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User Reviews + first impressions

yourfriendmat

Well-Known Member
May 13, 2011
200
247
I just got my Evo 3D from UPS today :D I'm in the process of uploading some pictures and I'll link the album here. I plan to include example pics from the phone and pics of the phone itself. I'll keep editing and updating this post as opposed to adding new posts so as to not clutter the thread. Hopefully everyone else can comment on their Evos as they come in! Apologies if I go into too much weird detail. I'll work on formatting this better once I have more info for you :) Feel free to ask something that hasn't been asked yet. Also, if you think something needs to be added to the main post, let me know.

NOTE: HBOOT is still the one from May 20 (S-ON)

__________________________________________________________________________________


3D Effect
The 3D is very effective, but it has a pretty narrow sweet spot. It also kind of looks like you're looking at the lenticular cover of a move or something. I understand the concepts are similar, but I thought the screen would look a little smoother. Also, the pictures used for the user interface weren't redrawn, so there is a lot of aliasing when you enter 3D mode. The only reason I think it is so noticeable is because it only affects the horizontal, not the vertical.

Exciting news: Side-by-side 3D files DO work. I put a side-by-side .mp4 on the phone. When you play it, it may not be in 3D at first, but you can hit menu and select "Play in 3D." So cool!

I can't get the Green Hornet to play on my device. :(

I can view 3D content from anywhere between 6 inches from my face to about an arm's length. The sweet spot is pretty narrow, but there seem to be multiple. My girlfriend was playing with the phone and I could watch it along with her.

Also, REALLY bright 3D photos don't work so well with the parallax barrier tech. Seems like the back light bleeds through the PB LCD.

Battery
So far, I'd estimate the battery lasts about 5.75 hours (2 hours to go from 50% to 15%) under pretty heavy playtime use. I've been looking at Youtube 3D vids, recording my own 3D vids and pics, showing it off to my friends, letting my friends play with it, etc. It's getting more use today than it likely ever will again in one single day. I have had the WiFi on most of that time, though. I'm charging it currently so I can show it off some more.

Worth noting: The display is definitely the biggest battery hog. It's averaging 83% of the battery use. Contrast that with the 28% used by my Evo 4G.

Top 4 Evo 4G battery usage (currently):

  1. Phone Idle (48%)
  2. Display (28%)
  3. Wifi (9%)
  4. Cell Standby (7%)

Top 4 Evo 3D battery usage (currently):
  1. Display (81%)
  2. Wifi (5%)
  3. Mail (4%)
  4. Cell Standby (4%)

First Startup
Restarted twice... I hope there's no problem. Activation was super easy on Sprint's website, and once the phone turned on, the process was seamless. The haptic feedback is different from my Evo. I like it :) It seems smoother.

The back of the phone feels awesome. It's a rubbery plastic and feels pretty solid. I don't know why people were calling it cheap. The camera positioning is frustrating though. I know it can't really go anywhere else, but I just feel like I'm gonna smudge up the lens so I don't want to hold it that way, but there isn't enough phone at the bottom to hold it any other way. I'll just be wiping down the cameras every 5 minutes.

It boots WAAAYYY faster than my Evo 4G, by the way.

It uses Fast Boot, so that explains why it feel like it's instant on. Even from completely off, it's still much faster than my Evo 4G.

Pictures
See my Picasa Album for pictures. When clicking the share button in the Gallery, you can select to share them as 2D or 3D. It warns you that your recipient may not be capable of viewing them.

Screen
The screen is amazing. If I get within an inch, I can BARELY start seeing the pixels.

SD Card
The included 8GB Class 4 SD card is fast! I copied the files (\.data, \Sample 2D Pictures, \Sample 3D Picture, \Sample Music) to my computer at 20 MB/s. It seems faster than my class 10 32 GB Lexar :(

Sense 3.0
The new mail app is worlds better. I love that I have an "All accounts" view now. They color code it on the left so you know from which account they came. I always HATED going through the menu, tapping Accounts, and tapping my other account. So this is nice :)

Messaging app got a facelift. It looks prettier now. It's also quite a lot faster. No more pressing send and waiting forever for the sending dialog box to go away. To be honest, though, I'm assuming they just got rid of that box and do it in the background :p It's still smart because it makes it feel instant.

Signal Strength
I know a lot of you are worried about call quality and signal strength. I can't comment on the former, but I don't think you'll have to worry about the latter :) I've been monitoring the phones in my office, and after about 15 minutes of observing, I'm noticing about 3.25 bars on average from the Evo 3D and only around 1.5 on average from my Evo 4G. Walking through the halls here, the Evo 3D gets 1 or 2 bars where the Evo 4G doesn't even get a signal. The 3G speeds are on par with what I've gotten before.
 
Thanks so much, yourfriendmat for doing that review! Some background here for posterity: yourfriendmat won a little contest to get a phone a few days before even the Sprint Premier people could order one. He was the first to play with the phone around here and gave us all a lot of good info.

In the spirit of the thread, I wanted to compile those reviews and link them here for easy access. Feel free to contact the mod staff if you see a post or thread that you consider high value for someone who might be considering the Evo 3D. Also, this thread contains a LOT of initial feedback from people as they got their hands on the phone. Lots of good tidbits there.

Call Quality:
Poll on call quality - good, ok, bad
http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-3d/361673-call-quality-analysis-still-mostly-subjective.html

Signal Strength:
http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-3d/360306-signal-strength-analysis-evo-3d-evo-4g.html

Camera Picture Quality:
http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-3d/362863-picture-quality-analysis-2d.html


more to come....
 
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yes he/she was one of five.

looking forward to it YFM. let us know how the activation process goes also.


+1, I'm jealous! Based on other reviews, there are some things I'm curious about that I'm hoping you could share your thoughts on after playing with it for a bit. Specifically, things I'm wondering about are below. Sorry about the formatting, I tried to use the bulleted list feature but there is a problem and the text just gets lumped together so this doesn't look like it's working properly.


  • 1) Does it include the actual Swype keyboard app pre-installed? Or does it just use HTC Trace keyboard?
  • 2) How is the Call / Voice quality?
  • 3) Any poor reception issues?
  • 4) How are photos & videos taken with the camera?
  • 5) Does the screen suffer from poor resolution in 2d due to the parallax barrier overlay to give you 3d abilities?

Those are some of the main complaints I think from some of the other reviews that were done last week. I'm very interested to know your opinion on these as well as your overall impression of the phone since you are the first to receive an actual production device that we'll all be getting later this week.


Thanks! :D
 
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+1, I'm jealous! Based on other reviews, there are some things I'm curious about that I'm hoping you could share your thoughts on after playing with it for a bit. Specifically, things I'm wondering about are below. Sorry about the formatting, I tried to use the bulleted list feature but there is a problem and the text just gets lumped together so this doesn't look like it's working properly.


  • 1) Does it include the actual Swype keyboard app pre-installed? Or does it just use HTC Trace keyboard?
  • 2) How is the Call / Voice quality?
  • 3) Any poor reception issues?
  • 4) How are photos & videos taken with the camera?
  • 5) Does the screen suffer from poor resolution in 2d due to the parallax barrier overlay to give you 3d abilities?

Those are some of the main complaints I think from some of the other reviews that were done last week. I'm very interested to know your opinion on these as well as your overall impression of the phone since you are the first to receive an actual production device that we'll all be getting later this week.


Thanks! :D

Gotta go to work soon, but I can answer the first one at least. It DOES have Swype. See it in my pictures once they are up.
 
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And look what we have here:

In the process of begging my GM to let me buy mines NOW!!!

The other two pics I have to resize, will do after I finish playing with this beauty!
 

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Sense 3.0
The new mail app is worlds better. I love that I have an "All accounts" view now. They color code it on the left so you know from which account they came. I always HATED going through the menu, tapping Accounts, and tapping my other account. So this is nice :)
Thank Fing God. I've hated NOT having this feature after using my Pre that had it over 2 years ago. About time!
 
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yes sprint SP members who entered a contest on the sprint site were able to be picked out of a drawing for 5 htc evo 3ds. its part of their first to try bag...

Ah, well in that case, EXTRA congratulations are in order! I didn't realize YFM won a contest and a free Evo 3D. Congratulations on being one of the lucky winners! :D

As a side note, while I signed up for the SP drawings for a free Evo as well, I had no anticipation of winning, I can't even manage to win a $5 prize at Bingo lol :cool:
 
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yes sprint SP members who entered a contest on the sprint site were able to be picked out of a drawing for 5 htc evo 3ds. its part of their first to try bag...
Wow nice! I remember getting that email, and entering one time. Of course I'm not lucky enough to win. :eek:

Congrats to the winners!!! :D

...As a side note, while I signed up for the SP drawings for a free Evo as well, I had no anticipation of winning, I can't even manage to win a $5 prize at Bingo lol :cool:
You and me both... LOL
 
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yes sprint SP members who entered a contest on the sprint site were able to be picked out of a drawing for 5 htc evo 3ds. its part of their first to try bag...

Where is the "Thanks but I kind of Hate You!" Button under yourfriendmatt's post? lol totally kidding.... or am I? haha The next day or two are going to be a struggle for the people around me.
 
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