Former CrackBerry Addict's 2nd Week Summary on the EVO

strick1226

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Today wraps up a total of two weeks without my Tour 9630, and my new life on the EVO. For any still considering jumping from RIM, please take this info into consideration.

Have I run into a few issues? Sure, but they've been very minimal. The advantages of Froyo on the EVO compared to BB OS5 on the Tour far outweigh the small problems I've encountered.


  • SPEED. I remain stunned, even now, at just how fast this thing is. I don't know just what CPU is in the BB Tour 9630, but it feels drastically underpowered in comparison.


  • It's wonderfully customizable--I can place icons and widgets nearly anywhere I want. The array of available apps is astounding, and most of the highly-rated ones really are quite good.


  • Battery life has not been an issue for me, even with an Exchange account syncing every minute from 0700-1800 every weekday (I love being able to schedule the polling activity of the email accounts!). In all fairness, I don't use fancy stuff like live wallpaper or watch Sprint TV, but battery life seems quite adequate for my uses (primarily messaging and browser use).


  • The large screen makes everything easier on the phone. I think I mentioned this before, but the screen appears to be much more accurate and responsive to input than either of our iPod Touch 2G's. The lack of a physical keyboard still "seems" weird to me, but, in actual day-to-day use, I don't miss it--the EVO's onscreen kb really is that good.


  • The webkit browser makes browsing the web a practical matter, and not the incredibly frustrating experience I found it to be on the Berry. I guess I need to look into rooting the phone, though--I really miss Adblock's Easylist filter!

My wife and I just picked up a second EVO yesterday--for her! She decided to make the switch as well, even without the benefit of upgrade pricing. We lucked out when one of my daily calls to Sprint stores in the area led her to pick up one of 10 new EVO's that just arrived yesterday morning. :)

Although I don't do Facebook, she loves it, and I was a little worried about how the Facebook app for Android would be; she's used to it on both the BB and iPod Touch platforms. Thankfully, she says it works just great--even likes it better than on the BB. I was pleasantly surprised to see just how quickly she became comfortable with the new interface in just half a day, already removing stock widgets and customizing the phone to exactly how she wanted it to look.

Really, the only things I miss?


  • Being able to customize a particular contact to not only use a custom ringtone, but also to allow for it to override the current sound profile


  • Being able to sort contacts list by last name. This seems pretty basic to me; I really don't quite understand why most custom UI's w/Froyo don't allow for this.

All in all, it's a great phone, on a great platform. Looks like we'll be boxing up our two 9630's and shipping them off to Gazelle.com soon! :)

Thanks again to everyone else for sharing their experiences in making the BB-->Android transition.
 

npark

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  • Battery life has not been an issue for me, even with an Exchange account syncing every minute from 0700-1800 every weekday (I love being able to schedule the polling activity of the email accounts!). In all fairness, I don't use fancy stuff like live wallpaper or watch Sprint TV, but battery life seems quite adequate for my uses (primarily messaging and browser use).

I make the next two comments because I'd like to suggest what would seem to be a more efficient solution:

- Why do you poll from 7am to 6pm? Wouldn't you rather set it for push mail (as items arrive)? It seems that would be a better solution for you. I have my Exchange Active Sync account to push email from 8am to 8pm on M-F and sync every 4 hours otherwise.

- If in-fact it's not an Exchange account, but rather you were using Outlook and pop3, I would suggest setting gmail as your mail checker and then using push mail. Or, migrate your email domain to google Apps and continue to use Outlook your other stuff unchanged, but using google Apps as the backend mail server.

In anycase, grats on your experience with the Evo! I'm glad you're enjoying the transition.
 

strick1226

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Good question! I discovered setting the Exchange account for "as items arrive" ended up in some pretty delayed receipt of emails--10-15 minutes past when they would show up on Outlook.

This seems to be the best solution for our environment, which is a weird non-ActiveSync Exchange 2007 setup. Strangely enough, I couldn't ever get it to work w/Touchdown, but the stock Froyo accounts options made it work ! (?)
 

Cobravision

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Although I don't do Facebook, she loves it, and I was a little worried about how the Facebook app for Android would be; she's used to it on both the BB and iPod Touch platforms. Thankfully, she says it works just great--even likes it better than on the BB.

Actually, I was never on Facebook before I got the Evo. The reason I joined was because I was taking all my pics and vids from the Evo anyway, it was a seamless process to upload them to Facebook. I even opened a Youtube account for the videos. So now, all my friends and family can see my daughters in action.

But I really hate being asked to be friends by someone I have no interest in communicating with anymore. But that's not an Evo issue.
 

Kedar

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I think you can assign ringtone to contact and let it override... But I'm on phone so can't really explain.
 

dwaynewilliams#WN

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My wife and I both had 9630s, but I got the EVO. I have tried messing around with hers every time I start to miss my blackberry and now it almost seems unusable to me. The phone seems so slow which is weird, because it seemed to be fast when I owned one. The browser experience is abysmal compared to the EVO browser. I love full flash. The features on this phone is amazing and they keep getting better.
 

mr.wizard

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Im glad to hear the tour owners here haven't regretted the switch. I too had a tour, and told everyone how cool it was. Now, I'm tellin everyone how my tour pales in comparison to my new Evo. I find new features and apps every day.
 

dwaynewilliams#WN

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Im glad to hear the tour owners here haven't regretted the switch. I too had a tour, and told everyone how cool it was. Now, I'm tellin everyone how my tour pales in comparison to my new Evo. I find new features and apps every day.

That's the great thing about Android devices. There are so many things you can do with them and new features are being added all the time.
 

zippybossrock

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This is all great to hear!! I have a Tour right now and am a LONG 4 days away from my upgrade date. Reading posts like this are proof that I'm making the right decision in jumping the RIM ship. Have been on a wait list at Best Buy for about a week. Called Friday AM and was told I am #2 on the list and should get my EVO in the next shipment.
 

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