Sprint EVO

[[AK]Hylander]

I've never had a problem with the covers coming off or battery getting dislodged on any of my phones, but like you - I don't think the sealed battery thing is that big of a deal really. At least until you have a bad battery which the odds are against. I don't think I'd ever use a smartphone long enough for a battery to reach 'end of life' that replacing it is a big deal. I suppose if battery life was a big issue on a device and there were larger / long lasting batteries available as an option - that might be a factor. Otherwise, no biggie.

[[AK]Clay]

So a week in, and still learning this thing. It's not as intuitive as an iPhone, but I'm OK with investing time into a learning curve, if it means I get to customize my phone a lot more in the end.

But the music player is just a bad joke. I mean... seriously? This is the best they could do? The music management is just horrible. I assumed it would at least be as good as a basic WinAmp/Windows Explorer combination style interface. Instead, it just lumps all your music into one listing, regardless of your subfolders. Good grief, they couldn't even figure out how to do the side rotation thing to let you flip through albums like on an iPhone? Is it really this hard? You can sort of sort by subfolder, by calling them albums. But that only partially works.

That aside, the device overall still satisfies. The huge screen was a good call, and makes a big difference. And I do much enjoy finally being on a decent network. 3G speeds are nice, AT&T should try upgrading from EDGE to that sometime.

One minor annoyance, the clock remembers it's last position when you put the phone in sleep mode (i.e. turn off the screen). There's a .1 second delay from when you reactivate the screen, where it displays the old number. I don't like this.

The calendar integration continues to impress, nicely done.

The weather feature is just neat. When you awake the phone on the home screen, it displays a subtle overlay animation on the homescreen for the first few moments. You can still do everything, there's just little graphics going on too that are cool I love it, so when it's sun shiney, the sun has beams of light going across the screen. When it's raining, rain drops fall down the screen, and even a little wiper wipes them off. Cheesy, but I love it.

The app store is pretty good. Basically everything I had on my iPhone is represented here. Some renditions better, some not. But it even has 1Password now - they finally ported to Android. Though the Beta is not as good as their iPhone version.

I've learned a few things about EVO too, that are interesting. The hardware specs are higher than what it actually runs. Android 2.1 is a 16 bit graphics OS, whereas the EVO has a 24 bit screen. The screen outperforms the Android OS, and is being throttled back by Android. Also, the phone is limited to 30 FPS display rate, but for no real reason. Rooted (which is the equivalent of jailbroken) EVO's can fly a lot faster then that, especially with Android 2.2 hacked onto it.

One thing I really don't like is the "expandable" memory really isn't. Apps, data, etc are installed on the MicroSD card - which is a lame 8 GB. If you want to buy another, and have it handy to swap out for more music, that's fine, but you'll lose your Apps and data when you do that. That's just lame.

The QIK video voice chat feature sounds really cool. I say sounds cool, because I can't actually test it, because it won't interface with a laptop on the other end - only cell phones. So the Apple-sucks because iPhone 4 will only talk to another iPhone 4 argument, effectively applies to the EVO right now too. That can be corrected by a software update later, but so too can the iPhone.

Movies generated by 1-click-to-iPhone work quite nicely on the EVO too. And they look beautiful on that huge high resolution screen. But what I'm really excited to test out is the HDMI output port. I intend to use that a lot, as I think it's a cool option.

Overall satisfaction score remains very high, but I did want to point out some of the minor things, for comparison. One item that I do like a lot more than my iPhone, the web browser doesn't crash. Actually, the whole phone is very stable. My iPhone crashed all the time.

[[AK]Hylander]

Clay - Download DoubleTwist for your music needs.

[[AK]Clay]

DoubleTwist is OK, but still pretty hokey compared to the iPhone interface. One concept though that really struck me was museek. It does a pretty decent job successfully transfering over cover art and genre information. What made it really stand out for me though was the 2D aspect of aranging albums. iTunes is 1D, in that music is arranged alphabetically in a linear fasion. museek arranges your albums in clumps by genre, in 2D fasion, or even 3D, with different zones of music. It's an impressive concept, that leapfrog's Apples interface. But the execution itself is borderline amaturish (a problem that plagues Android it seems). I'm liking it better than DoubleTwist, but it needs a lot more polish.

By the way, the Facebook app sucks. Apple's if far better.

Astro on the other hand rocks, as it lets you navigate your memory like it's a HDD, which Apple does not. I like the Kindle app a lot better too. It seems to just run better, but maybe it's the bigger screen. an iPhone screen is just pretty darned small to use as a reader. Tricorder cracks me up. Not only is it cheesy and fun, but it's also actually pretty useful! But my compass doesn't work for some reason - I don't know why, but it always points me in the wrong direction. This annoys me.

[[AK]Bribo]

But the execution itself is borderline amaturish (a problem that plagues Android it seems).

Welcome to the Android marketplace.

[[AK]Hylander]

DoubleTwist is OK, but still pretty hokey compared to the iPhone interface. One concept though that really struck me was museek. It does a pretty decent job successfully transfering over cover art and genre information. What made it really stand out for me though was the 2D aspect of aranging albums. iTunes is 1D, in that music is arranged alphabetically in a linear fasion. museek arranges your albums in clumps by genre, in 2D fasion, or even 3D, with different zones of music. It's an impressive concept, that leapfrog's Apples interface. But the execution itself is borderline amaturish (a problem that plagues Android it seems). I'm liking it better than DoubleTwist, but it needs a lot more polish.

By the way, the Facebook app sucks. Apple's if far better.

Astro on the other hand rocks, as it lets you navigate your memory like it's a HDD, which Apple does not. I like the Kindle app a lot better too. It seems to just run better, but maybe it's the bigger screen. an iPhone screen is just pretty darned small to use as a reader. Tricorder cracks me up. Not only is it cheesy and fun, but it's also actually pretty useful! But my compass doesn't work for some reason - I don't know why, but it always points me in the wrong direction. This annoys me.

I like DoubleTwist because "it just works". It's designed to be utilitarian and it will sync with any device - something that iTunes obviously does not. As far as just a media manager on Android - all I can say is hold on, there are several good products for that in the pipeline other than what will be in Gingerbread (Android 3.0).

I haven't used the Kindle app, since I don't have any Amazon e-books, but I've read the same thing in other reviews. Also, from experience, the Audible app for Android is also more polished than the one for iPhone, and it's still technically a beta. I plan to test out the Nook software more thoroughly in the coming weeks since my wife has a Nook and a library of books I can use for it.

The compass on my Droid works fine, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't work properly on your phone. Maybe it's a 'design feature' and you're just holding it wrong? Is it a built in app or are you using the 3rd party compass application from the marketplace?

The 'new' Android marketplace will make it much easier to find the more 'polished' applications in the near future, along with many other areas of integrations. Froyo does take a nice step in that direction, but Gingerbread is going to be the 'biggie' in terms of polish and integrations.

Once I have my hands on the new Samsung, I will decide if I'm going to pull the trigger on ordering a Droid X or hold off a tad longer for the Galaxy line.

[[AK]Bribo]

Once I have my hands on the new Samsung, I will decide if I'm going to pull the trigger on ordering a Droid X or hold off a tad longer for the Galaxy line.

Just don't death grip the Droid X.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJG7pbSRvJ8

[[AK]Hylander]

Just don't death grip the Droid X.

I've already done my research on the Droid X, the problem doesn't exist - at least not to the extent that it does on the Apple iPhone and exposed impedance areas. Holding the iPhone 4 'naturally', I could generate the problem very easily and repeatedly. I could not duplicate it on the Droid, Droid X, Incredible, or EVO. But then again, its hard to test because I couldn't run the Droid X on an inferior network like AT&T to get raw data off a network that barely has connectivity to begin with.

I think the best 'proof' of the problem was demonstrated by Brian Klug with real raw numbers, not bars. Maybe Motorola should "fix" the problem by changing the way it displays bars.