Not everything peachy in EVO land?

By now, the name EVO should ring a great many bells when mentioned. As sprint’s new knight in shining armor (excuse yourself Mr. Palm Pre,) and HTC’s latest piece of cutting edge technology, this device is nothing short of amazing! Or is it?

Michael Arrington over at Tech Crunch has a few points to be made against the device. This article caught my attention for more than a few reasons, but of all these reasons, the one that stood out was a dozy! This was coming from an Android user, one who embraced the platform with open arms! hmmmmm.

After playing with a friend’s EVO over the weekend, even before this article was published, a few of Arrington’s points were evident. Right away i noticed the “noise.” in the UI. It wasn’t as clean as previous Android devices i had played with in the past. HTC’s Sense sure did make its presence known on the device!

As a Windows Mobile guy, the notion of HTC having a UI presence is not a new thing to me, and a most welcome occurrence at that! But this didn’t feel right on the EVO. On my HD2, Sense is most definitely a full UI replacement. On the EVO, sense came off as a batch of widgets blotched all over Google’s UI.

Oh well, what ever, it wasn’t my device so i didn’t have to live with that inconstancy! Besides, with a screen that huge, my main concern was the browser, which is the next thing i went straight for. So i fired up the Opera 9.7 on my HD2 and the browser (chrome?) on the EVO and began my highly scientific comparison. I made sure to go to sites neither of us had accessed on either device before to avoid “cache cheating.” First site up was xda-developers. Oh how we love XDA, no images, just yellow background and text, should be pretty simple right? Well not for the EVO! Opera was finished a whole 4 seconds before the EVO’s browser (chrome?) was done. Second site up was citi.com. Once again, opera was done the same 4 seconds ahead of the EVO’s browser (chrome? no seriously, what is the name of this thing?!) The 3rd site up to bat was ign.com, and we all know ign.com is no light weight of a site. When it was all said and done, opera was finished a whole 7 seconds before EVO’s browser (I’m just going to call this thing chrome!) The 4th site was, you know what?! forget it, i had no faith at this point! My most used app is by far the browser, if you don’t have a decent browser you might as well not even come out to play. I’d also like to point out, i was using Opera 9.7 and not the newer and faster version 10.

With the look of stench in the air, i handed this man back his 4.3 inches worth of disappointment. But while making the replay, i caught a glimpse at the battery meter. And here we go again! I remember taking a look at the battery before i started playing around and it was at a mild 78%. Upon my hand off, the battery was now showing 48%! WTF! (am i allowed to say WTF here?) No seriously, WTF! A few websites, a sip or two of some Johnny walker and a chunk of the battery has been depleted? What is that about? So i asked him if he has made the necessary tweaks to safe as much battery as possible, and his answer was yes. Shame.

Its no secret, the HD2 and the EVO are very close cousins. Aside from the two cams on the EVO, the hardware have pretty much the identical specs. After the same amount\type of usage on my HD2, the battery had gone down 5%. How could this be? I thought Google’s Android was a much more efficient OS? what is happening here? hmmmmm.

Before i sign off into the darkness, I’ll leave you all with completely pro Windows mobile conclusion and a bit of a facetious statement. Right hardware, Wrong OS!