Review: The world's first 4G phone

A fun phone

HTC's Evo 4G phone is fast, powerful and fun to use - as long as your heart isn't set on tapping into the speedier new network it was designed for.

The Evo 4G, $199 in the US, with a two-year contract and rebate, is the first smart phone made for Sprint's fourth-generation wireless network, which is available in Seattle and a few dozen other cities from Thursday.

But the vast majority of the time, the phone was connected to the current-generation 3G network.

It turns out there are gaps in the coverage area, and my house and my office are both in that 4G-free zone.

That means I usually couldn't surf the Web and chat on the phone at the same time. It also wouldn't let me upload a large video file over 3G, waiting instead to be connected to a Wi-Fi network. The upload did work from my car once I got a 4G signal a few blocks from home.

Another disappointment was that the video-chat feature wasn't set up on the review unit from Sprint.

I used the program, called Qik, to stream live video to a website, which seemed to work well over 3G without too much of a lag.

Sprint says once the feature is working on the phones, I would have been able to chat with my parents, say, after they downloaded a desktop version of Qik.

All that said, I wouldn't pass on the Evo 4G completely.

Review: Jessica Mintz, AP Technology writer

Image: Peter Chou (L), CEO of HTC Corp., and Sprint CEO Dan Hesse hold HTC EVO 4G smartphones at the International CTIA Wireless trade show in Las Vegas, Nevada in March 2010

Images Courtesy: Reuters, AP, www.now.sprint.com and www.community.sprint.com

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