HTC Evo

I got an HTC Evo the beginning of September giving me about 4 months to give a good review on this phone. The Evo isn't my first Android phone. It replaced my Samsung Moment which was a very good phone for me. Transitioning from a phone with a physical keyboard to one without gave me a few moments hesitation but I made the upgrade after convincing myself that the added features were worth it - I wasn't disappointed.

A disclaimer to this review is that I have my phone rooted with a custom rom (Myn Warm 2.2 RLS4). My experience may differ from someone with a stock Evo.

Screen

The screen size and quality is great. Most comments I have seen regarding the screen are related to how it's too big and is bulky to cary. I have large hands so that might prejudice my fondness of the screen size but I love having such a big screen. I can do most things on my phone that I would have used my computer for when it comes to entertainment and browsing the internet. With the built in kickstand, movie watching is great. Since my phone is rooted, I have a modded version of Flash Player and can play Hulu through the phone which has been pretty cool when I have been really bored. I have no difficulty reading the screen in full sunlight if the brightness is turned up all the way (the Android power settings toolbar makes changing screen brightness a couple easy taps)

Audio

The built in speaker is powerful for both speaker phone and music/movie enjoyment. It's definitely one of the loudest speakers I have experienced on my many handsets. The actual speaker for call audio is decent as well. Sometimes I have to have it up all the way if the caller's audio is low or I am in a loud environment but that's to be expected. While I have a headset with a built in mic, I like the fact that you can use a regular set of earphones to make calls using the phones microphone, a feature that some phones don't have.

Keyboard

I do miss the physical keyboard some but the HTC auto correct keyboard is pretty good and I don't have much trouble sending text messages. I have a modded keyboard that takes the arrows away from the bottom of the HTC keyboard which always caused trouble for me. You also have the option of adding Swype or other text entry programs. Google has a voice to text feature that works pretty well if you are in a quiet environment however, it doesn't do punctuation so it's really only good for one line texts or internet searches.

Signal

The Evo is on par with all the other phones I have had and might have a slight edge but it's definitely not bad. I have 4G where I live and it's relatively fast. I did a speedtest and got 3.5mbps download speed which is not really close to the speed touted for 4G but it's way better than 3G.

Battery Life

Again, I have a modded phone which has been tweaked to allow better battery life but unmodded the phone is about as good as your average smart phone. I have been able to milk 1.5 days out of one charge by turning off data when I don't need it and light texting, calling and surfing. An average day for me though is about 14-16 hours till I need to charge.

Camera

One of my favorite things about this phone is the camera. I know it's a phone and if I wanted to be a serious photographer I should get a good DSLR but I don't want to carry a bulky camera everywhere I go so the 8MP camera on the Evo is great. I have taken some amazing photos with this phone. The only complaint is that it's pretty grainy in low light but most digital cameras suffer from this.

I took both of these photos on the Evo.

The amount of features that the phone has makes it my favorite phone that I have ever had. The only thing that would make it better is if I could add some kind of a hardware keyboard case to the phone for sending long emails etc. I'm not going to go into the app store because this isn't an Android review but I have apps for pretty much everything I could want to use my phone for. I can't see myself upgrading for a while unless they come out with a phone that is twice as fast (I don't really have any issues with the speed) and gets much better battery life. Unless you have to have a physical keyboard, the Evo is my recommendation for anyone wanting a non-iPhone smart phone.