Android HTC EVO vs.the iPhone

by Kim Bowser

source: HTC.com

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I became a smart phone user a little over a year ago. While I never thought I would I have fallen in love with my iPhone and all that it is capable of, it is now a lifeline for me! A smart phone is so much more then a device to call and text on.  It is literally a portable computer, a phone, iPod  camera and with apps, the possibilities are endless!  Since I have never owned or used any other smart phone then my iPhone, I was excited to test out another one and see how they compared.

Android HTC EVO–The Basics

The HTC EVO 4G lite has a 8.0 MP camera and a 4.7 inch HD Display and operates on the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system.  You can check out all the specifics of the HTC EVO here.

Overall, Android HTC EVO and iPhone 4 have very similar capabilities: talk, text, apps, camera and video camera, email, music, web browsing, etc. so I am going to touch on a few things that the Android had that I liked better!

Pros of Android

• The HTC EVO has a larger screen which makes  a larger overall surface to view everything.  It does allow more to be visible on the screen at one time which is nice and leads to less “scrolling”.  The one instance I noticed  a big difference is when I used my  Bible App.  You can see the difference below with the Left pic being the HTC EVO and the right being the iPhone.

• A lot of Apps that you have to pay for on the iPhone are FREE on Android! This is great for this mom of 4 that has kids that want all kinds of Apps
• The HTC EVO does browse websites much nicer. The iPhone will open some website in a modified format which is frustrating to view at times.  I never went to any websites on the HTC EVO that I had issues viewing. I felt like I was on my computer while browsing the internet on this phone which was very nice! I have had several times on my iPhone when browsing the internet would be frustrating and I would just wait to log on to my computer if certain websites gave me trouble!
• One of the features of this phone that I really loved was the Voice Texting  and  FaceBook update capabilities using your voice.  You can send a text or update your Facebook status using your voice with this phone.  This is a pretty cool feature that I loved because it makes things so much quicker.   I was a bit skeptical about how well it would detect what you were saying and type it, but it did very well and I seldom found mistakes when using this feature.  My iPhone 4 does not have any voice texting capabilities.  You can have it call someone using your voice…but I have never successfully done it because it never hears me correctly.
• Most Apps between the HTC EVO and iPhone seemed to work very similarly.  However one of my Favorite Apps the Nike+GPS, which tracks your run distance and times did have two different ways to view your runs.  You could either view them as a list (left picture) or in a graph (right picture) format.   I found I liked the graph format to be able to quickly get a feel for my run history.  On my iPhone you can only view your run history in the ‘list’ format.

• The camera on the HTC EVO is great! It is a 8.0 MP camera which is the same as my small point and shoot camera that I have.  My iPhone has a 5.0 MP camera and takes decent everyday photos, but if I knew I was going somewhere that I would want to later print the pictures out I would try to take my point and shoot along also to get a better quality picture.  Since the camera on the HTC EVO took the same quality pictures as my point and shoot, it saved me the trouble of having to remember to take is along.  Here are a couple of photos using the HTC EVO camera.

Cons of the HTC EVO

• It does not have all the Apps available that the iPhone does.  There are several Apps that I have on my iPhone that are not available on the HTC EVO yet.  It is only a matter of time though because most Apps do become available, you just have to be patient.
• The HTC EVO is not as user-friendly as my iPhone.  There were several things I had to look up how to do on the HTC EVO, like take a screen shot, which even when I knew how to do it was touchy to get it to take.  Also when you take a screen shot, it goes to a separate folder which took me 10 minutes to figure out where that folder was.  It was not nearly as intuitive to learn use as my iPhone was.

A Mom’s Perspective

Overall, I really enjoyed testing this phone.  It has some great feature including the voice texting, 8.0 MP camera and hundreds of FREE Apps.  It definitely saved me time with is ability to have me speak my texts instead of typing them.  I no longer had to worry about bringing my point-and-shoot camera along since the camera this phone came with took great pictures!  The fact that most Apps are free on this phone is great, since I do have 4 kids and every little bit of money we save helps!