While the spotlights are usually all over Apple’s iPhone, there’s another phone company out there which is busy winning the hearts and minds of many: HTC. Founded only 13 years ago, the company has become the primary supplier of top-notch Android phones. Last Friday, Sprint launched the HTC EVO 4G to raving reviews and considerable consumer interest.
For some inexplicable reason, technology journalists and bloggers, OSNews included, will pretty much dedicate their entire existence to Apple the moment it announces a new phone, while companies with far larger market share and far more prominence around the world – Nokia, RIM – rarely get a mention when launching new stuff. In case anyone wonders – the moment we don’t jump through hoops the moment Apple launches a new phone (like tonight), we’ll get complaints we’re anti-Apple.
I wish Nokia zealots would complain to us for once, but alas.
HTC is also one of those companies we just don’t seem to follow as closely, phone-wise, as we do with Apple. This is a shame, since HTC has been producing a number of really well-received Android smartphones this past year that have really had a tremendous impact on the market. Most prominently, the Incredible (Droid) and Sprint’s EVO 4G.
The popularity of both these devices have caught their respective carriers (Verizon and Sprint) completely off guard. If you order an Incredible now, it won’t ship until June 28, and last Friday, launch day for the EVO 4G, Sprint’s activation servers were completely overloaded, and the phone was sold out in a lot of places. Apple-like (or Windows-like) lines formed in front of Sprint stores. In fact, Sprint has said they sold more EVOs that day than any other phone in one day.
As The Wall Street Journal details, all of HTC’s design work is done by a design company in California, One & Co., acquired in 2008. “HTC has really stepped up its software and device capabilities,” John Harrobin, a senior vice president at Verizon, told The Wall Street Journal, “This bodes well for working more closely with them.”
It sure bodes well. However, tonight we’ll see Apple launching a new iPhone (that much is certain), and it might just be that this new iPhone will be so much better than anything HTC has to offer that the Taiwanese company’s winning streak is over.
We’ll see.
I had my heart set on an iPhone, away from a BlackBerry but I have seen or heard about so much grief to do with syncing and iTunes regarding iPhones and iPods that I am seriously considering an Android-powered HTC, most likely: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTC_Evo_4G
Also, although Google does see some evil, it’s nothing in the end compared to the closed ecosystem that is Apple. I have dev colleagues, long-time Apple fans, who are getting seriously riled by recent and further lock-downs of their patch by Apple, to the extent that they have spoken of not feeling ethically right developing stuff for the company.
And I like my MBP, and have been productive and happy with it for over a year.
However, something’s blowin’ in the wind
I still refuse to carry any cellphone, but I let my wife get the Evo on its 1st day. I must say it is impressive, and avoids the anti-technology Iphone. I’m also in a 4G ready city (Dallas) and experienced no networking problems or slowdowns. My wife did not preorder, but got one of Best Buy’s remaining ones when the store opened before they sold out.
It seems like it may have a chance of not being out-of-date by the time the 2 year contract ends. Anxious to see it with Android 2.2, but I didn’t find anything where it was slow enough for a speed boost to be of any use yet.
Sorry to use the comments section to push a personal agenda, but does anyone know of a good Android handset with a hardware keyboard?
I’m currently using the G1 and due for an upgrade in the next few months but it seems like every smart phone these days are software-input only for text.
The droid has a hardware keyboard. I own one and it works. The keys are tightly packed but it definitely is usable.
Depends, do you want a phone with a good QWERTY keypad, or a good phone with a QWERTY keypad? Reviews seem to suggest the T-Mobile MyTouch 3G Slide has a great keyboard (with left AND right shift! A comma key!) but the rest of the hardware is distinctly mid-range.
just a h/w keyboard. not after a great keyboard, just something usable
The LG Eve has a decent keyboard. The best thing about it is that it’s a 5-row keyboard, meaning there’s a separate row for numbers, and a lot of the punctuation is accessible without a shift key.
The Sony Xperia X10 Mini-Pro also has a hardware keyboard. However, this has a smaller screen than most phones (< 3″). This is the one I’m currently waiting for, as it’s not available up here in Canada yet.
The Motorola Droid, Dext, and Flip all have hardware keyboards as well.
Actually, if you look around, about 1/3 of all Android phones have hardware keyboards.
As many as that?!
Blimey I’m rubbish at phone shopping hehe
As I’ll have been with Sprint for 10 years this September. I’ve tried a number of phones, including 3 that allowed me to tether to the computer.
The EVO 4G seems like it’s an answer to everything Sprint customers (like me) have been wanting. The drawback, of course, is battery life. My Samsung A900 was similarly bad, as were most of the early 3G phones here. Eventually they’ll tailor chips and Android to use less power but for now, they’ll have to keep a spare battery or two or three. Of course, that huge and bright display sucks way too much power also.
Sprint is finally having some fun and success since their merger with Nextel and it seems like Sprint customers are pretty happy too. You have to wonder if people would lay down their AT&T-burdened iPhones to switch.
I used to have an A900 . I was the sexiest looking phone at the time. The battery life was awful though. Sprints service was even worse than what I get on AT&T now, due to their size I don’t see that changing anytime soon. Its nice that they got they are back in the game.
That bad for you? I’ve had great 3G service from Sprint almost everywhere but here and they’ve fixed things here for the most part. Having a third party covering this area didn’t help.
The A900 was better as a modem than a phone but looked great. I got over 6 hours of 3G modem time as opposed to somewhere between 2 and 3 hours of talk time with the extended battery. My LG Lotus doesn’t have an extended battery but charges by USB port. It surpasses the A900 in every way but thinness.
Well, I don’t know what the Evo has to offer, but according to MacGeneration’s (french site) summary of the keynote…
-Apple renewed the iPhone’s hardware and software to match today’s competition.
-Yes, match. There’s nothing new, the most touted parts being outrageous rebranding of existing technology except for an iMovie-branded toy.
-The iPhone 4’s prototype’s network connectivity was crap, it didn’t even manage to connect to simple sites like the NYT. Jobs used the good ol’ lame excuse of blaming the public. “Oh, guys, stop eating WiFi !”. *cough*
-The iPad gets useful through introduction of annotations and (especially) PDF reading support in iBooks.
-Apple loves the App Store ecosystem, especially with the introduction of iAds to make it even more profitable.
-Mac are crap. They don’t like them. They don’t care about them. They don’t speak about them. iDevices are the future, go buy one !
Edited 2010-06-07 19:18 UTC
Funny that Google had a similar problem in the same Moscone Center not long before that. I suppose they were demonstrating Apple equipment, yes?
No. They were demonstrating a poorly-made prototype which they got from their behind, too. Same issue, same punishment. It’s incredible how much the high-tech industry does not care about polish and bugfixing in its products…
Edited 2010-06-09 08:42 UTC
I just have to light the flame for the coming war:
Anyone that chooses an iPhone over the EVO 4G needs to have their head examined.
I loved the feature that was presented in a demo a while back showing Netflix integration. With HD output you could simply carry your phone to anywhere there is a HDTV and watch a movie or anything on STARZ. Now this is what I consider useful gadget technology. So suck it iPhone.
EVO makes me want to just pay the fee to release myself from AT&T bondage early. Sadly I have 4 phones on their contract. Bastards.
Uhm, you do realise that iPhone 4 includes Netflix support, right?
I think he was talking about HDMI output which the iPhone does not provide
Ah, that makes more sense.
The Evo has an HDMI port? Wow. But will the battery last through an entire HD movie streamed off wifi?
No, no need for wifi. The Evo brings a *physical* hdmi connector. You can then use an appropriate wire to connect it to a TV set, as an example when you’re visiting a friend in order to both watch in high resolution some pira… errr… legally bought HD movie that lies in your phone’s memory.
Google shows it best (2nd link for “htc evo hdmi”) : http://www.intomobile.com/2010/03/23/sprint-htc-evo-4g-aka-superson…
Streaming through a cable does not eat up a lot of battery, so if your phone can play the whole movie without dying, chances are good that it may play it on the TV just as well. This is somewhat related to the composite output of a lot of Archos media players. Just a modern equivalent.
Edited 2010-06-08 16:02 UTC
Well, duh, of course you need a physical HDMI cable.
What I meant was, as the OP mentioned, would the battery last through streaming an HD video from Netflix (either over wifi or 3G/4G) and outputting it to a TV.
If the battery will not last through that, then having an HDMI output is kind of pointless. Unless we’re expected to carry around a charger at all times.
Edited 2010-06-08 16:01 UTC
As I said in the edit (sorry), TV output probably does not eat up much battery compared to displaying the movie on the phone. Especially if it’s a fully digital output like HDMI.
Edited 2010-06-08 16:03 UTC
Can’t directly answer your question cause i haven’t used HDMI, but I’m not having any battery issues with my evo. Over night i turned on everything (wifi,bt,4g,gps,hotspot,pandora) then went to bed and still had around half battery left. I think pandora turned off after an hour or something cause it wasn’t running when i woke up. I just manage the activity on it and press OFF what i dont use with widgets.
That being said i’ll buy either extra batterys or car chargers cause its more for power not lasting.
All that being said im totally blown away by this phone. I’ve d/c my home internet and opted for the $30 hotspot/tethering. I basically break even with last months cell/internet bill if it wasn’t for the $7 insurance, $10 fee and $5 so i can add my google voice as a land line. yeah about $17 more but now i qualify for a 13% discount so it’ll probably be just a few bucks more.
$10 bucks more than my cell/home internet combined from last month except now I have a smartphone. Couldn’t be happier almost like a free gadget.
The new iPhone display should be amazing to look at. Shooting HD video, then using iMovie to edit/transition/title, etc ON the phone sounds OK. The demos that failed were because there were over 500 users in the room either streaming updates to the outside world and using up the available master wifi capability in the room. They politely asked everyone to turn off those MyFi’s, etc, but the bloggers and reporters, in their usual vast wisdom refused to do so, just so they could make fun of the results later, one must presume.
This new iteration of the iPhone provides some new features and the hardware rev sounds decent enough. The iPhone is a better overall experience than my Android Nexus One. The Froyo update brought it closer but it is still not quite there. The EVO with it’s 4-5 hour battery life is a non-starter compared to this new iPhone.
So they did not plan a head. It’s not that hard do make a network that only accepts the demo iphone and shut down the rest of the wireless network during the presentation. asking over 500 to shut down their wifi is a stupid plan. it so much easier to do it for them and be able to demo sommthing that is working
They almost certainly made a private network for demo sake. Not doing it would be suicide. That’s why I think that it’s a malfunction of the prototype, rather than something where the participants are to blame. Especially taking Jobs’ well-known reality enhancing habit into account
Edited 2010-06-08 11:33 UTC
Give iPhone 4G data hardware and see how long the battery lasts.
Of course, the iPhone should be a better experience than Android but in 2 years, they should be more even. After all, Windows 7 seems quite pleasant to use in contrast to WinXP and Vista and Google has been quite a bit more determined than Microsoft was.
good to see another company that can give apple a ass-whopping, when the rest (nokia comes to mind) has gone hiding under the stone, or are in fact stoned.
about freaking time.
Apparently, it’s got some serious battery problems. A guy I met today had an Evo, and he said it sucks. 4 hours standby. STANDBY.
http://techcrunch.com/2010/06/09/dont-buy-the-android-evo-it-is-a-s…