I changed from a Rise to an Event last Friday. It was my own fault--I had broken my phone 2 days before during a service outage, thinking the phone was at fault (it wasn't, my wife has a "feature phone" on Virgin Mobile it wasn't working that day either, service was out that one day only for whatever reason). Also, though, as one person mentioned, my Rise had a habit of "loop booting" as well, and while I liked the idea of a slider in theory (I guess I'm still a Blackberry person at heart), in practice with the Rise I found it irritating most times.
So far, the Event works a lot like the Rise, only smoother (maybe my Rise had become too cluttered and a "wipe" would've fixed it?). Here are my observations, understanding that I'm not a hard-gore gamer on my phone, I mostly run Fast for Facebook (or Friendcaster), Opera Mini/Dolphin Mini browsers, Google Maps, eBay, AK Notepad, Alarm Clock and Wapedia:
(1) Again, it seems to run smoother than the Rise, with less "stutter" delays and such
(2) I don't recall how I activated it, I didn't see any options for editing the numbers (MEID?) so I don't know how the next user will change over if I sell it down the road, I guess I did it "over the air" (I had switched off the old phone prior, I had pulled my old LG Optimus Elite out of the mothballs and was using it in-between the Rise & Event)
(3) I don't care for the location of the charger port (on top) but it's not a deal breaker either
(4) I miss the "recent apps" button, you instead long-press home, or in my case, as I install "Holo Launcher HD" instead of using the Google launcher, I can put an icon on the home screen for recent apps.
(5) GPS locks on quickly, I use the "power widget" and turn off GPS except when needing driving directions, it locks only quickly when I turn it on
(6) Voice quality seems fine. As long as it isn't God awful as my Motorola Triumph was (I sold that phone quickly and went with an LG Optimus Elite), then all's fine
(7) I didn't see a microSD card, maybe it doesn't come with one? I used the one that was in my Rise, no biggie.
Yes, with the Rise before, and also with the Event, I was getting the irritating behavior of auto Wi-Fi switch-on; I use Wi-Fi around the house, but the minute I leave the house, I turn it off and I want it to STAY OFF!! This is how you make it stay off:
Turn off Auto-Wi
At the home screen, system settings, more (under data usage), mobile networking settings, connections optimizer, UN-check at the top.
Voila--you're the man (or woman) now.