Has the HTC EVO 4G LTE met you expectations? Thinking of returning? Discuss

[dr g]

Rounding out about 48 hours with the Evo LTE and here are some of my general feelings:

Niceness:
1. The hardware is fantastic. Incredible screen and plenty of horsepower. I have not seen sense reloads yet and don't seem to be close to running out of operating memory.
2. ICS and sense 4 do seem to be an improvement over gingerbread in general. Like the lock screen functionality.
3. Stability seems good and battery life seems reasonable (but see below about the battery).
4. Multitasking card "deck" is growing on me. Though I'm not sure it is doing what I think it is.
5. Camera and camera functions. So far, so great here, and since I use my phone as a camera almost more than any other feature, I love the new focus on the camera.
6. Beats Audio actually seems to be a good thing. Seems to improve the sound out of the device.
7. Compatibility seems better. Despite still having sense, it looks like certain functions that were unavailable with previous htc devices are working with this iteration (e.g. foxfi). Oh and FINALLY a built-in screen capture!

Irkitations:
1. Removing buttons. Oh my god does this get my goat. It is so applesque, it just kills me. WHY take away buttons on a more sophisticated device?! Especially the search button, c'mon google, search is important. You of all people oughtta know.
2. Non-removable battery. I get that it improves build quality to be more competitive with the iphone. But dammit I hate the idea. I have several extra batteries for my OG Evo and rarely do I swap, but on occasions when I have had to, really enjoyed the ability. I suppose a battery booster will have to suffice. I'll be pissy when the battery starts performing poorly.
3. Size and thickness. I hate to say it but this phone may actually be too big. Maybe I just have to get used to it, but I find it difficult at times to reach everything on the screen one-handed. And with the thinness I often feel like I am going to drop the phone. This probably won't break things for me but it is a little irksome that I will have to two-hand more often now.
4. Why didn't they go 5 rows on the icons? With the longer, higher-res screen, it would have made sense, no?
5. Only 3G. I used 3G 95% of the time with my OG Evo, but with Sprint bringing on the iPhone, lately 3G has been clogged up a bit. LTE can't come soon enough.


So far, pretty happy. No real dealbreakers yet. Probably a keeper for me. Was considering waiting for the Galaxy 3 but I am a HTC guy to this point and the Evo was pretty compelling. I think I will be able to work around the niggles and be happy with the device for another 2 years

 

[aeiou]

Welcome around!

Sense doesn’t crash, it gets shuffled out of ram.

You see your wallpaper while a spinning graphic comes up as it's reloaded. Maximum time I've seen has been about 3 seconds for that, but that's anecdotal of course.

It's still three seconds too much, but the recovery is quick and graceful from what I've experienced, fwiw.

Howdy,

Do you know if Touchwiz or whatever Motoralla uses has the same problem (getting shuffled out of Ram)? 3 seconds is a long time when you're trying to immediately do something else after exiting an app.

Also, when you guys get emails with attachments (mainly pictures), are the they part of the email or do you have to still hit the arrow and wait for it to download and then hit either open or save to sd card, like on the old Evo?

 

[EarlyMon]

Haven't heard anything about the new Motorola coming to Sprint. The issue is looking curable with root, fwiw.

So far as I have seen, yep, HTC Mail still works that way.

 

[CriticalCritic]

Well, I was waiting to see S-Off before I rooted, but after reading Early's statement somewhere that S-Off is essentially pointless, I decided to research a little and finally root my device about an hour ago.

I should have seen it coming I guess. I should have known that I would probably run into the EXACT SAME PROBLEM that I had after I rooted my OG Evo. It turns out that after rooting and flashing Char Rom, I have lost control of my right leg and have been unable to stop kicking myself for not rooting sooner. After having spent an hour trying to resolve this problem, I am at a loss for how to fix it.

If anyone has a fix please let me know! Also, if anyone else is even considering rooting your device, please make sure to read this post carefully so you don't have the same problems that I am experiencing.



On a side note, I can't help but love the removed menu bar, and that the remapped recent apps = Menu, Longpress back = Recents, Longpress Home = Phone, and Longpress Menu = Voice Search (among various other tweaks).

 

[EarlyMon]

Toss in the fixes for http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-lte-all-things-root/565055-ending-apple-tyranny.html and maybe even add the http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-lte-all-things-root/567134-app-dsp-manager-one-x-port.html and you'll be cooking with gas!

Still working with JoelZ (Chameleon) and IOWA on the better memory approaches, updates are coming.
http://androidforums.com/evo-4g-lte-all-things-root/567134-app-dsp-manager-one-x-port.html

 

[amazin1988]

The only real thing I see better then are phone is the 2gbs of ram most of the soft ware people already hacking for are phone so other then that proud evo user n i think are phone will be a lot better when we finally get 4g

 

[12345Michael54]

The only real thing I see better then are phone is the 2gbs of ram

The 2 GB of RAM is nice, but between it and a removable battery, to me, I'd say the removable battery is the more important feature.

I don't want to blow this out of proportion; neither is a "must have" feature. And certainly there are ways to work around the non-removable battery issue. But can anyone honestly claim that, all things being equal (which, of course, they seldom are), the ability to swap out a spent battery for a fully charged one - likely obtained for $5.95 on eBay - is a bad thing?

i think are phone will be a lot better when we finally get 4g

Maybe. But I've heard that LTE may drain the battery faster. So potentially a negative for some people.

And honestly, it's rare that even 3G speeds leave me annoyed and cursing their sluggishness. Don't get me wrong, I'm looking forward to 4G LTE, since I'd rather have speed and not need it, than need speed and not have it. But the simple fact is, for me - and I dare say for most people - 3G isn't really all that limiting. Certainly not most of the time.

And I say this as someone in the Baltimore metro area, which is going to be among the first places Sprint is upgrading to 4G LTE - likely, within the next several weeks. So my "3G really isn't so bad" claim isn't an example of "sour grapes," from someone who's unlikely to have access to 4G LTE before the end of next year. No, it's coming from someone who will likely have Sprint 4G LTE at home and at work by sometime next month.
--
Michael

 

[novox77]

Up till recently, I was in the camp that felt that Sprint's 3G is not so bad. But then I started to stream my music via Google Play Music, and I realized just how bad a lot of areas are. I'm in metro Boston. You may have heard of that town. And there are plenty of spots during my normal commute where I trigger data and voice roaming. I would never have known about these pockets until I started relying on a streaming service. For much of the areas where I do have data service, the speeds are so slow that the buffer cannot keep up with the playback, so I get to listen to tons of pauses in my music.

For checking email, and maybe some light web browsing, a slow connection (typically around 200-300kbps) is acceptable. So I guess it depends on what you use that data for. Certainly with a stronger signal, battery life improves significantly.