Hands-On with the HTC EVO 4G LTE for Sprint

The HTC One series was HTC's marketing refresher for all those extra, unneeded phones that came out in 2011. This series includes the great phones that are the HTC One X, HTC One S, and the HTC One V. These devices made appearances on some networks mostly unchanged by the carrier. The HTC One X for AT&T is a great improvement over the international model, the HTC One S is almost completely unchanged on T-Mobile, and the HTC One V on Virgin Mobile is unchanged except for some bloatware. The HTC One X was turned into an EVO on Sprint with a new design. Is this EVO better than the original One X or is it another thing that the carriers messed up? Let's find out in our hands-on with the HTC EVO 4G LTE.

Look and Feel

The HTC One X was no slouch in design with the beautiful piece of polycarbonate that made up the back of the phone. The EVO 4G LTE has a much different design with the back being half metal, half black polycarbonate, and with the signature EVO kickstand. The front has the same 4.7 inch Super LCD 2 screen covered in Gorilla Glass. There is also an aluminium band that surrounds the sides of the device. This design feels very good in the hand and the metal makes for a premium feel. The polycarbonate feels good, but it is very shiny and is a huge fingerprint magnet. The metal also makes this device very grippy  and you should not have any problems holding on to this handset. The red kickstand has been improved from the EVO 4G's by letting you use it both ways so you can charge it and stand it up at the same time. The overall design of the EVO 4G LTE is great, but it seems like they just threw in a bunch of design ideas for this. The design on the One X seems more polished than the EVO 4G LTE's design. Overall, the EVO 4G LTE's design is good, but it is not as good as the One X's design.

Software

The HTC EVO 4G LTE runs the same software as the HTC One X and One S, Android Ice Cream Sandwich version 4.0.3 with the Sense 4.0 skin over it. The Sense 4.0 skin is a huge improvement over Sense 3.0 and looks fantastic. It does something that all other skins want to do, Sense 4.0 actually improves Ice Cream Sandwich! Sense 4.0 adds many great features to Ice Cream Sandwich, does not hinder performance, and lets you still know that you have an Ice Cream Sandwich smart phone. Overall, Sense 4.0 is a great skin that does not hinder performance, improves Ice Cream Sandwich, and is probably the best Android skin on the market.

Display

The HTC EVO 4G LTE has the same jaw-dropping 4.7 inch Super LCD 2 screen that we saw on the HTC One X. Colors are greatly saturated, the icons seem to "float" on top of the screen, viewing angles are spectacular, and blacks are abyss-like. HD movies and content looks fantastic on this screen, and shows much detail on the pictures you take with the fantastic 8 megapixel camera.This screen is one of our favorite mobile screens on the market and beats every other display on any other smart phone on the market. 

Performance

The HTC EVO 4G LTE is no slouch in performance with the same Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 Krait processor clocked at 1.5GHZ and 1GB of RAM as the AT&T One X and One S. In the few minutes we had with the phone, everything was butter smooth, and we had no lag. While touring the OS, everything responded quickly, scrolling was incredibly smooth, and swiping through pages was a joyful experience. Like we said in our Sprint Samsung Galaxy S III hands-on, data speeds were very different than the OS performance. Sprint has yet to provide LTE in many major cities (Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, etc.) and has not set it up in too many non-major cities. This lack of LTE coverage makes you have to deal with incredibly slow data speeds on your HTC EVO 4G LTE, Sprint Samsung Galaxy Nexus, or LG Viper. In  our speed test, we got 0.63MBPS download and 0.78MBPS upload with a 119MS ping with only one bar under perfect coverage. These EV-DO speeds are even slower than Verizon's EV-DO, and even slower compared to AT&T's and T-Mobile's HSPA speeds. Sprint has let down its customers by having barely any LTE coverage and by sticking the customers without LTE with incredibly slow EV-DO data speeds. This phone has a great processor, but the incredibly slow data speeds hinder the online performance of this great phone. Dear Sprint, you have let us down and have disappointed us with your incredibly slow 3G speeds and lack of LTE coverage.


Wrap-up

The HTC EVO 4G LTE is a very nice phone and true successor to the HTC EVO 4G. The phone has a great display, great design, and has a great camera. The phone is incredibly fast in offline tasks, but, thanks to Sprint, it is very slow in online tasks. Sprint left the EVO 4G LTE with 3G EV-DO speeds when you are not in LTE which happens to be almost all of the time. Sprint could have given it at least WiMax 4G (which is still really slow). Sprint needs to put out a large amount of LTE coverage fast, because it would be a complete waste for these people who bought a EVO 4G LTE or Samsung Galaxy S III or other Sprint LTE handsets to be stuck on 3G and never see LTE during their contract. Overall, the HTC EVO 4G LTE is a great handset on Sprint that is only hindered by Sprint's lack of LTE coverage.