“Man is free at the moment he wishes to be” – Voltaire

Let’s start with history.

For the last two years I have been an iPhone 3G user.  It was a great phone.  I moved to the iPhone from a Treo 750w on the AT&T network.  The Treo was also a nice, solid phone.  Before that I was doing voice on various non-smartphones while I ran a Danger Hiptop II on the Suncom network.  My first smart phone was a Handspring Visor with a Visorphone Springboard module,  on what was then the Cingular Network,  and is now AT&T.  My current phone is the HTC Evo 4G on the Sprint network.

I have had experience with closed and open OS phones.  The Danger OS was closed, no one wrote apps for it (although it had an app store).  The apps you could get were decent but a bit expensive.  It was a stable operating system, synced to the “cloud” and the hardware was not bad.  Sure it had problems but it was really ahead of it’s time.  It was a social networking phone before there was a social network.  It had features that Apple charges $100 a year for (Mobile Me) and it had the first mobile app store that I can recall.  It has had issues with data loss and hacking (Paris Hilton Boobies) but it was a solid product overall.

The Treo was really open, running Windows Mobile 6.  I could get apps albeit not from an app store.  The apps were not approved by anyone and it was really hit or miss.  You had to look around to find the good ones.  It was the best PDA type phone I ever had,  beating out the Visor which was a PDA that I could use as a phone.  The Treo was stable,  the hardware was great,  but by the time the iPhone 3G rolled out it was all but dead, so I moved on.

When I got the iPhone 3G I gave up the freedom to put anything on the phone I wanted.  I also lost video and multitasking.  I gained a phone that was more stable than the Treo , had better web browsing and a better email client.  I spent a few weeks getting a model together to handle my data, calendar and tasks the way I wanted.  For two years I molded my use of a phone to the limits of the phone I was using.  It was not all bad,  I came up with some creative work arounds and I began to use more web services.  The phone turned me into a hater of Apple Think and a unabashed fanboy of Google.

Don’t let it be said that I am above copying the rest of the world when I point out the fact that Apple is now what they were fighting against in that commercial.  Apple is no longer making products for people to create,  they are making products for people to consume.  They are no longer the chick with bouncing boobs and an hammer,  they are the man on the screen.  We all know that if you looped those bouncing boobs in an app for the iPhone they would be rejected.  Apple hates boobs.

Last Friday,  a day I call Evo day,  Sprint and HTC launched the HTC Evo 4G.  This is the best phone I have ever owned.  Android with the Sense UI is the best mobile operating system I have used.  This phone worked.  It took me less than a weekend to have it performing all of my core functions, remember this took weeks on the iPhone.  To the moment I turned off the iPhone I never had a task manager app I liked.

Review:

Hardware:

The Evo is a slab of plastic and glass.  It is big,  fairly heavy for a phone and I am not sure if it is stylish.

I never got into the form over function thing.  Steve Jobs in his announcement of the iPhone 4 spent time talking about the chrome rim of the iPhone 4.  He later said for $$30 you can get a colored bumper to go over it.  For $40 a Genius would tell you that it looks stunning and matches your eyes.  For fucks sake it is a phone.  I put my phones in a case before I leave the store.  My 3G lived in a black silicone case for it’s entire life (minus time spent testing out other Dollar Store cases).

The weight is not an issue,  I can still put it in my pocket and forget about it.  I have big fingers (that’s what she said) so the larger screen means I can thumb type with ease.  I have dropped the phone a few times, while in it’s case and nothing has happened to it so I guess it is sturdy.

It runs a 1GHz Snapdragon Processor, 8Mp Camera, 1.3Mp front facing camera, 2 LED flash, 4.3 inch screen, a Micro SD slot, FM Tuner, Wifi (with Hotspot ability), 4G radio, 3G radio, BT.. basically if you have seen it on a phone, it has it.  All of this together means that I can work the fuck out of this phone.  Video (recording or streaming) and stills are the best I have seen from a phone.  The recent pictures on this blog are untouched examples.

While low light throw a wrench into things, there are enough controls on the camera for contrast, brightness, flash and ISO that you can usually end up with a shot worth keeping.  Video is more hit or miss but I am finding that I am deleting a lot less video from the Evo than I did from other phones.  It is a nice feature to have back.

The only “drawback” is the battery.  So much is going on that the 1500mAh battery needs some charges under heavy use.  I find that after I got it fully charged and ran it through a few cycles I could go 8am to 10pm with no need for a charge.  If I used the camera a lot,  did a lot of surfing, game playing or other screen intensive tasks I would drop battery and need to recharge in the car or from the computer.  The same is true if I left a bunch of the radios on for BT, 4G, or the Hotspot.

I found the same to be true for the iPhone also.  Leaving Wifi and BT on would drain the battery quickly.  If I left a 3G area where it would search for signal I would loose battery quickly.  I am used to the battery issue and make sure I always have some way to get power if I need it and I usually have a plan to cut back to bare essentials to keep me going until I can get a charge.

Software:

Android is great.  Sense UI is great.  I can access my home screens with a pinch.  I setup home screens with icons and widgets to give me what I need for a task all on one screen.  Contacts, calling , SMS, things like that on the home screen.  A screen for calendar and tasks.  One for media, one for fun and useless things.  Oh yeah Astrid Tasks is one of the best I have seen and better than anything I tried on the iPhone.  It works the way I want a task manager to work.

Android itself works well with the Google Cloud services.  I have been using them for docs, calendar, contacts, email and just about anything else that made sense.  When someone hacks Google they will have access to a lot of my information.  I am not that interesting so I am sure they will skip it.  For example,  when I linked the phone with my Google Account my contacts were in the phone, when I linked it with Facebook those contacts were there to. You might ask what happens when I lose my data connection (which has not happened yet).  My contacts and other data are safe on my SD card, so I can access them.  I can even access them from my laptop when I connect the Evo via a usb cable.

The app store is not as user friendly as the iTunes App Store.  I have a search feature and some limited browsing which keeps me happy.  And the app store is where the freedom comes into play.  There is not an approval process per say.  If the app works and does what it says it means to do, it is there.  That’s right,  the app store I like has boobs in it.

The wise Iron Crow commented about quality vs freedom.  A quality Hello World app displays the words “Hello World”.  The Android App store has Hello World apps.  They are useless.  Apple would not put these in their store.  Android allows them.  Some kid, adult, slow adult or animal of some sort created a Hello World app and put it out there for others to download,  Google did not pass judgment on them.  For all I know this is the first thing they created in the form of a computer program and they wanted to share it with the world. I say great for them!

I remember being a kid and going into Sears and hopping on any computer with a form of basic on it and coding:

10  Print “Chuck was here”

20 goto 10

I was excited to know how to do that when I was 8 years old.  I shared it with everyone I could.  It was bad form, a shitty program but I was excited.  I am glad someone discovering programming can have that same excitement on a global scale.  Fuck Steve Jobs for taking that away from someone that wants to code for their device.  Fuck them for deciding what is worthwhile and what is not.  If it is not damaging the device let it free.  If you disagree with this chances are you are an idiot.

I am finding quality software, some from old names and some from people new to the game.  I am free to run it all.  I have a choice in how to manage my media,  as there is no true native media player,  sure one is included, but you have the freedom to use the resources the Android Team used to make one that is better.  And that is really the thing about the software on the device,  if you need it,  you will find an app for it.  If you want to make a better app you can do so.

Summary time:

The Evo kicks ass.