For a moment, David Pogue’s review of the HTC Evo had put the dagger in my choice of the new 4G phone, battery life being the culprit again. Here’s the money quote:
The good news is that most of the disappointing, flaky and mediocre aspects of the Evo all pertain to its cutting-edge features. Thousands of people don’t actually care about 4G or hot spots or video calling. They take pleasure in the Evo’s less exotic features: sizzling speed, smooth software, ingenious layout of the five home screens, and even the little kickstand that props the thing up when you’re watching a video.
Beyond that, the Evo is basically a technology demo. It’s a glimpse at the high-speed, smooth-video future of this country’s cell systems, at least for people who live in those 32 lucky hamlets.
Some of the Evo fans descended on the comments with contradicting experiences. Apparently if you work a little you can easily decrease the power consumption.
The real killer may be the monthly charges that accrue if you want the Evo with all the bells and whistles. You’re looking at $70 for the plan Sprint forces on you, plus $10 for the privilege of 4G (even if you’re not covered), plus $30 for WiFi hotspotting. That’s $110 a month total.
But here’s a combination of an iPhone 4 and a modem from Clearwire:
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$40 AT&T Nation 450 (voice)
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$5 AT&T Messaging 200 (text)
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$25 AT&T DataPro plan (data)
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$40 4G/3G unlimited Clear data plan
So for the same $110 bucks, I get the identical coverage on my laptop, which I can use as a WiFi hotspot through MacOS X Internet sharing, and an arguably better phone. Or at least one with less hassle. And I could ease into this plan, test driving the iPhone 4 with tethering before committing to Clear.
Now that’s not a complete apples to apples comparison, since the data plan for the phone is unlimited, text and bytes, with Sprint, while with AT&T I’m capped at 200 texts and 2GB of data. There’s also the $115 for the Clear modem and the inconvenience of another device. Alternatively, I could forgo the Clear 4G plan, add tethering to the AT&T plan and get a monthly hit of $90.
I still haven’t run into a review that flat out says “the Evo is great” with no qualms. Maybe I should trawl the Android fan sites to get another perspective.