Analyzed: HTC Evo 4G

As part of our membership with the Sprint Premier Program, we were given first dibs on the brand new flagship phone Sprint is offering, the HTC Evo 4G. And this phone isn't just the Sprint flagship, it is HTC's as well. With a 4.3" display and the latest Android operating system (ours came with Gingerbread version 2.3) it promises to be an industry leader and a strong competitor to the iPhone.

The first thing that catches your eye (aside from the eye popping display), it is the stand in the back. It gets you thinking, do I really need a stand? Trust us, it makes viewing movies, which you will definitely want to do on the WVGA display, a whole lot more comfortable. You won't have to hold the phone in your hand while viewing any videos any more. The phone also comes with 512MB RAM and 1GB ROM which makes multi-tasking a breeze compared to the competition. And with an industry leading 8MP camera and LED flash in the back coupled with a 1.3MP camera in the front, it blows the competition out of the water when it comes to taking pictures. The phone also comes with an 8GB microSD card which can be expanded to 16GB. That is more than enough space for some music, your pictures and a couple of movies. The best part of it all is you can directly connect the phone to your computer and transfer files to and from the device as though it were an external hard drive. No third party software is necessary. You can also connect the phone to your TV or monitor using the mini HDMI port and watch your videos in HD. That's pretty cool coming from a phone.

Is everything perfect about the phone? Unfortunately no. The battery life on this phone is horrendous. We happened to carry the phone with while we were traveling around places with spotty signal reception and lost all juice from the battery in less than 6 hours. It was probably caused because the device keeps searching for reception and switching from non-roaming to roaming but still, that's less than a day at work. Definitely not a good thing. Good thing for us we were able to download an app from the Android Market called Juice Defender which bumped up the battery life to about 15 hours. The phone is a little on the heavier side at about 170g (this is about 30g more than the iPhone) but you end up getting used to it. Aside from the battery issue, we were quite satisfied with our purchase. The pluses definitely outweigh the minuses. Looks like Apple finally has some competition in town.