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 |
|
 |
 |
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.
Facebook
Twitter
RSS
97 Comments
View All Comments
tommo123 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
any chance of revies of some apps?i.e for android keyboards, swype is awesome - best keyboard i've used
stryder76 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Sprint/HTC has released an OTA update yesterday. Supposedly, the EVO is now faster or at least feels snappier.Will you redo the benchmark tests?
cknobman - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
LOL only thing the OTA update yesterday did was brick alot of phones (including mine)!!!!!What kind of idiotic developer dosnt do a software check before installing new software? And what half assed QA team dosnt check for that scenario and lets the crap code roll out to production?
For those that arent aware the problem was the OTA update installs fine the first time then shortly later the user is notified a upgrade is available (apparently same one you just applied) and when the user tries to apply update instant bricked phone!!!!!!!
Its kind of my fault but after installing the first time I went home and was playing with my kids and surfing the web when my phone poped up the upgrade available again. I was busy and just hit ok thinking it was another upgrade in a series of progressive ones. Boy was I wrong. As a applications developer myself Im dumbfounded how some sh!tty code like this could roll out which is now going to cost sprint quite a bit of money.
Sprint has officially pulled the upgrade until they can fix this issue.
stryder76 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
You mentioned that there is a website that lists the virtual keyboards but all it states is "at .com". What website were you going to link to?BlueAqua - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Nice review Anand. Don't forget that Sprint makes you pay and extra $10 a month just to have an EVO. Undscountable too. Their new plans and this fee would have cost me over $2000 over my current similar plan for 2 phones, which really isn't worth it at all.rothnic - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Have you been trying to get your hands on a Droid X at all? I have really been hoping it would address most of the issues that the Evo has, while having the 4.3" screen. I have been comparing T-Mobile vs. Sprint vs. ATT vs. Verizon and think the Droid X might be the winner.Some reviews of the Droid X point to slightly better video and picture quality. (not as good as some iphone 4 samples I have seen, but a compromise)
No $10 charge for 4g that isn't even in my area.
No capped internet, which has turned me away from upgrading my 3 year old iPhone for the iPhone 4.
Better processor, so hopefully smoother experience(especially after 2.2).
Would like to see your review of it.
bigdeal101 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Annand,Is it possible to do a Clear 4G review or Sprint non phone review. I have been considering getting 4G but for Broadband only. I would be especially interested in home vs. mobile option with respect to signal strength and usability. Also, if there are any antennas out there for 4G do they help much. Not everone is an internet phone warrior but they do use the internet with laptops in mobile situations.
Thanks from a 13 year fan. (I read your site when you were in High School as well as Sharky and the original Toms Hardware. Still also visit Kyle's Hard OCP. )
ergo98 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
"Unfortunately there’s no way to close an app from the task switcher although there are many options in the Android market if you want something a bit more robust."This isn't some grievous oversight. Most task killers do far more harm than good.
Apps in the background seldom consume anything more than RAM. The RAM they do consume is automatically freed the moment any other application requires it. The app is essentially "freeze-dried" to a minimalist bag of state, restored when you go back to it.
I am a little disappointed seeing this continued ignorance about Android, most especially on AnandTech. Sure there are people who'll tell you how great life is with a task killer, just as there are also people who will swear by their Q-Bracelet's magical curative powers. Eschew task killers and embrace the platform as it was actually intended -- it isn't Windows.
The only real caveat to this is services -- services do consume resources in the background, however by and large the only services in Android apps are actually critically necessary, such as background music playing or downloading. Services very seldom need to be managed in any form beyond the app GUI.
strikeback03 - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
And there are plenty of users who believe the default settings allow suspended programs to hang around for too long, esp. on Sense devices.http://www.androidcentral.com/fine-tuning-minfree-...
Impulses - Tuesday, June 29, 2010 - link
Meh, you'll find a never-ending discussion on the subject if you look around... But there's also plenty of OTHER things you can do to conserve battery life. The stock sync settings for FB/News/whatever accounts are a little too aggressive if you ask me, that's the obvious place to start. Alternate launchers are said to help as well, I haven't really compared battery life w/ADW vs Sense...Personally Sense's launcher's UI seems silly to me, why do I need a permanent button on my home screen to just add more app shortcuts and widgets? And why is the phone button so large? Wasted space... That being said, a lot of the other Sense add-ons are very welcome (like the contact linking across accounts, which can be done manually, thankfully). Luckily you can dump the launcher and keep the rest.
Aaand that's pretty much what Android's all about, choice. Some of the custom ROMs out there do wonders for battery life as well, alto that goes well beyond the scope of a product review (as anything that requires rooting/jailbreaking does). But switching launchers or simply tweaking stock settings should be in the discussion at some point imo. It's a degree of customization that you don't (easily) get w/other phones/OS.