The Sprint HTC EVO 4G Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 28, 2010 6:04 PM ESTPerformance
Going from virtually any phone to the EVO 4G will be a pleasant experience. Die hard iPhone users will notice one thing however: choppy animations.
There’s lag or choppy animations when scrolling down a page, swiping between screens and generally interacting with the phone. What’s even more frustrating is if you leave a lot of apps resident in memory there are times when the UI will stop being responsive. If you have haptics turned off there’s no way to tell whether or not a button tap was recognized, often resulting in a double or triple tap which then results in an unintended phone call or similarly frustrating action. It definitely hampers the experience.
The best way to describe it is by comparing it to an old PC that just starts swapping to disk because it runs out of memory. It’s worse than anything I’ve seen on any other Android phone I’ve used (Nexus One, Incredible).
Remember how happy I was that HTC largely fixed the choppy scrolling of the Nexus One with the Incredible? It’s broken again with the EVO 4G. In fact, scrolling appears to be even worse on the EVO 4G than on the Nexus One for some reason. Given that this is mostly the same underlying hardware I can’t help but think it’s a driver or software optimization problem.
All I'm doing here is scrolling and running Task Panel |
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Scrolling isn't GPU accelerated, so a quick flick down a page will drive CPU utilization up to 40 - 50%. The only way around this is to either optimize the crap out of the code or move to dual core CPUs so there's another core ready to handle anything else you throw at it. Combined with a lightly CPU intensive app I found that scrolling can sometimes even send CPU utilization up above 70%!
To measure web browsing performance I downloaded a bunch of different web pages and saved as much of them as possible locally on a server. I used WiFi (802.11g) on all of the devices to connect to my local server and timed average load time. I repeated the test at least 3 times and threw out any unusually high or low numbers. Performance on the Android devices was from a clean restart with no unnecessary programs running in memory.
What these tests should show is the overall performance of the platform when all network bottlenecks are removed. Obviously hiding in a tunnel under a lead umbrella will make any phone slow, but we’re looking at peak performance here.
The first test is the new AnandTech front page. Here we’ve got tons of images and HTML, meaning we’re stressing both bandwidth and code parsing speed.
The EVO 4G is actually slower than the Incredible, which isn't totally surprising given that the device actually feels slower.
Next up we have the first page of our recent Zotac XBOX HD-ID11 review. The balance shifts from tons of images to more HTML processing:
Here the EVO actually inches ahead over the Incredible, but none of the HTC devices are still as fast as the Nexus One.
Using our Print this Review function, this next test loads our entire 2010 15-inch Macbook Pro review. While the other two tests had some flash ad content, this one is completely devoid of it so the HTC phones shouldn’t be penalized:
This is quite possibly our most unusual result - the EVO 4G is actually faster than the Nexus One and Incredible.
Our most intensive test is up next with a load of the Engadget front page:
And now we're back to normal, the EVO 4G is about the speed of the Incredible in our longest test.
Our most CPU bound test is up next. I put together a custom page with a ton of tabular content and a single page copy of our 15-inch MBP review to make the load take some time at least.
Once more we're a bit faster than the Incredible here.
Javascript performance shows that the HTC phones have the potential to be fast. They both outpace the Nexus One here:
Overall the EVO 4G tends to be about the speed of the Droid Incredible in terms of web page loading performance. Sometimes it's faster and other times it's slower. The Nexus One still loads web pages the fastest, while the Incredible has the smoothest UI.
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JimmiG - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Amazing how expensive plans are over there compared to where I live.I have unlimited data at 6Mb/s and make calls for the equivalent of 5 cents a minute. That costs $26 a month (plus the cost for any calls or texts). There are cheaper alternatives if you only need 1GB or 5GB of data month. Sure, there's no subsidized phone included, but I just bought an unlocked HTC Desire (~Nexus One), it costs about the same as a high-end netbook.
Over 24 months I pay maybe half of the quoted prices, one-time cost of phone included.
chriscusano - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Where is there?DigitalFreak - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Considering he's getting 6Mb/s, I'd have to assume somewhere in Europe. :-)JimmiG - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
I'm in Sweden which is why I was even more surprised. Everything tends to be more expensive here, not cheaper.Another operator offers 1GB/month at 6Mb/s for $9 a month and 5GB/month at 10Mb/s for $16 a month. But I choose unlimited data over the higher speed since stuff like HD video is kind of pointless on a 3.7" screen.
Of course you don't always get those speeds. Some 3G areas, especially in rural areas, don't support HSDPA so you only get 384Kb/s. But most built-up areas have at least 2Mb speeds and the entire city where I live offers the full bandwidth.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
So what would it cost for about 1500 minutes, 6000 SMS, and 200 MMS?Gamingphreek - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Anand,I have found SIGNIFICANT performance and battery improvements in using LauncherPro by Federico Carnales on my HTC Hero <www.launcherpro.com>. I would be interested to hear if you notice the same thing.
Additionally, while it is only for root users, Autokiller is a terrific application for modifying the Android's preset memory limits.
Finally, regarding internet use, Dolphin Browser HD 2 is head and shoulders above the stock browser in every aspect. You may consider trying and seeing if that makes a difference in the browsing tests.
Great review regardless, but as a long time Android user, I have found these to make a significant positive impact on my overall experience with the device.
I know adding different applications to review can get out of hand very quickly, but is there any chance we might hear about your experience with some of these aforementioned applications?
Thanks,
-Kevin
chriscusano - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Hey great thoughts. Well I don't have an android myself, but maybe you guys might want to consider writing up an article (after official 2.2 release I'm thinking) with a phone "fully optimized" using some of the best (and cheapeast/free) apps out there. I think a phone with these apps will be sigificantly better than a stock phone. It's *almost* like comparing an oem computer out of the box to a customized computer (with a few performance tweaks). All serious computer users as well have their own customized setups that make their experience much, much better than a standard one (choice of web browser w/ addons/extensions, cutomized start bar, useful desktop gadgets, etc). Truly the experience can be totally different when things are customized. I'd image the same is the case with a phone like this.Also, man I've been looking for some VOIP 4G tests. Help me out guys! I may try to downsize to one internet carrier for home and phone but my major concern is I NEED VOIP for work. Can 4G cut it if the signal strength is strong (from a static location)? Does tethering via USB to the computer affect internet speeds? If so, how is VOIP from the computer when tethering via USB? Anyone? Anand ? :)
-Chris
Gamingphreek - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
I have an HTC Hero, so I'll have to run all the tests over before I do it with the apps, but I would be more than happy to run a couple tests and send in a short little article for Anand's consideration. I can post it in the forums too just for general knowledge.My undergraduate research prior to my graduation this past May was on the Android OS (More specifically how secure it was from an IT Security perspective).
Impulses - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
There's a ton of things you can do to optimize battery life, from alternate launchers, to custom ROMs, to simply configuring the stock sync settings for the various accounts. Something Anand made no mention of, and it's one of the more obvious tweaks, the stock settings are actually pretty poor if you wanna preserve battery life but they're easy to change from 2-4 hours to 8 hours or daily or w/e.The latter alone made a difference for me, but some of the custom ROMs and such make a very very noticeable difference as well. It's really quite amazing what some of the user devs come up with, it puts Google/HTC's stock builds to shame. I've no idea if the iPhone jailbreak community delves into that kind of low-level optimization but the stuff they're doing on Android's end is awesome.
misaki - Monday, June 28, 2010 - link
Froyo is now getting rolled out officially, so I hope you guys will include it in your browsing comparisons since the speed gains are so drastic ;)