Phone Review : Android Smartphone HTC EVO Shift 4G

The HTC EVO 4G was a legendary Android smartphone: it had been among the first with 4G, it stood a huge 4.3" display and Android operating over a fast 1GHz CPU. It sold-out quickly, and was difficult to get in shops for several months. It was, and remains, better of breed until dual core Tegra 2 smartphones start shipping by mid-2011. Many months following the EVO 4G's very profitable release, the HTC Shift EVO 4G will be here, the expected keyboarded associate to the first EVO. And now that it is here, we're slightly confused why Sprint would sully the EVO name having a lower than flagship device. The Shift 4G is a decent upper-middle range Android phone with an 800MHz second generation Qualcomm CPU, Android OS 2.2 Froyo with HTC Sense software and a 5mp camera. Celebrate a great alternative to Sprint's ever lots of entry to midrange Android QWERTY phones, but unlike the EVO 4G, it's not a significant superphone.

The HTC EVO Shift 4G features WiMAX for 4G service along with 3G EV-DO Rev. A as well as the typical collection of wireless radios for WiFi, Bluetooth and GPS. It shares DNA using the solid and understatedly attractive HTC T-Mobile G2 on T-Mobile, nonetheless it lacks the G2's visual appearance, metal back and superior keyboard. The Shift 4G does reduce the infrequent keyboard Z joint mechanism which may be a good thing given complaints about wobbles and jiggles, nevertheless the Shift 4G's slider is stiff and unassisted, making it seem under top quality. Over a positive note, it's solid without wobble or play. Granted, the Shift 4G does cost $149 as opposed to the $199 or more cost we have seen on their Android superphones, making it clear that Sprint didn't intend the EVO Shift 4G to compete directly with all the Samsung Epic or HTC EVO Shift 4G.

The HTC EVO Shift 4G has a blue soft touch finish that seamless comfort in hand. We aren't fans with the chrome display screen and earpiece surrounds or even the smoothed but angular bulging back. The telephone looks slightly dated, and reminds us of older Windows Mobile QWERTY sliders.

The laptop keyboard just isn't as impressive since the T-Mobile G2's; there exists a nearly useless d-pad around the lower right corner that's a bit stiff and generally seems to lack a center press function. We'd rather that space choose to go to a right shift key and arrow keys. Tactile feedback is nice regardless of the relatively short travel today's tightly designed phones demand, and we appreciate the @ symbol featuring its own key as well as the ".com" that's only an Fn key press away. Complaints aside, it's the most effective Android keyboards in the marketplace.

The Shift has capacitive buttons about the front and we found the placement perfect for accidental presses. Likewise the quantity keys are put where we accidentally hit them whenever we opened the laptop keyboard slider. The energy and 3.5mm stereo headphone jack are sensibly placed up top while the micro USB jack are at the reduced left side. Unfortunately, both the gig sd card lives underneath the battery, so you need to opt for a USB cable and mass storage mode as opposed to powering down the phone simply to remove the card and insert it in a card reader.

The smartphone posseses an ambient light sensor, proximity sensor along with a digital compass. You need not deploy laptop keyboards to change to landscape mode typically since the accelerometer handles this. We did remember that in the settings applets and a few other areas the accelerometer didn't switch orientation and that we had to open the laptop keyboard to improve to panoramic mode. You can disable the accelerometer should you desire.

Call Quality and Data

Call quality is quite good and volume is average. Both incoming and outgoing voice sound natural and full. The speakerphone didn't overly impress us, even though it sounded less hissy and tinny compared to the G2's. Like a voice phone the HTC EVO Shift 4G gets a thumbs up. With regards to reception, the Shift 4G gets somewhat weaker than average reception in line with the bars, but HTC and Sprint have removed the most common Android settings applet to view actual signal in decibels on their own 3G EV-DO Rev. A network. We did remember that the signal as meansured in bars, jumps around a great deal on the HTC EVO Shift 4G.

The HTC EVO Shift 4G has the 3G/4G Mobile Hot Spot feature where your HTC EVO Shift 4G can become a higher speed wireless WiFi hotspot for 8 devices such as laptops, tablets and cameras (we expect speeds to become quite slow in the event you actually use 8 clients at the same time though).