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Have any iPhone 4 owners played with/owned a Evo 4G? How is it?

X

XciteMe

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 21, 2009
450
1
Santa Monica, CA
I really am thinking lately of jumping ship from iPhone 4 to Evo, I realize this would mean an ETF and everything but I figure I can offset that cost as much as possible by selling the iPhone 4 unlocked & jailbroken on Craigslist.

However I want to know, before I even consider, is the 4g a good phone? Hows its battery life, screen quality, and speed?

Thaks
 
So..you came to a Mac/iPhone forum to ask about an Android phone?

Go to a Sprint Store, play with one, and see if you like it yourself. No one here can tell you what YOU really want.
 
Dude, you've been in this forum with your "I don't know" and one day it's great the next day the world ends attitude. I don't know what the deal is but it seems to me you're picking the phone you want to play with and not the service you need. The Evo is no better than an iPhone. In fact, nothing sprint has will work at my house, my old apartment or under their own tower in my area. The phone you use isn't the answer to you not liking whatever it is you seem to have an issue with.
 
I have both an iPhone 4 and an Evo 4G.

I've been through 4 Evo's to get one that worked properly/didn't have build issues (not minor stuff, things like the screen separating from the phone). If I didn't need one for Android development, I'd have given up after the 2nd one.

Your specific questions:

The Evo is fast enough. It's not iPhone 4 fast/smooth, nor is it as quick as, say, the Epic (though the Epic has so many issues right now don't even bother, I tried one for the last week and a half while waiting for my most recent Evo replacement).

Screen quality ... the resolution is fine, but the colors are rather washed out and if you turn the brightness up over half it eats battery like it's going out of style (10 minutes browsing on WiFi ate 8% of the battery). Compared to the iPhone 4's screen it's average at best.

Battery life on the Evo is comical. I run a whole day with my iPhone 4 as my primary phone, 2-3 hours of calls, BlueTooth, WiFi, GPS and Push on ALL the time (if I had to keep turning them on and off to get through a day I'd ditch the thing and get a dumb phone and an iPod Touch), copious email and browsing.

If I tried that on the Evo I'd be out of power by noon. You'll either need spare batteries, one of the extended packs, and to be dilligent about turning features on and off when you're not using them to get better than that.

As a phone it's "okay". It's still missing, even with Android 2.2 some basic features that I've taken for granted on phones (smart or dumb) for years though.

...

Beyond that it's a bit of a spazmodic experience (true for Android in general).

I love the HotSpot feature now that I have a unit which will do it properly, and that now works well enough that I can ditch my Overdrive.

Apps are generally noticeably rougher than on the iPhone, but most of the critical stuff is there. Games are lacking still, and particularly on the Evo you'll run into a capped framerate issue which affects the smoothness/responsiveness.

There's lots of silly non-attention to detail stuff like, oh, if you take a video and then want to MMS it to someone you can't without third party apps unless you chose to use MMS resolution when you first recorded it.

The 8MP camera yields noticeably lower quality images than the 5MP unit on the iPhone (more pronounced with HDR now). Though white-balance control IS nice on the thing.

Video is poor, plain and simple.

There is no way that I could use the Evo 4G as my primary phone right now. If I didn't need a wireless hotspot AND an Android device to test on, I wouldn't have the Evo at all.
 
Well....

I have an i4.
I was playing around extensively with an evo a week ago on behalf of my brother :)
I pretty much had to learn most if not all the in/outs of the evo because i was rooting and burning custom roms ....

the android interface is "ok" ... you have to get used to it to be productive/efficent. a bit jerky/lagging at times.

the screen quality/resulution are no where near the i4.
you would think the bigger screen would give you more estate/contents when compared to the i4..but not ! because the resolution is not as fine as the i4.

the camera/pictures quality is bad! same goes for the flash-over saturated (could be software related)

the evo's battery would last about 4-5hrs with extensive usages when compared to 8-9 hrs of the i4.

last but not least : can't see jack in the sun light !

anyways, bottom line : It's a decent "smart phone" but not quite fine-tuned/polished as the i4 nor the 3gs for that matter (even with the latest frozo roms!)
 
The OP went from OCD with the iPhone 4 to jumping ship by willing to sell it now? Hey, whatever it takes to cure that OCD even if that means getting rid of the phone altogether.
 
+1 on the battery life complaints. My friend Bobby (see sig) was getting about 4 hours. He cured this by turning off active sync and a few other features. now he's getting about 8 on what I think is a crippled phone, but hey he really likes it.
 
I dont have an evo however i have a htc desire and had used the iphone since day one prior to this.

I am not keen on the htc - i have tried to get use to it but i am just not getting on with it.

It has its pros and cons as any handset has. Things like being able to use it as a wifi hotspot alongside my mbp and ipad is fab without having to hack into it.

its totally customisable in terms of interface but it does remind me too much of windows where the OS is not built very well for the handset.

My desire has crashed on me several times already and i have had to reset it twice in the space of 8 weeks.

I also use to use my iphone for taking snapshots every now and again and vid clips at gigs etc - yes i have a slr but sometimes you just want a point and shoot for quick shots - the camera quality isnt amazing on the htc althought its 5mp and has flash integrated.

the audio side of things isnt great - the speaker is on the top of the handset and volume limit isnt amazing either. again i use to use my iphone alot for videos and audio.

for me personally the experiance hasnt been the best - i will be buying the iphone 4 once this handset has been sold on ebay
 
Since were talking about it...

If your backtracking and considering the Droid X...

  • No copy and paste in the browser or email clients.
  • If you navigate to the facebook "desktop" site you, you'll experience a lot of difficulties. Never had a problem on iphone
  • Even though its 8MP the video and camera aren't good at all. However the audio it records is great(3mics)
  • Apps?What apps? The app store is horrible just to navigate through and you have to currency convert if your planning to buy a foreign app.
  • It seems like most of the apps in there are made for the lower end Android phones. eBay app for instance is crap compared to iPhones version.
  • Battery life is good for the Droid X but not better than the iPhones.
  • Yeah theres HDMI, but no point since you can only download a limited selection from the soon to be bankrupt Blockbuster
  • Cosign, you can't see the phone under sunlight
  • I found that switching from the iphone that typing is hard to get use to because of the space bar placement
  • Overall UI lags and is glitchy beyond control. Sometimes my browser gets stuck and I'm not able to zoom out.
  • I personally dont like multitasking, its annoying to have to go into task manager after every phone session to save my battery life

Overall its a good phone and I'm only listing the negatives about it. Some of my issues listed will be fixed in 2.2. Or might be configurable. However I wish I would have gotten an iPhone, and I plan on forking up the dough for the ETF and coming back.
 
I've played with the Evo:

Number 1 problem is the battery life, it is basically less than half of what the iPhone 4 can do. The reality is Apple's limited multitasking was the best way to go, Android apps can start all the background services they want and managing it all can be pain for the user.

Screen size is nice for some things, screen is not as nice as the iPhone 4's or Epic's though.

HTC sense is actually pretty nice and I think gives Android somewhat more polish though still not as polished as iPhone.

It's pretty fast though seems kind of "choppy" compared to say the Epic (which has it's own problems) probably due to that FPS cap.

Web browsing is pretty fast even with flash on.

Camera though 8 MP is not as nice as the iPhone 4's.

Overall it's not a bad device but the battery will be a deal breaker for many, you're talking ~3 hours of web browsing on this thing and it's dead.

On the Epic:

The Epic is pretty good though I don't really like the look of touch wiz, and the GPS problem is still there, the Super AMOLED is awesome though it is actually way better in sunlight than the Evo's LCD screen and pure black levels and great contrast, on the flip side the retina display is much better for reading text so it really depends on your priorities but it definitely beats the Evo screen.

Unfortunately the Epic's battery life isn't really that much better than the Evo's but it may get you an extra hour or so.

The Epic is weird in that it can be really fast then lag quite a bit here and there, one example would be it took like over 5 seconds just to open the dialer this one time. I saw this a few other times just opening simple things like that. I never saw that kind of lag on the Evo though usually the Epic is faster and smoother than the Evo.

Scrolling is MUCH more responsive and smooth on the Epic, actually the Epic probably has the smoothest scrolling and zooming of any Android device I've seen.

I'd probably recommend the Epic over the Evo of your looking between those two despite it's bugs because it's definitely the more capable device.
 
All phones have there issues bro.

Galaxy S phones (including the Epic) = Practically pointless GPS, Laggy

Evo = ****ty GPU, Camera, Camcorder.

iPhone = Antennagate, Locked out without jailbreaking

Pick your poison.

I went from Evo to iPhone to Rooted/Rom'd/Kernaled Evo to Epic and back to iPhone where I'm staying. If there were no jailbreak ever for the iPhone, then I would have stuck with the Evo for sure. But when the iPhone is jailbroken, the iPhone because the more complete device. It can do everything the Evo can do, plus more.

Like I said, I had a rooted Evo, and it was fun installing different Kernals & Roms in the device, but unfortunately there is nothing that can be done about the ****ty GPU, Camera, and Camcorder.
 
Please get psychiatric help, post haste.
tinfoilhat.gif
 
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