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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thesafetyisoff - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
This article needs to be re-written after the system fix for the Evo that occurred yesterday. The over-the-air system update released on June 30, 2010 fixes the battery life issue. Really.After buying my Evo, I initially had the same problem with battery life: Even using task killer aps, the phone would drain at least 15-20% of battery power EVERY HOUR. I'd plug it in overnight and it was half dead by the time I got to my office, completely dead by lunch time. I had to get an extra charging cable for the car and the office, and it would still run out of juice if I had to be in a meeting for an extended time. And forget about airline trips entirely. To make matters worse, my phone started hanging up and spontaneously rebooting, so I couldn't even use it when it had battery life. I was about to return it when I heard that a system upgrade was pending.
The update fixed EVERYTHING. No hang-ups, no reboots, and a full charge went over 14 hours with moderate use. I don't know why htc initially shipped the phones without this fix, but the problem is now gone.
Long live the Evo - on a single charge!
worldbfree4me - Thursday, July 1, 2010 - link
Great to see a non-biased and impartial article! However, I do wonder that if this review would have been done post Sprint update, would the results have been slightly better with regards to the battery test. Battery life for me personally has not been a problem for me due to me having a charger at the Office, in the Car, at Home and a Battery pack that is used when traveling that can power 2 USB devices. Also, it is a well known fact that the Stock Android UI weighs less than the HTC Sense UI. This could be why the N1 is consistently faster then the Incredible and the EVO. I suspect FROZEN YOGURT aka 2.2 should close this gap somewhat. Overall, I feel that each of the aforementioned phones is very close in terms of overall performance.rf40928 - Friday, July 2, 2010 - link
Maybe the review for the iPhone 4 wasn't complete yet..but its funny how the Iphone 4 review that Anand did proves
Iphone 4 on a "slower" 3g network is consistantly faster then the Droid on a 4G network when it comes to the web .. I guess 4G's Peak performance is theoretically better.. but are Sprints 4G average 4g Speed numbers better then ATT's avg 3g speeds??
it would seem not..
topgun966 - Saturday, July 3, 2010 - link
I noticed you said that there is a 5gb cap on 3g. That's incorrect with the Evo. Evo plan has a $10 premium which nulls that cap. The Evo is true unlimited both 3g and 4g. Great review otherwise.OzzieGT - Friday, July 9, 2010 - link
Thanks for the honest and detailed review. It's because of this review I feel better about waiting for the Samsung Epic. A little smaller, also a good screen and the Swype keyboard are making for a very interesting package...VIDYA - Monday, July 12, 2010 - link
Samsung and nokia will remain in the future with the mature platforms and technology while the USA based companies will be eager to run and fall down before learning to walk or simply take stride....... 4G by HTC and SPRINT is a joke or a watered down format war.Announcer - Saturday, October 9, 2010 - link
My business partner and I travel between Dallas/Fort Worth and the SF bay area. I have the Sprint HTC Evo and he had the At&t Iphone 4g, The Evo 4G blows away the Iphone in the Dallas metroplex area and holds its own in the SF bay area. When I am in the Dallas tethered to my Evo with my laptop I get 6 Mbps and just surfing with the Evo everything loads faster than the Iphone on At&t. Sprint 4G rules! I did have At&t a few years ago and the customer service was horrific. I got a sprint air card and was grandfathered in on the unlimited usage. I did have a At&T HTC Tilt phone and tethered it to my laptop. The speeds on At&t were abysmal then I got the sprint aircard and went from 400kbps with At&t to 1700 kbps with sprint. Needless to say my partner paid off his At&t contract, sold his Iphone and now has a Sprint Evo 4G.