[HD2 General] depsilon:
The Verdict: HD2 vs EVO

Lets examine some common statements made lately about the HD2 and EVO.

1-"On the HD2 WinMO 6.5 is dead"

-6.5 will be supported through the transition of Windows Phone 7.

-WP7 has not been released.

-Developers are still learning how to code for WP7.

-Mainstream apps like Opera, Slingplayer, Firefox, Office etc.. will not be available for all phone models running WP7 at launch.

-WP7 does not support multitasking (Pissed lots of developers off) :mad:

-You cannot use any .cab files from any previous versions of WinMO (New kernel) and all apps can only be installed through windows marketplace (Kiss all that SW you bought goodbye) :(

-All versions of WP7 produced on display are little more than Silverlight demos that are not functional or robust enough for real-world products (Nice GUI, but it still needs to work well with Baseband FW - Wait at least 12 months)

-One big problem is the direction ARM is going: Dual core - Is Microsoft really that crazy to kill multitasking when the HW roadmap is going in the opposite direction? :eek:

-Frankly, Microsoft WP7 is 4-years late to the iphone-android game and will likely be slaughtered while killing their biggest customer base in the mobile space - cooperate enterprise - Good luck. :D

2-"No WP7 Upgrade for HD2"

-After reading the above issues with WP7, would you really want that upgrade? :confused:

3-"The EVO will have the fastest connection available"

-Back up a second, this phone wont be released until late summer 2010

-Do you know how many other providers are using the same 4G service from Clearwire? (Comcast, Quest, Verizon etc.. all have usb dongles using Clear's Network - Try getting a reasonable 4G connection with all those competing providors)

-Wimax has lots of dead areas and is not pervasive as Sprint would like you to believe - In fact there is a reason the usb dongles are WiFi/WiMax dual mode) :cool:

-Wimax caps the upstream at 512kb/s - even EVDO can upstream at 1Mb/s, AWS - 2Mb/s (Your thinking so what, its all about downstream, but how do you request a page or stream data reliably if you need to actually talk to the web servers to request your content?) :eek:

4-"EVO with android will have the best application selection of any phone"

-Android is still not there yet, even the iphone apps have wider selection

-The key word here is WILL, Android is still gaining share and it serves a purpose, but more useful apps were developed for WinMO

The HD2 is not really as obsolete as people would have you believe. It will stay among the top of the heap for another 12 months or so. :)

Microsoft announced WP7 a year too early and set consumer hopes too high on WP7 - The ecosystem is 18 months from being viable for WP7 and by then android will have taken another 15% marketshare.

Microsoft is not Apple and should not try to ride their cotails in an attempt to declare innovation while completely obliterating their existing customer base. It takes more than a couple Silverlight demos to impress me - I have seen this kind of smoke and mirror shell game before. Microsoft has an *SS ton of heavy lifting if they want to actally provide what they are short selling to OEMs and consumers.

I wish Sprint the best on getting their EVO 4G phone to reliably connect to 4G, but Wimax is still not back-hauled for full capacity and they can't expand until they sell a boatload more service contracts - the money is simply not there yet while Clear brokers out their service to multiple providers.

The Verdict - Get the HD2 now and move to android when app developers move to WP7. Then get the EVO or successor in late 2011. :cool: