[HTC EVO 3D] PoorCollegeGuy:
So I owned the Epic 4g Touch for about 6 months and then just last week traded down to the 3vo (along with some cash, to save up for the next Evo...gotta start saving now people!). The reason why, mostly, is because the dev section here is better and I miss Sense. AOSP fans, you can stop booing now.

So I've made some comparisons based on my 6 months with the Epic Touch and now my week with the Evo 3D (having it properly rooted, s-off and flashing some fun roms here and there).

Pros for the Epic Touch.

1. Beast chipset. Quadrant scores were amazing, but even for the benchmark haters the phone rarely lagged. Never lagged actually, unless you forced it to or you were using Google Voice (which will lag everything, I don't care what it is). Never a bump in performance in anything from Playstation Emulators to pinch to zoom. Watch review videos. Butter smooth.

2. Epic camera. Most people, like me, depend on their phone camera as their only camera because we can't afford to have a hobby like buying $600 cameras (because we already have an expensive hobby called Android phones) nor do we have a bag or pocket to carry said camera. The Epic Touch camera was awesome. Great pictures in any light, barely any fuzz or loss of focus for zooming into pictures already taken. Great settings, 1080p video shooting (which, when it worked, was phenomenal).

3. The big, gorgeous screen. I don't care for you little finger people complaining about it. I'm a 25 year old man and the guy who drills holes into my bowling ball says I have the fingers of a skinny teenage girl and that giant screen was nowhere near "too much" for me. It was big, beautiful, you could see it in sunlight, took up less battery life (if you set it up properly) and was just all around wonderful. 4.5" should be the industry standard, not 4.3". It really does make a difference.

Cons agains the Epic Touch:

1. Touchwiz is f*cking ugly and useless. No cohesion or synergy in Touchwiz at all. No messaging widget, no Social Hub widget, the calender, mail, weather and clock widgets all look like they came from wildly different themed ROMs. Social Hub didn't work for the first 2 months of the phone's life, the iPhone-style dock and app drawer lent no imagination or originality (no wonder they're getting sued left and right) and it was wildly scaled back from the OG Galaxy S 2. They keyboard was ugly as all hell. Hated the Touchwiz. Even the lockscreen was useless and stupid. The overscroll glow was blue and the battery indicator was green...who designs **** like that? Don't get me started on the 4g "dozing" feature. If you don't use 4g for 10 seconds, it goes to sleep and it is a ***** to wake up. You gotta open up an app like facebook or twitter, then go to your web browser. Absurd.

2. No developer support. The guy who did CM7 over there was a 15 year old who stole phones from people (no, really, he'd borrow a phone or propose a trade and a moron would accept and then wouldn't get their stuff...he also ripped off some people who wanted to donate a t-mo sgs2 to a developer for cm7...asshole). The custom kernels are all the same features with a slightly themed CWM recovery. Nothing original and all the ROMs are more or less the same with maybe one unique feature. Calk's rom had an htc keyboard, unnamed rom had themed icons...nothing really special. Since our AOSP devs are felons and, frankly, code thieves, we're stuck with Touchwiz over there unless you like MIUI...everyone else = boned.

3. The feel of the phone. The battery door was plastic. Not the super thick, awesome plastic like the battery door to the 3vo, but like flimsy child's toy plastic. The kind that shatters when you drop it. In fact, the whole phone minus the screen felt cheap and plasticky. I used to complain about it before I bought a samsung, now I've owned one and I can say from experience. Yeah, they're going for sleek and light, but how sleek can you feel holding a phone that's made with the same quality of plastic as a Barbie doll? When I did buy a case, the damn thing was too weak to keep it's own battery door on when I removed the case. Seriously, don't drop this phone on thick carpet, it might not work again.

Now for the Evo 3D. Pros:

1. HTC Sense is, as usual, beautiful. The applications, like friend stream, work like they should, the widgets are all cohesive and look like they belong together. With HTC Skins you have a plethora of theming options, you can customize the lockscreen to suit your needs (and the lockring idea is freaking awesome, admit it). The keyboard is nice and it works. HTC Sense may be giant and bloated, but all the pieces fit together in a synergistic manner that makes the phone feel more complete and that's not only hard to do, but a huge plus for Sense over Touchwiz.

2. The dev support here is better. The ROMs are actually different from one another and not just the same base with a few unique tweaks. MeanROM looks and feels completely different from Myn Warm (either one of them). There's Sense 3.0, 3.5. There's AOSP builds (3 of them, last I counted. 2 CM7 and a CM9...none work quite right yet but they're getting there). There's Sense 4.0 alphas out. There's kernels with characteristics that are different from one another. It is possible to have a more unique experience with this phone than the Epic Touch because with the Epic Touch, there's simply not as many good developers as there are here.

**note** I know development around here has been slowing down lately. Hopefully that'll turn around once they release kernel source for the latest Sense build. Plus, and this is minor, you can change the splash screen on this phone. You can't on a samsung device.

3. It's very well built. It's got heft, so you can feel it in your pocket. It feels and looks like it could take a drop or two before you start to worry (my cases are in the mail as we speak :P ), the notification light actually works and blinks often enough that I know I have a text message. There's a dedicated camera button. The hardware, the chipset notwithstanding, could whip the hardware on a galaxy s 2's ass any day of the week.

And the cons:

1. HTC and releasing kernel source. Seriously, I've spent maybe 33% of the time I've been an Evo owner (4g and 3d) waiting for HTC to release kernel source so we could get some custom kernels on newer builds before the devs got bored and jumped to a nexus s or a galaxy nexus. Looks like that's what's happening here too. Hopefully there's some adventurous people when it is released so we have those awesome kernel options like before.

2. The chipset is obviously inferior to the exynos. I love the evo series, i love htc, but you can't deny that. exynos is beast and whatever is in this phone doesn't stack up. While the lag isn't terrible (not enough to affect daily usage), it's still there and noticeable, which is kind of a bummer for a dual core device. Additionally, anyone else notice that data goes to sleep when the phone does? My google music sounds like a bad cd player when it goes to sleep so I have to leave it awake until it buffers the whole song or the song literally skips. That's kinda lame.

3. The camera, while better than the OG Evo, is much weaker than the Epic Touch. A lot of fuzz in low light settings and it just doesn't look like as high quality as the Epic Touch. Don't get me started on the 3D. I have taken one picture and shot one video. It gave me a headache, no more 3D for me. I would've traded in 3D capacity for the Amaze 4g's camera sensors any day of the week.

Overall, I do like the 3vo better. Despite it's shortcomings, it feels like a more complete device than an Epic Touch. The UI matches itself, you can customize without rooting (and even more after rooting), there's a stronger dev section and a more active IRC chat. It feels better in the hand weight wise and is built better materials wise (I still miss my giant screen to play video games with). Dedicated camera button ftw. There's more working features and fewer bugs than Touchwiz (google Epic Touch LOS...and start laughing lol). Both devices will eventually have ICS, so it's not like you can hold that against either one. I just hope our CMs get done eventually (i don't care about the 3D, but the other stuff kinda matters).

Sorry if this has been done already...actually no, no I'm not. It was fun to write.

:)