Comments on: A Lawyer’s Review of Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G

By: John

John — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 21:53:25 +0000

I am a lawyer with an EVO. By fr the best phone I’ve ever owned, and I’ve had many. First, it’s a good telephone. Makes and receives calls easily and well. Second, you can actually read the attachments that people send you. With the large screen, and the ability to adjust the font size to your liking by pinching or spreading your fingers, reading documents, reported cases and letters is a breeze. This was impossible on my Blackberrys that had screens that were less than half the size of my EVO. Calendar syncs wirelessly as well as my Blackberrys did by USB hardwire. Saw a new app yesterday to get the Arizona Revised Statutes on my EVO – haven’t had time to try it yet, but I do intend to. For free you can use the EVO as a hot spot by installing pdanet on your desktop and/or laptop. Can’t use the EVO as a phone simultaneously, but really comes in handy in a courtroom where there is no WiFi, or if your highspeed connection goes on the fritz for a while. I use it for my desktop when the Comcast broadband goes out for an hour or two every so often. Considerably cheaper than paying for a $10 to $18 daily hotel wireless network connection when you travel. With the HDMI connection, you can download your closing arguement bullet points on your SD card and then show them on a HDMI moniter to the jury. Much better than an art pad and magic marker.

By: Common Sense

Common Sense — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 16:56:34 +0000

You are making an issue out of nothing. If you have a problem paying extrad to enjoy Evo phone, then I suggest you stick with other smartphones that doesn’t require $10 premium. May I suggest HTC TOuch Pro 2. There is no $10 surcharge. In fact, some lucky people have $30 SERO plan that includes 500 minutes, unlimited data, and unlimited text. But you don’t get android phone (unless you jailbreak) and no 4G.

It’s costing Sprint billion dollars to provide 4G. If you think paying extra $10 is too much, then you don’t deserve 4G phone. Your frugile mentality needs to rewarded with Palm Pre (it should be a free phone by now).

By: toby

toby — Fri, 20 Aug 2010 20:45:22 +0000

Thanks for the review. I am considering the evo, in part because I cant stand how slow and laggy the hero is. Is the evo that much faster? How can you take the hero as your everyday phone? I can barely make a phone call! what are you running on your hero to make it faster?

By: Rich

Rich — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:25:10 +0000

I am not a Lawyer but I found your review to be exactly what I was looking for.. some real world experiences. I work in Corporate IT and have always been around the latest “gadgets” but have pretty much been a loyal BB user from day one but just recently decided on getting a new phone after 2 years on the bold (loved it). I have my EVO on backorder and looking forward to its arrival (even more so thanks to your review!).

By: Eric

Eric — Sat, 10 Jul 2010 04:21:13 +0000

I like that the EVO 4G is bigger thean most phones. I cant stand browsing the internet on my blackberry because the screen is so small. I’m glad the download speed is fast. Downloading on my blackberry is to slow. I hope the Sprint’s 4G Network is available where I live i am really considering getting my own EVO 4G.

By: Brent Barnes

Brent Barnes — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 21:01:50 +0000

It’s a matter of fact that 4G wimax costs Sprint less to operate than the 3G CDMA EVDO rev A because of the mere costs of licensing the products. Wimax is an industry standard adopted by the ieee as 802.16 and CDMA EVDO is licensed from Qualcomm and Qualcomm is pretty proud of there proprietary products so the price is pretty high. So yes I have a problem when the top executive gives you these facts and then they later try to pass off a price increase on you and try to justify it by describing all the hardware features of the phone.

Like I said it’s not about the money it’s the deceptive advertising of the fee. The way they advertise the fee makes it sound like you put a $199 down payment on the phone and then there is a $10 lease fee per month for the life of activation.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:18:32 +0000

The other thing is that these phones are highly subsidized by carriers and costs of production in China are rising. Don’t be surprised if you see either the cost of phones or the cost of plans rising across the board.

By: Chris

Chris — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 17:50:01 +0000

Thank you Ryan for bringing a sense of sanity to this discussion. I agree that if you want something better you should pay for it. If not, stay with a lesser smartphone and quit complaining. Brent is probably also for “free” health care, where someone else pays.

By: Ryan

Ryan — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:24:36 +0000

I understand your frustration with the marketing of the plan but at the end of the day it simply doesn’t matter to me. We live in a society where we pay more for nicer things. The EVO 4G is in my estimation the most robust smartphone on the market. If it were a baseball player, we’d call it Pujols.

At the end of the month, the data plan is nothing more than another expense for a law firm or a business. $79.99 for the plan and 450 minutes isn’t a bad price when you look at what similar plans cost through Verizon or AT&T. How Sprint rolls out the expense likely means very little in the final analysis as to whether or not a firm adopts the EVO.

Sure it’s something to be aware of but I think the net cost matters a lot more than how Sprint tries to sell that cost to its consumers.

By: Brent Barnes

Brent Barnes — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:08:21 +0000

It’s really not the money that urks me. I know that it is still cheaper than the others but when Dan Hesse himself stated at CTIA 2010 (look for the youtube video) that 4G would be thrown in for free in the data plans because it actually costs Sprint less than 3G. Then two months or so later when the EVO was released this $10 fee was introduced but not as a 4G fee but as a “Richer Data Experience” which in there legalese lists hardware features of the phone. Just check out the site I mentioned above and you will see all of the correspondence with Sprint being well documented.