The Sprint HTC EVO 4G Review
by Anand Lal Shimpi on June 28, 2010 6:04 PM ESTThe FM Radio
The EVO 4G ships with an FM radio app. The phone uses your headset as an antenna so you need to have one plugged in for this to work. Once running however you can manually turn on the external speaker so you don’t have to listen to the radio over earbuds if you don’t want to.
There’s one large slider to select your frequency and two buttons to move the tuner in smaller increments. You can also create presets. Unfortunately there’s no way to record audio in the app.
Reception was surprisingly good indoors, but it did depend on where I had my earbuds. If I left them on my desk I’d get a lot of noise in the audio, but in my ears it worked very well for the stations I could tune to. It didn’t work as well as a car stereo for obvious reasons. There were some stations that would come in easily in a car that I couldn’t get at all on the EVO, while others worked perfectly. No surprise there.
It’s an iPo...Android Music Player, Too
As with all other Android devices legal music purchases are supported through an Amazon MP3 Store app. If you want to get your existing music library onto the EVO 4G you do it the old fashioned way: copy it over USB.
HTC’s Sync application doesn’t support music syncing so you’ve got three options to get music and photos onto your phone.
Plugging a USB cable directly into your computer will let you treat the EVO’s microSD card as a USB storage device. Put your MP3s in the Music folder and throw whatever videos you want on the device and you’re good to go.
You can also physically remove the microSD card and stick in a card reader attached to your PC. This is a bit more irritating of a solution as you need to remove the battery to gain access to the card.
The third option is the best but it requires an additional expenditure. The Missing Sync for Android is an application that allows you to sync your movies, photos and music over WiFi or Bluetooth with your Mac or PC.
The music player app is pretty straightforward. It just plays music. You do get a healthy amount of functionality in the app however. The usual shuffle and repeat modes are there, but you can also create ringtones while you’re listing to a song. Hit the menu button, hit create a ringtone and then you have the option of using the whole song or trimming it down to the portion you want. You can then go ahead and assign the ringtone to your phone or an individual contact.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
97 Comments
View All Comments
flurrball - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Thanks for the review Anand!You've convinced me to at least wait and see what the Droid X will offer to compete with the other smartphones. I'm really looking to get off the Apple/AT&T rapetrain, but not eager to sign a two-year contract and be unhappy again.
Can't wait for your Droid X review!!
Sf ted - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Anand, great review as always. You're a master of the details. I do have a suggestion that could change your mind about loving this device. The recent update increased my battery life an order of magnitude, elimanated the unsensitive Pp touchscreen and now reacts to my slightest of touches. You might have a much better experience after the update. Cheers! TedShadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Does anyone make an oversized battery that adds an extra 10-20 Wh?Shadowmaster625 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
You mean this thing can not play an Xvid encoded avi file out of the box? 512x288 and 576x320 are my most common resolutions.Screammit - Wednesday, June 30, 2010 - link
the default android video player will not take Xvid, but there are a number of apps hitting the market that likely do/will. RockPlayerBase is one that comes to mindtotenkopf - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
In the dimensional comparison table please take all inch measurements to the hundredths place (evo is 4.80", iphone is 4.54", etc.) and keep the trailing zeros in this case. It's just the right thing to do... and because when my instructor said 10 years ago in highschool that someday I would use this knowledge, I'm pretty sure that today is the very day she was referring to... how fortuitous.echtogammut - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
I have been using the phone for about a week now and have found the battery life to be less than my old iPhone, but not a real issue. So far with fairly heavy usage, web (no 4g), regular GPS lookup and moderate phone usage (I run my own business), it takes nearly 2 days for it to completely discharge. One thing to note, I charged my phone for 8 hours after getting it, totally discharged it and repeated this processes twice. I always charged my iPhone at night and I plan on doing the same with this phone, so like I said battery isn't an issue for me.Trebus - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Nice review, as usual.But please learn how multitasking works on Android, this seems to be problem of many reviewers on the internet :-)
If you long press the Home button, it is not task manager, there are simply 6 last used apps. Some of this apps may not be running at the moment.
For start I can recommend this article about Android multitasking:
http://android-developers.blogspot.com/2010/04/mul...
austonia - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
I believe Premium Data gives you true unlimited data on 3G and 4G, although unlimited 3G is an unadvertised feature. I'm guessing they don't want a flood of extreme bandwidth hogs.http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/33866?tstar...
I'm past 5GB this month on 3G and it doesn't show any additional charges at sprint.com where i can see a near-real time summary of my bill. I download 6GB over 3G in one night (200-300 KB/s) so it would be easy to crack 100GB/mo if motivated.
Tempted to see just how far I can push it. ;)
Adul - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
I long since had my EVO 4g Root and running one of the many custom roms for it (DC3.2.0). I notice considerly improved battery life and put it to the test with a mix of browsing, installing apps, loading a new rom, and phone calls. Had it off that charger from work at around 4:30, drive to a friends house with wardrive running in the background. Got there and showed a few things on the phone that they did not have on his EVO. Left around 10 PM and made it home near 11. I have about 10% battery life left.Plus there was an update pushed and pulled out yesterday that address some battery life issues which is partially to blame on HTC background tasks.