HTC EVO 4G LTE First Impressions/Reviews

[dway]

Re: First Impressions?

Activate its second stage. If you just press it as if focusing, it won't launch the camera app. Press it until it gives a vibration and the camera app will launch.

Sent from my EVO using Tapatalk 2

Thanks. I just wasn't holding it long enough despite depressing to the second stage -- but I figure it's to prevent accidental presses which are quite possible given that I'm right handed and the phone is quite large

 

[w5cyc]

Re: First Impressions?

I was pretty skeptical about Beats Audio, but having it now, I like it pretty well. I had preloaded a 32 GB card with all my music and popped the card in at Best Buy. Got home, installed about 130 apps and did a basic run-through. The phone recognizes all the music on the card, so that works. All my apps seem to work well, but more quickly, of course. The phone plays well with Tasker, which is huge for me, because my Nexus S didn't. I also preloaded some episodes of Homicide: Life on the Street onto the card, and watched a few minutes of one episode. That's the only area I'm disappointed in. Video playback quality was not good. But I suspect that's probably more a function of the low- to medium-quality copy I made of the DVD than it is a problem with the phone. I'm sure there are settings in there I can tinker with that I just haven't found yet. Great phone, no regrets.

 

[MDteX]

Re: First Impressions?

So far so good. Battery seems pretty good. It got its first full charge overnight.

So far it is been unplugged for about 4 hours and I was doing emails, texting, showing it off, using the camera and listening to music. So far the battery level has not moved and the details still show about 90%.

Also I have a full 6 bars of signal strength here at work. I do miss the 4G access I had with my OG EVO though. But I should have LTE access next month.

 

[strudel#AC]

Re: First Impressions?

I came from the Samsung Epic 4G. Here are my observations:

- I miss the deep blacks of the Epic's display but besides that the Evo's display blows the Epic out of the water in every possible way. I can't say enough good things about this display, it is simply beautiful

- I am not a big fan of not being able to swap batteries. I am very used to swapping in a fully charged battery at a moments notice and this will take some adjustment. Time will tell if this ends up being a problem for me

- The quality of the 3G radio is so much better then the Epic. I was never able to reliably stream Netflix over 3G with the Epic but the Evo handles it like a champ. I am eager to try streaming Google music in low signal areas, my Epic would pause the music for long period of time while it tried to buffer but I am hopeful the Evo will handle it just fine. I have not actually turned on wifi yet because I am trying to find a situation where 3G is inadequate. I have not encountered such a situation yet.

- The Evo is a beast when it comes to performance. I have tried many times to get it to give any indication that it is working hard such as unresponsiveness or lag. I am still trying but have failed miserably so far. There is a HUGE difference in performance between my stock Evo and my overclocked and performance tweaked Epic. I can't wait to see how the Evo handles overclocking when the time comes

- I have no comments on battery life yet because I am abusing the phone too much to come to any conclusions yet.

- There are a few minor annoyances with Sense but overall I like it. It is a HUGE improvement over Touchwiz which in my opinion, did nothing more then put an obnoixously bright skin over Android. I hated Touchwiz, good riddance!

The camera is very nice and very quick. I don't see myself missing photo opportunities while I wait for shutter lag or the camera app to open like I dealt with on my Epic.

In a nutshell, I am very happy with this phone. Like many people, I am not in love with the design choices on the back but I have a gel case for it so it is not really an issue. I almost find the phone to be too thin so the case protects it and makes it more comfortable to hold, a win-win situation.

 

[rasmithsr]

Re: First Impressions?

The screen is beautiful, faster than my OG EVO, and it looks great! Still getting use to it, miss the menu and search buttons. .

 

[DavidF78]

Re: First Impressions?

Open it the way you normally do, turn the phone over so the usb port is on the top and set the phone down.

 

[sookibong]

Does anyone have any comments regarding multitasking? Does the phone aggressively kill open apps like the One X does?

 

[Nasko]

Everything good said about this phone is true, valid and i agree with it

However I want to voice displeasure with multitasking. It is very reminiscent of how iphone handles multiple apps, by only allowing certain services to run in the background, like music, navigation etc. If i have a couple of tabs open on chrome and go to facebook, then back, it reloads completely. If you look under memory it has less than 1gb available combinded, which means sense has about 256 dedicatated just for it (hope it can be freed with custom roms). I had the epic 4 with cm9 and memory management there was better than this. I get where they are going with having always smooth homescreen and basic functions, but this wouldn't be so neccessary if Sense wasn't such a memory hog. I hope CM9 gets in on this, because multitsking and battery life will be even better than it is now. Otherwise i am very impressed with everything else.

Favorite feature is watching Starcraft 2 casts on 720p. stunning, simply stunning.

P.S. One stupid question: How do you activate fron facing camera.

 

[BigDinCA]

Re: First Impressions?

My First impression is that it is a nice phone, but I think it was over hyped. My expectations may have been a little high by all of the hype. One thing I don't like so far, is the profile pictures for contacts are very distorted. I hope that is just a setting that i haven't figured out yet.

That's an HTC thing, Sense to be exact. It's been like that for a few years. I had the same issues with my old TouchPro, Hero, EVO, E3D... there are workarounds for it that I've seen in tons of threads here, XDA, PPCGeeks, etc.

I'm curious as to what other things you think are over-hyped. And I'm not busting your balls, I really am looking for the other side of the fluff (and no offense to the ƎVO lovers - I'm one of them). I'm looking at picking one up today or tomorrow.

 

[Paul627g]

Re: First Impressions?

I came from the Samsung Epic 4G. Here are my observations:

- I miss the deep blacks of the Epic's display but besides that the Evo's display blows the Epic out of the water in every possible way. I can't say enough good things about this display, it is simply beautiful

- I am not a big fan of not being able to swap batteries. I am very used to swapping in a fully charged battery at a moments notice and this will take some adjustment. Time will tell if this ends up being a problem for me

- The quality of the 3G radio is so much better then the Epic. I was never able to reliably stream Netflix over 3G with the Epic but the Evo handles it like a champ. I am eager to try streaming Google music in low signal areas, my Epic would pause the music for long period of time while it tried to buffer but I am hopeful the Evo will handle it just fine. I have not actually turned on wifi yet because I am trying to find a situation where 3G is inadequate. I have not encountered such a situation yet.

- The Evo is a beast when it comes to performance. I have tried many times to get it to give any indication that it is working hard such as unresponsiveness or lag. I am still trying but have failed miserably so far. There is a HUGE difference in performance between my stock Evo and my overclocked and performance tweaked Epic. I can't wait to see how the Evo handles overclocking when the time comes

- I have no comments on battery life yet because I am abusing the phone too much to come to any conclusions yet.

- There are a few minor annoyances with Sense but overall I like it. It is a HUGE improvement over Touchwiz which in my opinion, did nothing more then put an obnoixously bright skin over Android. I hated Touchwiz, good riddance!

The camera is very nice and very quick. I don't see myself missing photo opportunities while I wait for shutter lag or the camera app to open like I dealt with on my Epic.

In a nutshell, I am very happy with this phone. Like many people, I am not in love with the design choices on the back but I have a gel case for it so it is not really an issue. I almost find the phone to be too thin so the case protects it and makes it more comfortable to hold, a win-win situation.

Great little review... Since I'm a previous Epic 4g owner too this gives me some real input to what this phone is really like compared to the Epic 4g which we at the time thought was a very nice phone.

Looks like HTC has lived up to the expectations with this one I can't wait til my upgrade.

 

[Klotz]

Wi-Fi Signal ---------Using Wi-fi Analyzer i tested this vs. my OG Evo. Not that the old Evo had any issues but new Evo trumped it showing a a very good increase in signal strength for my network and my neighbors.

Camera Lens ---------Removing the back cover, I was happy to find that the camera lens hole is just that, a hole in the cover you can stick a pencil though. The lens itself sits under the cover, not coming into contact with a flat surface you would set it on.

Feel---------Taking a bit to get used to the feel of this phone.Where the OG Evo seemed a perfect fit in my hand.This one can be a bit more difficult for one handed operation. Instead of a more rounded, plastic edge. The metal edge is more ridged and almost abrasive. Its that feeling that im having a hard time getting used to. This phone is so thin though that a thin case will fix that.

Coming from an OG Evo. I've been blown away by this phone. Yes the screen is the killer upgrade on this phone but everything seems better. Sence doesn't suck anymore. I'm digging it like I never thought i could. Everything looks fantastic and working buttery smooth. It wasn't love at first sight but after 24 hours with this phone, its the real deal and i haven't even watched porn on it, yet.

 

[r1fo]

My thoughts after a day of medium/heavy use (defined for me as 2.5 hours of call time, 4 hours surfing on the internet and sending text messages, 20 minute video on youtube, and ~35 minutes taking pictures and video. This was all 95% connected to wifi, bluetooth on but not connected, CDMA only):

Aesthetics
I now see we've been giving the phone way too much grief in the looks department. In person, the design is nothing short of stunning and I really like it. As with most of the people on this forum, I've been planning on covering the back with a case but now that I have hands-on to the device I can really see what Sprint/HTC was going for with this look. I'm seriously debating if I want to cover it up with a case now! Kickstand is strong and sturdy and not as hard to pull out as people have been saying (this is coming from someone who bites their fingernails, so trust me on this)

Screen
Been said before, amazing screen. Works very well, even in direct sunlight and the HD quality is fantastic. While using Google Chrome I sometimes push an unintended button but I believe that is due to the browser and not the screen as this does not happen in the stock browser.

Hardware
Snappy! Very satisfied with the speed. My battery life has been very good as well; as of this post I am still at 47%. My OG Evo would have been dead by now on the stock battery.

Phone - including bluetooth & speakerphone usage
The speakerphone is LOUD!!! I actually had to lower my ring volume rather than keep it all the way up like I normally do. I pulled out my OG Evo and the EVO LTE is indeed noticeably louder.

Overall User Interface (including HTC Sense)
I like what HTC did with sense. It's smooth and looks great. The multitasking "issue" was a concern for me but it looks like I'm not the type of user that relies heavily on the crazy multitasking that other users perform with their phone. Nothing wrong with that, but I'm not that type of user so I guess it works for me.

Widgets
No complaints. Toned down which is good. Some useful HTC Apps through their little hub, but overal stock is working for me right now.

Signal quality (Compared to other devices)
I didn't run a speed test on my OG Evo before swapping but I think this the EVO LTE may be a bit slower in the 3G department. Then again, my area can be spotty so it might just be bad timing on my part. I'll review this over time.

 

[PookiePrancer]

First impression: data slower than molasses. I'm returning mine due to crummy 3G speeds. And I mean crummy.

 

[cloak.n.dagger]

Ok, so after a full day with this phone, all I can say is that I'm in love all over again! HTC has delivered the goods in a big way with this phone. There are a few misses, but everything else is a home run!

- The screen is second to none. Every single person that has seen this screen can only seem to muster up one word, "WOW!" Even outdoors this thing is awesome! The best screen on any device to date! I heard in one of the many reviews that the screen is Gorilla Glass 2! I haven't looked into this yet to see what Gorilla Glass 2 is, but I can say that I have noticed a serious decrease in the amount of finger smudges compared to what I have seen with all my other phones. I'm not sure if that is one one of the features offered by GG2, but it is noticeable!

- Data speeds seem to be the same for me despite more bars being displayed. Can't say that the speeds are worse as they were typically pretty crappy before. Wifi is the way to go with this beauty. Everything sings when on wifi! Can't wait to try out LTE when it's available.

- Kick stand is awesome. Going from the EVO 4G to the EVO 3D I was pissed to not have a kick stand. The EVO 4G LTE has brought kick stand back in a big way. I can use it in almost every possible orientation! It is a bit difficult to dig out, but I'll take that for the functionality that it provides!

- SD Card access was a bit odd. Using a file browser, the folder marked as sdcard was not my SD card! I had to enable extra features in my file browser to allow me to go up one level from /sdcard to /. Once at / I was able to access my sdcard via a folder titled sdcard2! Very strange. Not sure why HTC implemented things this way. Why have a folder called sdcard that isn't my SD card? Not sure....

- The camera is nothing sort of amazing for a cell phone camera. It isn't quite a replacement for my digital camera, but it has some amazing features that my digital camera does not! We all know about the rapid shot feature and the ability to capture still pics from video feeds. However, in accessing old videos (taken from my EVO 3D) from my SD card, I was able to capture still pics form those as well! Fantastic functionality! I used the camera extensively today at my son's soccer tryouts and the rapid shot feature is just amazing! I must have taken over 100 pics today! My only complaint is that there needs to be a back light feature. If there is a bright horizon in the background then the area you are focusing on tends to go really dark! You have to lower the camera to try to force out as much of the background light as possible to get the picture to brighten back up. This has always been an issue with cell cameras, but I was hoping that this camera would be different. Still amazing despite this continuing issue.

- The multitasking issue is a bit of an annoyance for me. I am accustomed to switching between at least 4-5 different apps at a time. In one case I was reading an AC forum thread via the AC Forum app and switched over to respond to a txt message. When I returned to the AC Forum app, it refreshed and was no longer focused on the post I was reading (you Android Central guys should be pissed about this!). I think this needs to be fixed ASAP by HTC. If you hit up XDA you can see that this is something that devs are currently working hard on fixing (Go Devs)! I have sent a tweet to @htc voicing my hopes for a fix and hope that others will also let HTC know how they feel about this. One voice in the dark is not nearly as loud as several hundred!

- The build quality is exceptional, second to none! I was 50/50 on the backing of this phone but when I saw it come out of the box my jaw hit the floor. This thing is damn sexy (and it knows it, LMFAO)! It is much thinner that I am use to and I do find it hard to hold when I am trying to power type out a message or email. However, I am not about to wrap this thing up in a case and keep the rest of the world from seeing my new baby! Every single person that has seen or held my phone has had the same reaction that I had when I first saw it! There is no getting around the beauty of this design when you see it in person!

- Battery life is still rather unknown for me. While today was my first full day with the phone, I did have it connected to a charger at various times throughout the day. I didn't use it much in the morning hours, as I was very busy at work, but used it heavily in the afternoon. I think tomorrow (Saturday) will be a better gauge of how well this phone gets through the day without being charged randomly. I do feel, though, that this phone may have a tough time getting through a medium to heavy usage day without needing to be put on a charger before bed time. We will see how things go tomorrow and I will try to keep in unplugged all day just to see how it does.

Update:
Battery stats after a full days of moderate to heavy use...

- The only bluetooth device I have connected so far is my Sony SmartWatch, and it works perfectly. I had to enable an advanced feature in the bluetooth settings to get it to work, but it works flawlessly! I will try a few of my headsets tomorrow to see how they work as well.

- I haven't really tested out the speaker or music playback just yet. I did try to use the speaker for various things throughout the day and it seemed ok in some things and a bit poor in others. I will have to use it more to narrow down the specifics, but I can't say that it's better than the EVO 4G just yet. However, it does seem to be better that the EVO 3D for sure (that one was the worst I have ever seen).

 

[linzgeneral]

Re: First Impressions?

No complaints about the phone, but the "menu" feature in ICS is a joke. They take away as much screen real estate in some apps to add a menu bar as you gain by having the bigger screen. The dedicated button would be nice to have again.

I totally agree. How the heck to get rid of the taskbar to the top eith the batterry and clock. It seems like you can't and this takes up more space in apps...smdh....

 

[IneffableCause]

I have to say my experience with my EVO has not been as great as most people are posting here. Half of it is probably because I'm coming from stock Android and another carrier.

I'm coming from T-Mobile and I've hated T-Mo's services since I switched to them. It got even worse since I moved south to Savannah, GA. Now up north everyone I know with Sprint gets good service so I expected at least similar service here. Well Sprint service here I've now found is horrible. Everywhere I go my Nexus One is reporting better service than my EVO. Someone called my Nexus and I wanted to see how call quality compared so I called them right back on my EVO and the Nexus sounded better.

At lunch yesterday I ran over to the Sprint store and bought the car dock. I tested Google Navigation on my way home. It was a clear day and most of the drive is open sky. Yet Navigation stopped tracking my movement and displayed "searching for GPS" at least 4 times on a 20 minute drive. My Nexus One almost never does that. Also the car dock that Sprint has is no where close to the quality of what AT&T has with the One X.

Pictures are taken so incredibly fast, which would be great if they weren't all fuzzy. I've seen lots of posted pictures that look good, but none of mine turn out like that. My Nexus One so far takes much better pictures.

The screen is absolutely beautiful and is the most redeeming aspect of the phone. Works great in the sunlight. The phone feels OK when making calls, but just OK. The Galaxy Nexus is comparable size and it was very comfortable.

SenseUI. NonsenseUI is more like it. I've played with stock ICS and just as I've seen several journalists report it feels like they're adding things for the sake of adding them and the stock features are better.

I'm really debating on returning it, but I know no phone is going to have a screen this nice.

 

[linzgeneral]

Well after two days of use, here are my impressions. I must first mention my observation that most of these reviews are from folks coming from the OG EVO to the EVO LTE. I think this make a great diffrerence in the initial impressions. I however, haveat least sampled every good phone out there. This includes the OG EVO, EVO 3D (crappy camera), Samsung Epic Touch (brilliant camera), Iphone 4S (nice camera -limited OS and functionality), Nexus (nice screen and colors/contrast), Galaxy Note (nice screen and camera among others), and other phones like the Photon, I don't care to mention.

Design - Second to none, well done. Robust materials, thin, very pleasant on the eyes - a sure winner. Only downer being the shiny half to the back but I predict that third party vendors will soon have a matted option and others to more suit the bottom. The fact that the phone comes with a kickstand, memory card slot, and camera button makes it a very hard package to top. I actually think these features put it above the new GS3, at least on paper.

Screen- here is where some might disagree with me. I love the screen for the clarity. Details are superbly sharp, text is crisp in a way unequaled by no other phone maybe except for the Rezound and Iphone 4. However, the colors are little bland and the screen can appear to be dull at times. I clearly see it in pics and videos and on certain websites. The colors just aren't nearly as vibrant as the Samsung screens (which may tend to be a bit over-saturated but gorgeous non-the-less). To me the screen could use some more contrast; for example some blacks looks grey instead of the deep blacks found on the Nexus, Galaxy Note, and EpicTouch. Overall, an excellent screen, perhaps indeed the best available, but not without its faults.

Camera - here is another area of contention. The camera is very good, certainly leagues ahead of the OG EVO and 3D - but that's not saying much. I have taken at least 100 pics in various lighting conditions and I noticed a consistent lack of focus in most pics. Maybe I am using the camera wrong but there is something lacking in the focus, the pics looks great but not exactly sharp. I am not having the issues some are having with the focusing. I am stating that the pics are not perfect. They are perhaps about 90% great but not perfect - when all elements of a great pic are considered. I actually saw some reviews that mentioned this. Again, coming from an inferior camera phone might suggest a huge improvement. However, coming from a device like the Iphone 4S, Galaxy Note, or even Epic Touch might leave one less impressed than most. For all of the HTC hype about the camera, I expected more.

Battery - not overly impressed but it is certainly very good. I noticed the battery decreasing rapidly while surfing the web. I did notice that it tends to level off and slow down as you switch to more normal tasks. To be honest, I don't think it has gone through enough charging cycles to make an adequate assessment. I do think that it should easily last a day though and is easily one of the better batteries available on a phone today.

OS- I actually have mixed feelings about ICS. While it may provide performance boosts, none of which jumps out at me, it is not without its faults. One thing that I abhor is the perpetual menu bar to the bottom that effectively renders a 4.7 inch screen down to about a 4.4. In fact, the 4.5 screen on the Epic Touch actually feels bigger than the new EVO LTE screen. I also noticed that some apps don't allow me to get rid of the task bar to the top that shows the battery and time. For instance, in the BN Nook app, the option to hide the task bar is greyed out - never saw this before. This effectively cuts a 4.7 screen to even less than 4.4 inches as now you are stuck with a bar to the top and one to the bottom. Other than that nuisance the OS is nice with some changes that will take getting used to but should improve the user experience.

Processor - certainly snappy but not much faster than say the Epic Touch with its Exynos chip. The user experience is far snappier than my International Galaxy Note whose performance might have suffered from the large HD screen.

GPS- consistently show me between 5 yards and 20 yards from my actual location but this is actually excellent and probably can be easily fixed. Much better than my Epic Touch that consistently had me a half a mile away...lol. I have noticed that all the HTC phones going back to my Apache (PPC 6700) seems to have excellent GPS as compared to Samsung who seem to never get it right with the GPS radios. The Galaxy Note did however have the most impressive GPS of all my phones but they actually put special effort into that radio which picked up both US and Russian GPS sattellites.

Final Opinion : Overall a great phone - a substantial and worthy upgrade for most, especially those coming form the OG EVO or even lesser phones. Heck that would be like going from two strings and a cup to cellular tech,,,lol.... However, after having the most current crop of "great" phones, I don't find this one to be too much of an upgrade. Simply put, I am not that impressed. That is not the phones fault since after having owned the Galaxy Note, I knew going in that it would take a lot to impress me since I vowed I would never have another main phone with less than a 5.3 inch screen.
My most notable considerations include that an other wise large screen is effectively reduced by the ICS menu system. An otherwise brilliant screen suffers from bouts of dullness and lack of contrast. An otherwise superior camera seemingly does not focus all the way and is matched by other great camera phones on the market. No 4G or LTE is a downer though not a deal breaker. In the end, I am really considering returning the phone and waiting for something better to come along - could be a while ,,,lol... No, I don't think that the Galaxy S 3 will be better. I will however drop this phone in a heartbeat if Sprint started selling the Galaxy Note anytime soon.

 

[BOSSY TEXAS CHICK]

Well after two days of use, here are my impressions. ...

Final Opinion : ... My most notable considerations include that an other wise large screen is effectively reduced by the ICS menu system. An otherwise brilliant screen suffers from bouts of dullness and lack of contrast. An otherwise superior camera seemingly does not focus all the way and is matched by other great camera phones on the market. No 4G or LTE is a downer though not a deal breaker. In the end, I am really considering returning the phone and waiting for something better to come along - could be a while ,,,lol... No, I don't think that the Galaxy S 3 will be better. I will however drop this phone in a heartbeat if Sprint started selling the Galaxy Note anytime soon.

Excellent post, ty! It really solidified for me the impression i was sure to have when i FINALLY would've gone thru all the trouble of landing one of these....i haven't even been successful at gettin' the lil bugger in my hands, but i'm fairly certain your review could duplicate to the letter the things i have found with the HTC One X, and on top of all the things you wrote, we'd have to throw no SD Card into the mix.

I am soooo with you on Screen size, on my One X i kept feeling like, why is this supposed 4.7 inch screen feel SMALLER than my 4.5 inch Samsung Infuse? And every picture i snapped i'm like, i must be nuts, they seemed blurry and less sharp than my Infuse... And don't get me started on the video, it just didn't pop like my Infuse or Samsung Vibrant even... Thought it MUST be me, or the settings, tried a whole bunch, diff ISO, nothing helped....Camera IS nice, not defective, but like you, with all the camera hype, i expected more...

.And i know that everyone says how great ICS is, and there's a huge learning curve involved, but truthfully, to me ICS largely feels like a "it wasn't broken, why did you fix it"? ... While many changes probably do enhance the experience, i feel an equal amount of the changes seem awkward and confusing, like they just "overthought" many things and jacked with them unneccessarily.

Throw in the cramped screen, bars top & bottom, no removable battery, no menu button, having fat silly smilies instead of android emoticons, sub par camera shots, inavailability, Sprints abysmal network (for some : ) weirdly designed back, and a few other niggles, i'll say it, it just isn't on par with the 1st generation rEVOlution....

I think this phone will REALLY wow ppl who are coming from a lesser device, but to those obsessive, compulsive, ppl with sometimes unrealistic expectations, this isn't The One... : )

So now, thanks to your post, i'm off to change my signature...lol

i think i'll put something like this:

"BTC...Turns Out I Prefer "Cookies to Ice Cream!" - who'd a thunk it?!"
Thanks for putting me out of my misery General

 

[bc2k]

First Impressions/Reviews - battery use while on charger

A caution / FYI for "navigation" users - keep an eye on your battery level even if you have the phone connected to a car charger. Under "heavy use" mine went down instead of up.

This weekend I used it as a driving gps with Telenav. With the phone connected to car charger, display on, auto brightness - over the course of about an hour, the battery level dropped instead of going up.

Maybe our charger is relatively inefficient? It's a generic, $15 model bought at Wal-Mart a month or so ago. Seems to work fine, charges the 4GLTE just fine under other circumstances. Also used it previously with a 1st-gen EVO 4G running Telenav, display on, and had no problems. With the 4GLTE, even with the display off, Telenav running, phone on charger - the charge rate seemed really slow. With the display on, the charger can't even maintain steady state.

I have another charger I'm going to test some time this week. Hope it's better behaved.

 

[njnets21]

Re: First Impressions?

Screen is wonderful

3G speeds are at least 25% faster than what I saw with my ET4G at home and believe me...I checked that constantly.

WIFI shows full signal whereas ET4G showed 2 bars and this pegs at 20 MBPS where the ET ran at 12

Phone signal shows LESS bars than the ET4G but it's pulling the exact same signal strength

GPS is instant lock on showing far better signal strength than any phone I've had....even indoors

Earpiece sound quality is PISSA and that's one reason I got this...I wear hearing aids and this is as good as any BB I ever owned and they were the best!

Connects to my visor mounted BT speaker within mere seconds whereas my ET4G sometimes took minutes.

So far, can't get it to charge off either of my computers no matter what cord I use and I've never had an issue. My guess is there is a "what to do when a USB cord is plugged in" setting somewhere which I haven't found yet.

Still have a lot of discovery to do here

so you came from an E4GT? i have an E4GT now and I'm trying to decide between the S3 and this EVO LTE. if you indeed came to the EVO LTE from the E4GT, please tell me your thoughts to help me make this decision. thanks!