User Reviews + first impressions

[Emmexx]

My question is... is it worth it?

Pros and cons to the choice, honestly. The smoothness of the glass and the tactile feel are simply amazing. Putting a screen protector on keeps even small abrasians from marring the beautiful display. Some protectors do distort the display in some fashion, though most I have seen are negligible.

I, personally, keep one on all my phones based on my prior history with watches. Every single one I have ever owned has had the face of the wrist watch broken or marred in some fashion. I take special care this does not happen to the device I use, among a multitude of other things, to tell time.

 

[JMPointelin]

I have also received my new EVO 3D - I'm a Sprint Product Ambassador and employee. I've had the phone for about a week and love the phone and havne't had any complaints of voice quality or noticed anything in my own use.

The battery life is good - I don't use any task killers and haven't had to charge during the day since the day I first got it and loaded all my apps and settings.

3D is very cool but different - it's not like the movies where things jump out at you, it adds depth behind the picture if that makes sense. The preloaded pictures are really cool but even taking a picture of your desk or kids can show the effects.

The dual core processor is so fast - my daughter says that there is no lag when she plays Angry Birds! But seriously there is no lag when you are opening programs or moving between screens at all.

 

[momoceio]

Just so everyone is clear "Gorilla Glass" isn't magical glass. Glass has a hardness range, I believe it just goes through a different tempering technique to make the glass as absolutely hard as glass can be. Any hard metals or materials will still very easily scratch "Gorilla Gass". In a way, I prefer that they don't have "Gorilla Glass" because it gives a false sense of security. So, just because it doesn't have "Gorilla Glass" doesn't mean that the glass on the E3D isn't equally scratch resistant.

 

[Evo_luv]

I live in the desert where we have sand - one of the active ingredients in sandpaper. I'll definitely be going for a screen protector.

I live 30 minutes from the beach so to think that my phone won't see sand is pretty niave. I will definatly be getting a screen protector. I have to protect my baby

 

[EarlyMon]

I have also received my new EVO 3D - I'm a Sprint Product Ambassador and employee. I've had the phone for about a week and love the phone and havne't had any complaints of voice quality or noticed anything in my own use.

The battery life is good - I don't use any task killers and haven't had to charge during the day since the day I first got it and loaded all my apps and settings.

3D is very cool but different - it's not like the movies where things jump out at you, it adds depth behind the picture if that makes sense. The preloaded pictures are really cool but even taking a picture of your desk or kids can show the effects.

The dual core processor is so fast - my daughter says that there is no lag when she plays Angry Birds! But seriously there is no lag when you are opening programs or moving between screens at all.

Ambassador, welcome to the 3vo Forum!

As you can see, this thread is full of our trade representatives (people doing business with Sprint). Mod staff is prepared to give you the keys to the city and sign a bilateral disarmament agreement in exchange for any inside info you can share, especially on the update situation.

 

[C21Realtor]

Got mine last night. Very excited to be first with a cool new phone. Battery came charged, and worked great last night. I charged it overnight. Used the phone average today, with some 3g web use, hooked it to a charger while in the car, and it's in the yellow at 4:30. No 3d usage, no pictures taken, no 4g usage. Just calls and text messages. I'm a Realtor. This was not a heavy day of calling, and there were no long calls.

I want the phone to work for me, and I'll give it a couple of weeks, but the early indication is cool functions. Sub par for business calls (quality), email and text (battery). I'm new to android from a windows phone, so I'll give it a fair shot. My daughter loves her Optimus S.

 

[dan330]

earlymon working it.... everybody step back.. give the man room.

 

[dan330]

Got mine last night. Battery came charged, and worked great last night. Charged overnight. Used the phone average today, hooked it to a charger while in the car, and it's in the yellow at 4:30. No 3d usage, no pictures taken, no 4g usage. Just calls and text messages. I'm a Realtor. This was not a heavy day of calling, and there were no long calls.

I'll give it a couple of weeks, but the early indication is cool functions. Sub par for business calls (quality), email and text (battery).

did you have a sprint phone before?


all carriers have week areas of service.. some are better in one area.. and others are better in others.

maybe in your area... sprint cell is not strong.. or is having some issues that day.

week signals cause the phone to search for the towers constantly.... it is like the phone is making short phone calls.. all the time. which eats the battery. check the phone's awake time and what is keeping it on..beating the battery.

 

[sikclown]

did you have a sprint phone before?


all carriers have week areas of service.. some are better in one area.. and others are better in others.

maybe in your area... sprint cell is not strong.. or is having some issues that day.

week signals cause the phone to search for the towers constantly.... it is like the phone is making short phone calls.. all the time. which eats the battery. check the phone's awake time and what is keeping it on..beating the battery.

It is also possible that the HTC Watch bug that caused the 3vo to get stuck syncing ate the battery. I had great battery yesterday but noticed I draining faster today. Looked at all running apps and sure enough Watch was keeping phone syncing and awake. That will drain every time. FYI if you go to HTC Software Update under System Updates they have a fix already.

 

[falconey]

Got mine last night. Very excited to be first with a cool new phone. Battery came charged, and worked great last night. I charged it overnight. Used the phone average today, with some 3g web use, hooked it to a charger while in the car, and it's in the yellow at 4:30. No 3d usage, no pictures taken, no 4g usage. Just calls and text messages. I'm a Realtor. This was not a heavy day of calling, and there were no long calls.

I want the phone to work for me, and I'll give it a couple of weeks, but the early indication is cool functions. Sub par for business calls (quality), email and text (battery). I'm new to android from a windows phone, so I'll give it a fair shot. My daughter loves her Optimus S.

That's very weird. I'm still on my first charge after 24 hours and I have 15% battery left. I haven't used phone, 3g or text messaging yet. Other than that I've been on wifi with normal useage otherwise. Actually I've used the device to watch many videos and to let my coworkers watch them as well.

I'm going to recharge to full, activate the phone and see how long I can go again.

Edit: Just to add. If you won't be around wifi much I would suggest getting a second battery. The 3g radio is the biggest battery drainer on the EVO 4G outside of the actual display.

 

[blingeorkl]

Got mine last night. Very excited to be first with a cool new phone. Battery came charged, and worked great last night. I charged it overnight. Used the phone average today, with some 3g web use, hooked it to a charger while in the car, and it's in the yellow at 4:30. No 3d usage, no pictures taken, no 4g usage. Just calls and text messages. I'm a Realtor. This was not a heavy day of calling, and there were no long calls.

I want the phone to work for me, and I'll give it a couple of weeks, but the early indication is cool functions. Sub par for business calls (quality), email and text (battery). I'm new to android from a windows phone, so I'll give it a fair shot. My daughter loves her Optimus S.

As others may have mentioned, ensure you update PRL in the settings->system updates menu if you haven't already and are in a location where you spend a significant amount of time (IE home and your office).

 

[SherlockHolmes76]

Got mine last night. Very excited to be first with a cool new phone. Battery came charged, and worked great last night. I charged it overnight. Used the phone average today, with some 3g web use, hooked it to a charger while in the car, and it's in the yellow at 4:30. No 3d usage, no pictures taken, no 4g usage. Just calls and text messages. I'm a Realtor. This was not a heavy day of calling, and there were no long calls.

I want the phone to work for me, and I'll give it a couple of weeks, but the early indication is cool functions. Sub par for business calls (quality), email and text (battery). I'm new to android from a windows phone, so I'll give it a fair shot. My daughter loves her Optimus S.

I got mine yesterday and noticed that the sync icon seemed like it was continually on (even after the OTA update), but didn't think much about it since it was plugged in and I was still setting things up. Today I kept an eye on it and it never disappeared; I also noticed that in the battery info that the Uptime and Awake time were the same (never good for battery life).

So I did a factory reset (but not erasing the sdcard) and before adding anything I verified that the phone would now go to sleep (uptime > awake time). Now I'll add the apps back one by one and monitor things as I go. Hopefully it wasn't app related but can't be too careful. I've also noticed that battery drain is much slower.

Keeping fingers crossed, because other than that and the Green Hornet issue which seems to be resolved now, I love the phone!

 

[falconey]

I got mine yesterday and noticed that the sync icon seemed like it was continually on (even after the OTA update), but didn't think much about it since it was plugged in and I was still setting things up. Today I kept an eye on it and it never disappeared; I also noticed that in the battery info that the Uptime and Awake time were the same (never good for battery life).

So I did a factory reset (but not erasing the sdcard) and before adding anything I verified that the phone would now go to sleep (uptime > awake time). Now I'll add the apps back one by one and monitor things as I go. Hopefully it wasn't app related but can't be too careful. I've also noticed that battery drain is much slower.

Keeping fingers crossed, because other than that and the Green Hornet issue which seems to be resolved now, I love the phone!

I forget which thread, but there was a fix for the syncing icon issue floating around.

 

[sikclown]

I got mine yesterday and noticed that the sync icon seemed like it was continually on (even after the OTA update), but didn't think much about it since it was plugged in and I was still setting things up. Today I kept an eye on it and it never disappeared; I also noticed that in the battery info that the Uptime and Awake time were the same (never good for battery life).

So I did a factory reset (but not erasing the sdcard) and before adding anything I verified that the phone would now go to sleep (uptime > awake time). Now I'll add the apps back one by one and monitor things as I go. Hopefully it wasn't app related but can't be too careful. I've also noticed that battery drain is much slower.

Keeping fingers crossed, because other than that and the Green Hornet issue which seems to be resolved now, I love the phone!

If you read my post above you will see it is a bug with HTC Watch. Go to Menu then Settings then System Updates then HTC Software Update and Check now. There will be 2 updates both for HTC Watch that fixes the constant syncing and phone awake issue. No need for a hard reset.

 

[SherlockHolmes76]

Understood. I had run both updates and rebooted many times. For whatever reason, the update didn't work until I did a factory reset.

 

[sikclown]

One little bug I have found so far is the Icons for any Apps I downloaded from Amazon Market that I put on the home screen turn generic after a total restart. I think the OTA did this because it uninstalled the Amazon AppStore for some reason.

 

[JGOTit18]

First impressions:

- The screen is beautiful. Definitely liking the higher resolution and the crisp, vivid colors. Screen does gets washed out at extreme angles, though.

- Phone call quality was just fine. I'm really not seeing how reviewers were calling the phone quality atrocious. I've engaged in multiple phone convo's since having the phone, and both parties were heard almost crystal clear.

- The phone is fast. and ridiculously fast. I have yet to encounter any type of significant slow down running or doing anything with the phone. However, I noticed a slight...and I mean SLIIIIIIGHT hit on performance hit when using live wallpapers.

- Battery life so far is average. I wasn't expecting something out of this world....but like everyone else has mentioned....use anything 3D related...and it drains your phone severely. so view/watch/shoot content in 3D very wisely.

- Definitely liking the new Sense. it's aesthetically pleasing and it gets the job done. Also like the 'quick settings' feature on the pull down notification bar. makes turning radios on/off extremely quick and simple.

- 3D content is pretty cool....I'll be the first to say I think 3D in general is pretty gimmicky and for the birds....but I was actually surprised at how neat it is. The 3D sample pics on the phone are NICE. It's as simple as finding the narrow sweet spot, letting your eyes focus a bit...then BAM. Definitely like the depth as well.

- Picture quality in 3D was nice. Nothing extraordinary. Just have to let the cam focus a bit before snapping your shot. Pictures in 2D so far have been what I expected. slightly better than shots I've seen taken with the EVO 4G. It's not the complete replacement for your digital camera, but it does get the job done.

- One negative to me thus far....is....I live in a relatively hot place...where temps hit 100+ daily during the summer....if you have the weather lockscreen displayed when you unlock the phone....the first digit of the temperature is cut off. so instead of reading '106 degrees'....I see '06 degrees'......any way to fix that?


Overall, I am extremely satisfied with this phone. Having it a little over 24 hours and I realize I'm gonna have a lot of fun with it. If you have any questions, ask away.

p.s. I wrote this all in about a couple of minutes, so bear with me if there's grammatical errors, etc.

 

[ArmageddonX]

- One negative to me thus far....is....I live in a relatively hot place...where temps hit 100+ daily during the summer....if you have the weather lockscreen displayed when you unlock the phone....the first digit of the temperature is cut off. so instead of reading '106 degrees'....I see '06 degrees'......any way to fix that?

I'm having this problem too. I'm in Phoenix and it was 114 degrees yesterday LOL

 

[papermonkey01]

Also worth noting if you set your phone on it's back on a flat surface only a very small part of the bottom of the glass touches the surface because of the angle. Looks like it was designed to do that. I would still feel much better with a case keeping it off of anything but this'll do for now.

Otterbox defender case covers the lenses nicely

 

[papermonkey01]

As for the handcent issue it hasn't bothered me at all. The only thing it doesn't do is show the message count number in the top corner of the icon on the lock screen. However it does show in the notification bar so I didn't think it was that big of a deal.

 

[C21Realtor]

This phone is cool enough to give it a chance. I need to do some research about what I might have turned on that I can be sure is off. I tried to get the Green Hornet, (no) and I'm sure there's a fix. Maybe something is still trying to download. I turned on the nav, and turned it off. Maybe i should turn off the locate feature.

I don't want to rip on my new phone, but it's not easy to be an early adopter again. After being the first on my block with a host of failed Palm products, always with Sprint, there are some puts and takes along the way to technological superiority.

 

[novox77]

Coming from the Evo, I have to unlearn some muscle memory. I'm swiping through the home screens with too much force that it triggers the carousel.

the swype keyboard is physically smaller now, so i am fat fingering a lot more.

Not concerned though. I've switched ROMs enough to accept having to unlearn stuff all the time.

 

[lafester]

First impression... nicer looking then I thought it would be. The red ring is not too bad (still want black though). camera button is actually pretty nice, not cheap feeling. Nice solid feel to the phone.

Screen looks good but of course only when looking at it dead on. After using amoled for a year its hard to get past how easily the screen washes out. There is light leak around the bottom edge of the phone and there is one little dot of light that comes through in between home and settings buttons (defect).

Overall the build quality is much better then the evo but not as nice as other high end phones (like sensation or thunderbolt). Software is fast but not insane fast as others have posted. Overall I am pleased with how well it runs out of the box.

Have not checked out 3d yet... thats next

edit -- browser is fast and smooth. nice... almost makes the stock browser usable.
3d is wow. yes it is intense. but it is also pretty darn cool. look forward to trying out some movies but hopefully it isn't quite as hard on the eyes.

 

[dan330]

ok.. this washout at an angle thing.... with the screen...

are we talking about only in 3D viewing? or all the time, even in regular 2D images?

 

[lafester]

ok.. this washout at an angle thing.... with the screen...

are we talking about only in 3D viewing? or all the time, even in regular 2D images?

regular viewing. as i said i haven't even tried 3d yet.

if you haven't used amoled you are probably used to it.