Hasta La Gadget!

You know what they say about Sprint Premier, the carrier’s VIP program for loyal customers: membership has its privileges. Actually, that’s the tagline for something completely unrelated, but we think it certainly applies here — especially now that we’ve learned that Premier peeps have been invited to apply to win an EVO 4G before the superphone’s general release. It’s not as simple as dropping your name in a hat, though: you’ve got to tell Sprint in at least 150 words what you can do “really fast,” presumably with the goal of making the judges laugh, cry, and generally love you. Ten winners will be notified on May 18 that they’ve been selected, at which point you’ll get a phone, a year of free service, and a job as a blogger on an official Sprint site about your experiences with the handset through August 31 (hopefully using a contest management system that’s compatible with Eclair’s not-always-awesome browser). What’s more, four of those ten will get “long summer weekend” trips to a Sprint 4G-enabled city; it’s not Venice by any stretch, but hey, the EVO’s the important thing here, right?

[Thanks, nickb]

Sprint contest promises ten lucky jerks HTC EVO 4Gs before everyone else originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 22 Apr 2010 14:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So we just got handed some sort of Sprint “overview deck” going over some of the HTC EVO 4G’s finer points — and rest assured, there are many fine points — but all told, there’s not a lot new here; there’s no release date that we can see, and we’re already well acquainted with its 4G hotspot capability and the major features of Android 2.1 integrated with Sense. That said, our attention was drawn to the last couple slides, which reveal a bunch of accessories that’ll be available just in case the phone itself isn’t enough to max out the plastic. Specifically, there’s a dock with HDMI out (“likely” available after launch), a car mount, screen protectors, several kind of cases and gels in every color of the rainbow, and a couple different kinds of replacement shells — one multi-color kit with a handful of snazzy shades, and a custom design option that sounds similar to what T-Mobile has done in the past with some of its devices. Oh, and there’s another gem in here: a battery charging holster — something along the lines of a Case-Mate Fuel, from what we can tell — that’ll come after the initial launch.

That’s about it as accessories go, but we’d like to call your attention to the second slide in the deck, which calls out a mysterious “Segment 1” as Sprint’s primary target market for the EVO 4G, with “Segment 6” gaining importance after the phone drops in price — possibly around the holidays this year. From what it sounds, Sprint actually has all of its target demographics grouped into numbered buckets; we’d love to know what they all are, but needless to say, you can count us (and probably most of you) in this fun-loving, awesome Segment 1. You know, the cool kids.

[Thanks, Crimmage]

HTC EVO 4G to get boatload of accessories in Sprint stores originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 11 Apr 2010 19:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Now that the excitement of the EVO 4G announce has finally worn off, it’s time to get down to more practical matters — in a street fight, would the WiMAX-powered beast hold its own against an HD2 and a Desire, for example? We had all three in a room just now, and here’s what we’ve got to say:

• It feels significantly beefier than the HD2, but in reality, it’s not — it’s just a single millimeter thicker. The brushed metal back of the HD2 is a little sexier, but just by the tiniest of margins; it’s hard to argue with soft touch and a kickstand, obviously.
• We would’ve never noticed this without the Desire next to it, but the EVO’s text is pretty huge, a side effect of the fact that it’s running the same resolution on a screen 0.6 inches larger. It’s not annoying, really, but it struck us that they could’ve comfortably fit quite a bit more information on the screen without getting cramped. The Desire’s display is more vibrant, too, but that makes sense — we’re indoors under artificial lighting and the Desire has AMOLED on board.
• The EVO’s got touch-sensitive buttons below the display that function much like the Nexus One’s, but no worries: they work quite a bit better. We think this might be because there’s more touch-sensitive bezel real estate below the keys; on the Nexus One, you’ve got to be far too accurate for comfort.
• Interestingly, this is the first EVO we’ve seen today with a silver earpiece grill — Sprint’s have been red. We’ve confirmed with HTC that production devices will be silver.

Want to draw some of your own conclusions? See the shots for yourself in the gallery below.

HTC EVO 4G vs. HD2 and Desire… fight! originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 19:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve been rumoring a WiMAX “HTC Supersonic” for a while now, and Sprint just dropped the hard news: the phone will be dubbed the HTC EVO 4G, will be released this Summer and it’s easily the best specced phone we’ve ever witnessed. The hardware is of quite obvious HD2 descent, but with Android onboard and some nice aesthetic tweaks, the EVO 4G takes on a life of its own. The handset is centered around a 480 x 800 4.3-inch TFT LCD, with a Snapdragon QSD8650 1GHz processor under the hood (the CDMA version of the QSD8250 in the HD2 and Nexus One), and even a helpful 1GB of built-in memory and 512MB of RAM — hello app storage! Even the battery is bigger than the HD2, and the camera is an 8 megapixel monstrosity with flash, that’s capable of 720p video, and is augmented by a 1.3 megapixel front facing camera for good measure. The phone features HDMI out (though you’ll need an adapter for turning it into a TV-familiar HDMI plug), 802.11b/g WiFi, and an 8GB microSD card. There’s that still-rare Android 2.1 underneath an updated version of HTC’s Sense UI. But… despite all these wild features, what actually sets the EVO 4G apart is the fact that it’s Sprint’s first 4G phone. The handset runs a combo of EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX, with calls still being made over CDMA and the EV-DO / WiMAX options for data. Interestingly, it sounds like concurrent data and voice use might be possible for the first time on CDMA carrier in this way (killing AT&T’s well-advertised differentiator), though Sprint says that’s still in the testing phase. One other new feature is the Sprint hotspot app, another MiFi-style connection sharing number, which is obviously aided greatly by the WiMAX on board and can support up to eight concurrent users. Follow after the break for our hands-on impressions and videos of the phone in action, including an up-close-and-personal test of the touchscreen keyboard. Below you’ll find galleries of the phone by its lonesome and up against the Nexus One and iPhone 3G.

Update: We’ve got a graph comparing the Nexus One and Droid with the EVO spec for spec, and there’s also a pictorial shootout with the Desire and HD2. Pick your comparo poison!

Continue reading HTC EVO 4G is Sprint’s Android-powered knight in superphone armor, we go hands-on

HTC EVO 4G is Sprint’s Android-powered knight in superphone armor, we go hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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