HTC EVO 4G vs. iPhone 4 (was: so I spent about 2 hours with the EVO 4G today...)

Apple certainly isn't ruling on the smartphone top end market, considering the rapid growth of Android in this area. As a matter of fact, the best selling Android phones have been remarkably, the top end ones like the Droid Incredible and not the teener chatters like the Motorola Cliq.

Facts remain, Android phones rely on an development infrastructure inspired from the PC industry. Reference platforms - compatibility suite tests, using one platform to spawn many models. None of these HTC phones are completely brand new, they have direct relationship with their predecessors, often polishing and refining them, quite evident when you compare the HTC Desire to the Google Nexus One. Its a highly evolutionary process---think of sharks getting meaner by the generation.
 
True, computers aren't "cell phones" but cell phones aren't "smart phones" either. smart phones are just like computers where they can open documents, browse the web, get emails. The cell phone side is a add on. So they are little computers if you REALLY get technical.
 
The only thing the Apple people can talk about is the interface being smooth.

It is smooth because it doesn't do much.

When an email comes, what does it do? If you got push notification working, it pops a transparent overlay that disappears when another message comes in to steal the screen. So you don't know if you got a new email until you have to swipe back to the screen that has the email to see a red button over the icon.

If you're installing new apps, does it tell you when the installation is finished?

If you're downloading a file, does it tell you when its finished?

If your friend sent a message on Facebook or Yahoo, does it tell you? Well, if you paid for Boxcar, it can, except notifications are free on both Android and Blackberry. And the notification disappears the moment a more recent message, like text or email comes in.

There is no collective interface that brings all the incoming messages in one place for you to review.

I learned from a business perspective that you can't use a phone that cannot collect all vital notifications and brings you to one place. On a business travel, I can sleep in a hotel room and during those 8 hours of sleep, the phone can be collecting text, email, IM and social networking messages in one place and display them in an organized manner when I wake up the morning to glance at the phone.

I can get that with a Blackberry. I can get that with WebOS. I can get that with Android. I can't get that with the iPhone OS.

Oh yeah, but its still smooooth....
 
Well here is my best response. Apple doesnt put anything on their phone unless its perfect. Any other phone company says "..its half finished and barley working and not user friendly? ahh..just put it on the phone who cares". Apple doent put flash on their phones because it doesnt work well on mobile phones, flash isnt designed for touch screens, and drains battery, and is a fading technology compared to HTML 5. But despite a lesser preforamnce, HTC will say to put it on anyway. When you build a computer or phone with this overall approach to everyhting, you get a un-polished experiance that is maybe hard to put on paper. For example, video chat. doesnt really work well at all on HTC, but who cares, at least they can say it has video chat. And that counts Physical features like bendy plastic over glass and metal, and the OS, the difference being intuitive and instant use vs confusing slow operation. In the end, Apple was the one to push the touchscreen smart phones, and everyone else followed. In the end the reason you pinch to zoom out on the droid, is because of apple. If apple didnt do the pinch to zoom out, nobody would do it and we would still be pressing the zoom button 50 times. The iPhone sells so much units for a reason, its the simple, core features that it acceles in. My grandma, who know NOTHING about technology can use my iPhone without any explaining needed. Its that kind of setup that makes it popular. It just seems that sometimes the iPhones competitors accel in superficial things. Its has video conference, but it doesn't work well at all. It has a 4.5 inch screen, but now the pixels are spread out, it has a 8MP camera, but is lesser than a 5MP, it has a touch screen, thats closer to a pressure senative screen, it has a app-store..but not really. These are the things that fly around my head at least. Everything is done to 80%. If the HTC has some features that the iPhone does not, im willing to make that trade. I just appreciate teh anal/ high quality approach.

Its not like if one phone is better, the other suddenly becomes crap. They both make excellent phones, but if i were to point out what a Pro Apple person is thinking that might be it
 
I don't know what this "choppiness" is that your experiencing but I have NEVER ONCE had that issue on my EVO.

I cant believe someone could say notifications are annoying, I guess no one ever texts you or you get spam messages all day long. Two of my 3GS coworkers just switched to the EVO and they cant keep their hands off it ! You gotta have an open mind or else the manufacturers are the real winners here, cause if you don't give yourself a chance to try another device and just stick with brand loyalty, THEY WIN. Not the consumer.

Everyone can say what they want to say about which device is better, honestly it could go on for years. I for one are sick of hearing it, use what you want and like what you want to like. What I cant stand is when someone makes a claim about a device and its completely NOT TRUE, and their just out to make the competition look bad and to favor their brand. I'm sure there are people out there bashing devices they have not even used.

I'll leave it at that with this quote from AndroidCentral



I for one, don't know how you guys live with AT&T's outrageous plans.

Don't let the phone pick your carrier, Pick the carrier yourself then the phone !
 
Actually, compared to Android, right now Apple is leading in market share for the high-end market. You can look at data from comScore, NPD and others that aggregate world stats; even in North America, Nielsen says Android is at 9 percent.

Now, feature-wise, there are some areas where Android pulls ahead; the Droid X is an awesome phone in hardware (although it does omit a front camera and runs a lower resolution than the iPhone 4). But having more features doesn't guarantee being more appealing to the public.

Also, to follow up on earlier (since I don't want to rehash all of an older argument): the 800MHz band is on the iPhone 4; the FCC doesn't lie, even if Apple doesn't expose it on the specs sheet. NTT DoCoMo is a possibility!
 
Nielsen measures installed base. So does Comscore. Installed base gives the advantage to the older platform since its been around longer to install more total phones.

Installed base means zilch when it comes to current sales numbers.

According to Andy Rubin in the Droid X presentation, Android now activates 160,000 phones a day.

60,000 in February, according to Google
100,000 by mid May
160,000 by Mid June

Apple shipped 8.75 million from January to March of 2010. RIM shipped 10.6 million on the same period.

That translates roughly to 97k units per day for Apple and 118k per day units roughly for Blackberry.

And now there are 160k Android activations per day. There is still a whole bunch of Android phones still coming in and have not made their full impact like the Samsung Galaxy S, Galaxy A, the Motorola Milestone XT, HTC Aria, T-Mobile Slide, HTC Wildfire, X10 Mini, Droid X, Droid 2, Dell Streak, and so on. Some of these phones are significant because they are low end, volume pieces.

160k activations a day means 58 million devices a year.

When an Android comes to life and connected through wifi or data, it sends a signal to Google saying "its Alive". So Google knows the total count of phones coming online.
 
While the sales numbers for Android are impressive, I would say that they're slightly inflated by the initial demand. Since the wireless market isn't really creating many new subs, just passing them around, once the first wave of phones are sold and everyone is in a contract the numbers should deflate a little.
 
Drillbit: a few qualms here.



I don't think the relentless iteration of Android is automatically a good thing. It's great in that you'll probably be buying a good phone whenever you jump in. But I've seen it trigger a form of paralysis, too. Don't get the Droid Incredible, the Evo 4G is coming out! No, wait for the Droid Xtreme! And the long-term prospects are also a problem. Do you know how timely HTC or Motorola will be with the Android OS update you want?

Also, I don't think Apple is terribly worried about screen size or outdoor readability. The iPhone 4's screen is supposed to have improved outdoor visibility, and I don't think having a bigger screen automatically makes a phone better. At this stage, we're at the threshold where the screen size can get too big. I wouldn't want a Dell Streak in my pocket, and an Evo 4G would be borderline.

Verizon and Sprint are looking increasingly good for late 2010 or early 2011.



Actually, not anymore.

In the US, RIM still has a wider lead, but that's mostly because of RIM bending over backwards to serve every carrier, in some cases having 2-for-1 deals. Apple moves to Verizon and a lot of that advantage goes away overnight.
 
Those are not merely sales numbers. They are activation numbers. Which means they are not only sold, they are activated, with wifi or data connection to Google.

When it comes to Android, the first wave is rather few. You have to consider it only started selling G1 Dream in October 2008, and the contract ain't over October of 2010. This means most Androids are going to new users. Ask yourself, how many Android users are there by December of 2008?

We have to remember that in contrast, its the Apple market now that has its 2007 and 2008 users eligible for a replacement and a lot of the new Iphone 4 buyers are turn over from 2007 and 2008 buyers.

Also, unlike Google, please note the Blackberry and Apple figures are shipments, which means reporting is based on sales to the carriers and distributors, but not end sales to the users which means channel inventory, whereas an Android activation is a report that goes the sale to an end user where the device finally comes to life.
 
Apple isn't moving to Verizon and not by a long shot. The exclusivity agreement with AT&T ends with 2012 and by then, worry more about LTE than CDMA vs. GSM issues.



It is a GOOD THING believe me. Because innovation happens on a natural, open democratic market, FREE ENTERPRISE pace. I do not like rationed technology, rationed innovation models. That's too Communist for me.

Buying an iPhone 4, latest Nokia N8 or Blackberry 6 still won't make these Android superphones disappear from the face of the Earth. They will still be there, and platform envy becomes cross platform envy. That's why platforms are bleeding in the first place. If your platform doesn't have the latest or bestest, the top users are not going to stick to the best of that platform but move on to the other platform. That's what hurting Symbian and Blackberry now. People are not accepting the pace of rationed innovation no longer.

The argument that Android is moving too fast doesn't hold water. Neither is the argument that your fastest Android phone becomes obsolete two months from now. The facts are, even if you own a non Android smartphone, your phone in an absolute sense, is still being made obsolete or has gone obsolete long time ago because these superphones will continue to exist in the real world and cannot be be made not to exist by belief-denial. People are thinking, let's wall up ourselves, the Apple world, the Symbian world, the Blackberry world, and so on. When you wall up yourself, you're just hurting yourself. The real argument is that your platform moving too slow, not Android moving too fast.

If HTC or Motorola isn't timely with their updates, I would just stick with Google's own model, which is the Nexus One for now. That's not a problem. I will make my vote with my wallet---by purchasing and continue to purchasing the raw Android models or from companies with timely updates. If users feel this way, the open market process means that all these other companies are also forced into offering raw or less layered models (LG Ally for example, is pretty much raw except for themes and its own bundled app) for quicker updates, or speed up their homework working on the update with the UI layers. Its that simple. Its the sheer power of the open market at work.
 
I can't say I can entirely complain about lots of Android choice, but keep in mind that many casual customers aren't necessarily going to see it the same way. Some will no doubt opt for anything with Droid in the name, but imagine having to explain the differences between a Droid, a Droid Incredible and a Droid Xtreme in a way an inexperienced user could relate to. Apple does have the advantage of keeping it simple: there's the shiny new one (or newest), and the cheap older model. They're differentiated by what they can do.

There's also a very real problem with custom UIs and updating too quickly. Apps. Right now, if you own the wrong Android phone, you can't get the official Twitter app; you may not have the option of certain Google apps, and what you see in Android Market won't be the same. Unless you own the very oldest iPhone, you can be certain you'll have access to all the latest apps on an iPhone because you know you can update to the latest OS version.

I don't like the idea of Android updates feeling like horse race bets; bet on the wrong horse and you end up left behind. That's the open market almost working against itself, and the number of 'pure' Android phones is slimming down fast.
 
If you can't tell when an app installation has finished, you shouldn't be using the phone in the first place. Your point is moot.



Again, moot. If you can't figure it out, you need to just move on to something that will hold your hand a little more.



The iPhone OS works and works well. Is it perfect? No, but then neither is the Android OS, the webOS, S60, etc.... It's all about preference. Get over it.
 
Android's figures are good; we'll see if that's sustainable in the short term (I can't imagine it going down much, though).

We also have yet to see how the iPhone 4 is going to do. By all accounts, today's launch was a record for any phone. I wouldn't be surprised to see Android still have an edge, but we also haven't seen an iPhone launch where Apple had 600,000 units spoken for even before the retail shops were carrying them.
 
OP poster here... why did my title get changed and thread moved?

i thought of a very similar experience i had with buying a laptop a few years ago... maybe u guys can relate:

SAGER brand makes custom built laptops that you can build with lots of options and they usually offer cutting edge tech. they also offer a pretty good price too. well on paper they look great so i ordered one. once i got it it worked but it wasn't very pretty, made a lot of noises, and the fans were located under the machine. it was fast. the screen was a bit washed out and had some light bleed at the bottom. everything worked for the most part although i recall a few glitches in integrating components and having to update several drivers and i think the cd burner firmware as well. i had to search through different websites of different manufacturers to get the components to work finally.

i eventually upgraded laptops and bought a SONY Vaio... and all i can say is i never looked back. sure the vaio was 30% more expensive, but everything worked right out of the box. it wasn't the fastest, but the screen was gorgeous. the entire build fit and finish of the product said COMPLETE whereas the SAGER said RIGGED. the overall user experience has led me to buy VAIO 3 more times as i type on this new VAIO Z11

polished consumer product wins out over rigged cutting edge tech product for me
 
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