Top 5 Tech Purchases For 2010—#3

HTC EVO 4G.

I admit it. I’m a huge fan of HTC smartphones. The EVO is my 3rd, and first Android phone. I won’t say I’ll never switch from HTC, but it would have to be a very impressive phone for me to even consider it.

The EVO is THE world class smartphone. Nothing is as good. Very few are even good enough to be considered competitors, and all fall short in some way or another. The iPhone4? Slow, small, 3G only, and currently only available on AT&T, the worst of the cell phone providers. The Droid X? Awkward shape, and 3G only, but if you’re stuck with Verizon, this is the best you can do until the HTC Thunderbolt becomes available. Samsung Epic? Closest you can get to an EVO, and has the advantage of a slide out keyboard (although that does make it bulkier), but it’s a Samsung, and thus doesn’t have the HTC Sense UI.

Windows Phone 7 has recently been released, and does have some interesting devices. I’m a longtime Windows Mobile user, but WP7 seems a little too late for me. We’ll see. Right now the app market is too small, and WP7 hasn’t really been put to the test. And for me, they don’t have any Sprint offerings, so I’m not interested just yet. I’m a Sprint Premier customer, so I can upgrade my phone every year. Check in this time next year, I may have more to say about WP7 phones.

Pros:

• 4G
• Size – bigger than an iPhone, but small enough to fit in a pocket
• HTC Sense UI
• Android

Cons:

• HTC Sense UI. I love HTC Sense, but many prefer a “clean” Android experience, and it’s likely that having that makes upgrades easier.
• Video calls don’t work quite as well as I’d like. That’s the only thing that I’d like to see significant improvement. Still, it’s far superior to the iPhone in that it works in 3G, 4G and WiFi. iPhone video calls are WiFi only. There’s no doubt that this is the next major feature revolution in cell phones. Give it another year or two and all the smartphones will have it and the software will be significantly better and easier to use.
• Battery life. This is the bugaboo of all smartphones. Still, I do ok with my EVO. I have to charge it every night, but that was the case with my previous two smartphones as well. It lasts me through the day with normal use, so I’m happy.