HTC Evo 4G LTE Review: I Can’t See Why Not

Short Version

The Evo 4G LTE is a fine phone. There certainly aren’t any glaring issues: Sense has been considerably streamlined, and it’s really good at what it was made to do, which is entertain. The design language is a little loud, though maybe that’s what it takes to shake things up in the land of Android. (LAndroid.) But unlike the Evos that have come before it, this latest iteration doesn’t really bring any truly special features to the table.

I mean, consider the name. It’s the Evo 4G LTE, yet Sprint’s 4G LTE network isn’t set to go live for another month, at the very earliest. And even if that weren’t the case, LTE is no longer a wow factor. It’s a soon-to-be norm, which means that the Evo needs something more than fast data to be a big deal.

Does it have what it takes? Let’s find out together, yes?

Pros:

• Excellent camera
• Pretty solid battery life
• Thin and light (in a good way)

Cons:

• The plastic on the back gets marked up with prints easily
• It’s a 4G phone, but Sprint LTE won’t be around for a while

Features:

• 4.7-inch 720p display
• Sprint 4G LTE (eventually)
• Android 4.0.4 Ice Cream Sandwich/Sense 4
• 1.5GHz Snapdragon S4 dual-core proc
• 8-megapixel rear camera (1080p recording)
• 1.3-megapixel front-facing camera
• MSRP: $199.99 on-contract

Long Version

Hardware/Design:

As I mentioned before in my initial impressions post, the Evo feels like business in the front and a party in the back. The bezel is quite thin, which means that HTC managed to comfortably fit a rather large 4.7-inch display onto a smaller frame (thumbs-up for that!), and the top bezel near the speaker grill is finished with soft-touch rubber.

On the back, however, the Evo tells a different story. A strip of shiny red metal separates a soft-touch bottom and a shiny, black plastic top. Within the plastic area, the camera is square in the middle, with a little extra Evo-esque red lining. I’m a huge fan of the soft-touch and honestly wish that the entire backside of the phone was finished in it. It’s comfortable and doesn’t take prints much at all.

The plastic, on the other hand, picks up prints like it’s being paid to do so. It feels a bit like HTC ran out of budgeting dollars and simply said “F&#* it! Let’s just slap some plastic on this last bit.” It’s the only part of the phone that feels cheap, even in the way that it creaks a bit when you stress the phone.

HTC nailed the kickstand, as you can prop the phone up with it in the traditional sense, as well as turn it right over so that the kickstand is resting against the table. Either way it works, which means that you can plug your phone into the charger while you’re kickstanding.

Just as you’d expect, the lock button and 3.5mm headphone jack are up top, microUSB is on the top left-hand side, and volume rocker is on the left. There’s also a dedicated camera shutter button on the bottom right-hand side of the phone.

Software:

As I already briefly covered, Sense 4 is far more attractive than earlier iterations. HTC clearly took a hard look at the UI and realized that too much fluff on top of Android is a big no-no. That said, this streamlined, clean version of the custom overlay offers only what you need.

One nice touch is the ability to drag and drop icons from the lock screen into the circle used to unlock the device. By doing so, you’re taken straight into the dragged app. The less clicks the better, am I right?

At the same time, we’re not seeing anything incredibly new here. No pop-up play, like on the Galaxy S III. No brand new operating system, like on the Galaxy Nexus. But that’s not to say that HTC doesn’t offer up some solid, albeit a bit played out, features.

For one, you’ll get 25 free GB of Dropbox storage with this bad boy, along with Beats Audio integration. I see the former as much more of a selling point. Oh, and Google Wallet comes pre-loaded, as well.

Sprint’s loaded this thing up with plenty of its own content, including Sprint Zone and Sprint Hotspot, and unfortunately it doesn’t seem that you can uninstall them.

Camera:

The camera on this phone rocks. It employs the Sense camera app on the software side of things, which means you’ll have easy access to plenty of Instagram-esque filters even in the viewfinder. A couple of my personal faves are Vintage, Solarize, and Aqua.

There are also plenty of settings for ISO, white balance, etc., and zoom is on the left. Shooting modes include auto, HDR, Panorama and portrait, but there seems to be some sort of auto-burst mode inherent in the app. In other words, when you hold down the shutter, you get a continuous stream of shots.

The shutter button itself is incredibly fast, snapping pictures as soon as you touch it. It’s also very solid — no shakiness or looseness in its socket — and can be half-pressed to focus and then full-pressed to shoot (just like on a DSLR).

Color reproduction was excellent, though I think that HTC tends to blow out warmer colors like reds and yellows to make pictures more beautiful, but not necessarily realistic. Low light shots turned out better than expected, and video recording only takes a second to focus and switch between bright and low light.

The camera app has some nice features to it, as well, like the fact that it goes into a thumbnail mode if you start swiping through pictures quickly. It’s like the phone knows you want a photo that’s way on down the line, and wants to help you get there. The only problem is that it only works like half the time.

Comparison shot between the Evo 4G LTE (left) and the iPhone 4S (right):

Display:

There’s more to a display than resolution or size. It’s the marriage of these two factors, along with the technology behind the screen that makes an excellent display. In the case of the HTC Evo 4G LTE display, this marriage is a harmonious one. The 720