacy or are dying to upgrade your sound, I'd hold murder happening buying the Evo until you know that you'll get LTE or induce seen what else is available before lockup into a biennial abridge.