I need a lot of help here guys...

[EarlyMon]

Sorry if this has been posted, but aside from 1ghz a4 processor, front cam/vid talk, battery life and higher res, what does iPhone 4 have over 3gs?

Personally, I think that pretty much nails it.

 

[ConfusedHumanBeing]

Great job! A few things in your list I can help deconflict, in my opinion, it'll help.

1. Retinal Display.

I'm all for higher res. I'm an early adopter of HDTV, for example. BUT - here's the deal on that:

a. the eye (+/- a bit for the population) can resolve down to a certain sub-degree (as in 360 degrees).
b. that info is used in the motion picture, TV and HDTV crowds to decide how far you should sit from how big a screen with how much resolution.
c. the idea on one hand is to not have wasted pixels (imagine going a hundred yards out from your tv (turned on) at night - basically, you go far enough away where all you can tell is if it's on or off, and it's a one pixel TV at that point.
d. the idea on the other hand is that you don't want to get so close on the display that the picture disintegrates into a bunch of dots instead of a coherent picture (under that parameter in point a, above).
e. there's a minimum point, in general, for the eye, such that if you get something too close to your face, you cannot focus - it's a blur.

The "Retinal Display" simply says the dot density is so great that you can't get the screen so close you'll only see dots - you'll just get blur from going out of your focus range.

You can test out the idea with your iPod Touch to see if that's important to you or not - your Touch is the same res as rev 3 iPhone.

Personally, I do nothing close up, so the idea of "Retinal Display" is just a waste of resolution to me. Your mileage may vary (YMMV).

The original iPod Touch/iPhone and Evo resolutions seem quite sensible to me for the use case of a personal electronic display.

HTC did the same goofiness with an 8 Mpixel camera where Apple has 5 Mp - just specsmanship. Similarly in a camera, resolution ain't everything - at a certain point, it's the lens quality and the lens size - how much light enters the lens and then gets distributed to each pixel sensor is way more important than Mp.

Until I get proven wrong, I'm going to make fun of all of my iPhone 4 buddies with their wimpy little front facing camera compared to my Evo, but the first time they Skype videochat me and it looks OK, I'm gonna have to shut up. (you know - buddies.)

2. Facetime

The Evo has a similar screwup called Qik: Qik on EVO Does Free Video Chat.

I call this a screwup because for video chatting, both lock you to their platforms and have restrictions going outside their little world.

If you want any of the social thingies specific to Facetime or Qik, so be it, you can review and decide on that.

If you want full platform freedom for making video calls you want a Skype account and you want to wrapper it (access it) via Fring.

You just install Fring and tell it what transports to manage - Skype, AIM (so you can get to your iChat buddies by text, but not video - it doesn't support the iChat A/V full protocols - again - that's private, but you can get AIM working with iChat A/V - but I've yet to see that on a phone (outside of, bet me that's what Facetime is automagically doing)). Fring also connects to jabber (Google Talk) and MSN and Yahoo Messenger and twitter and SIP and ICQ and your address book.

You want Fring.

Because of Fring and Skype - available and works GREAT for both iPhone and Evo - I call vendor-locked stuff like Facetime and Qik as screwups.

For an iPod Touch replacement, I'd expect you to get your best battery and interface-you're-used-to performance from the iPhone - those have always been marketed as the best iPod there is Jobs himself, from Day One.

3. Safari

OK, I'm a huge Safari fan. But - I'm way happy with the stock browser on my Evo. You zoom in, it reflows, no left-right panning when all you want is up-down scrolling. I've successfully blogged and posted from my Evo browser - plus - I like the rich music on Magnatune and that works great. (hope you checked out and liked the Trip Wamsley link in my earlier post)

Heavy lifting I leave for my desktop browsing - again - YMMV.

4. AT&T quality

I don't know. I was with them until 3 years ago and the quality was good - for calls anyway. You'll have to make your own decision about their new network phone policies for yourself.

Price is a big killer. I'm one of the two heaviest phone users in our company. The rest of the gang is kinda normal, a few exceptions, they mostly use iPhones. The whole crowd is always complaining to me about usage and "can I call the office phone, it's the end of the month" or "can we chat on the desktop, it's the end of the month" - and every month they report their bill add-ons while I just pay a flat rate with zero worries.

Best phone with a music player attached - Evo
Best music player with a phone attached - iPhone

And that's why I still carry an iPod nano for my heavier music lifting.

Tough decision because you want to go to just one device.

You freaking normal guy, you - shame on you!!

Just looked at Fring, and wow, it's pretty amazing. Great all-in-one app for video calling especially. I'm comparing Sprint's and AT&T's plans (hope I'm looking at the right one) and Sprint's is definitely more valuable than AT&T's. You get more stuff (unlimited data for instance) with the 69.99 plan than AT&T's plan. Thanks for the help!

 

[EarlyMon]

Sports = I am sure you can find an app for that.. if not; there is always the internet at blazing speeds to see official team sites! Add in Sprint TV and ESPN!!! Does AT&T have a TV app??

sport Android Freeware. Download free sport software for Android Phones.

 

[ConfusedHumanBeing]

oh, and one more thing, is the EVO video format the same .mp4 that the iPhone has? And does the EVO have more than 1 video format? (For watching movies)

 

[EarlyMon]

oh, and one more thing, is the EVO video format the same .mp4 that the iPhone has? And does the EVO have more than 1 video format? (For watching movies)

You betcha. Some of the codecs (formats) are named in the Meridian review link I posted earlier.

There's another media player in beta development right now that will be a one-stop location for most all of the codecs you can name.

Think of it as nearly having QuickTime + Perian - The swiss-army knife of QuickTime components coming soon to your Evo.

And if you don't have Perian on your OS X machines - get it, it's the bomb.

PS - With media formats, you really have to care about two things: the wrapper (the way file is laid out) and the codec - the contents of the file.

So, I have an .mpg file that won't play on my Evo when my others do - because that one file is using one of the unsupported (at present) codecs.

But .mp4 - yeah.

 

[pwnst*r]

It'd be awesome if VLC went open source :|

 

[EarlyMon]

It'd be awesome if VLC went open source :|

Maybe - maybe not. I couldn't really say, personally.

Remember, VLC is a tool for media pros - look at the preferences/settings. Now - go to the VLC forums and see what an unwashed user gets when he asks what the right config questions are: a polite, but definite, although gentle, spanking.

It's their tool, we're just interlopers.

VLC is pretty great, but it does get unstable on some ports - makes sense, it's their development tool.

I'd love nothing better for VLC on my Evo - but I expect the whole issue of the libdvdcss distribution has to be considered.

 

[pwnst*r]

Maybe - maybe not. I couldn't really say, personally.

Remember, VLC is a tool for media pros - look at the preferences/settings. Now - go to the VLC forums and see what an unwashed user gets when he asks what the right config questions are: a polite, but definite, although gentle, spanking.

It's their tool, we're just interlopers.

VLC is pretty great, but it does get unstable on some ports - makes sense, it's their development tool.

I'd love nothing better for VLC on my Evo - but I expect the whole issue of the libdvdcss distribution has to be considered.

It's also a simple tool for playback of almost any codec in existence. I've not ever needed to use the advance functions of it (yes I know it'll rip DVD's etc) and I use it for both Linux and Windows.

 

[EarlyMon]

It's also a simple tool for playback of almost any codec in existence. I've not ever needed to use the advance functions of it (yes I know it'll rip DVD's etc) and I use it for both Linux and Windows.

Without a doubt - it was the first thing I checked for with my last phone.

BTW - I guess some things have changed - but given that you can get source, can join the devs, and it's covered by the GPL and LGPL - shows what we know!

VideoLAN - VideoLAN developers - VLC media player

 

[EarlyMon]

Hey - just found this - looks pretty useful:

How to sync the HTC EVO 4G with iTunes - Know Your Cell

 

[Zameus]

One reason why you should get the EVO.........................the kickstand baby!! lol

Whatever you choose, good luck. I'm sure you won't regret your purchase!

 

[ConfusedHumanBeing]

Hey EarlyMon you've listed a few great music apps that look pretty nice. Can you share me your favorite apps, and ones that you would recommend?

 

[EarlyMon]

Hey EarlyMon you've listed a few great music apps that look pretty nice. Can you share me your favorite apps, and ones that you would recommend?

Besides the Meridian media player, I also use Rings Extended - seems that normal Android lets you choose your own mp3s for ringtones and notifications, but you need to add that on the Evo to get the option.

BTW - On my Mac I run AudioHijack Pro from Rogue Amoeba - it's worth the price of admission for so many things. Including my Monte Python "I told him we already got one!" ringtone that I made from YouTube.

I control my startup per this: http://androidforums.com/htc-evo-4g/102336-real-app-startup-control.html

Then, there's the Google must haves: Maps, Navigation (free speaking nav, no need for the Sprint add-on), Sky and Translator. Translator is cool - lets you translate foreign words and phrases - and it has a speaking mode: say it in English, hear it in other. And Compass by Snaptic - I figured I had everything else for location....

For references, Dictionary.com and WikiMobile.

Have a GDocs app - kinda a nice helper. All MS Office doc formats (read only) and PDFs are already handled by apps that come with the phone - so I don't recall their names. I also use Thinking Space for reading Mind Mapping files.

For eBooks, I use Aldiko Book Reader.

For sms, I totally prefer Handcent SMS over the stock app.

TV.com in addition to Sprint TV.

RealCalc Scientific Calculator - not only matches almost perfectly the Casio I've carried for years, but also has a handy convert anything to anything button - except currency, and you can google that.

I've been playing around with the Astro File Manager, the EStrongs File Explorer and AndFTP - not sure which I prefer for what at this point. (Applications -> Utilities -> Bluetooth File Exchange on your Mac also works swimmingly here.)

Favorite helper apps - No Lock (can turn on/off the "swipe to open" feature), LED Light (use camera LEDs as flashlight), and I'm monitoring resources with SystemPanelLite and Spare Parts and grabbing screen shots with ShootMe.

I grabbed The Weather Channel app - a quick view is built in with HTC Sense, but sometimes I like a little more.

Fring you already heard about.

For fun, I have Mirror 4 Evo, SchottGunn, Coin Flip, and prolly a few other time wasters I play with for a day.

Oh - almost forgot - FM Radio, of course.