[EVO 4G General] Justin.G11:
When I first got my Evo a lot of people I knew were saying "it's a nice phone and all, but you had to go to SPRINT?"

Now the Evo also marks my maiden voyage with Sprint, so I don't know the history that may have gotten them this bad rep ... but I have to say I've been nothing but pleased. I bought my phone a mere 2 weeks before my road trip across 4 states in 3 weeks (started in Georgia and ended up in Washington DC). During the ENTIRE road trip I had signal. Now I didn't call people, but I did use google maps and Nav and I maintained data the entire time (some minor blackouts in Mentone Alabama looking for an old friend's wedding ... but if you saw where I was you'd completely understand too ... and GMaps still got me there fine).

So while during this trip I saw 4G go up and down ... I will say their data was consistent. I uploaded photos to facebook nightly, took pictures all day, and even occasionally handed the phone to the kids to stream you tube videos (OK I had to plug in for that ... phone can't handle 4-6 hours straight youtube).

My only complaint with this phone while on 2.1 an touring ... was that 4G would destroy my phone (only when connected ... 4G seemed to idle fine in areas with no coverage). By destroy i mean that doing the same heavy uploading of images would kill the phone in about 4 hours.

Now back in the home land of LA ... vacation is over and I'm making more calls than you tube videos. In this case it's more of a Sprint vs ATT conversation (my old provider) and I have to say: Sprints coverage blows away ATT in all areas here. I consult .... meaning i travel all corners of the southland. While Sprint may have bad signal reception occasionally ... it _never_ disconnects. In contrast my ATT signal was always clear .... when it bothered to connect and would disconnect _constantly_ even when driving down major highways. So I like the Sprint service much better.

My Phone has "evolved" with me which is huge. 4G is now here where I live ... but I've also learned to root and tweak my EVO ... and I leave 4G on all day now and can make it from wake up to home with the wife and kids on one charge without having to plug in (I do tend to car charge every so often if i know I'm going to be on a long conference call or can't resist flashing a new ROM during my lunch break ... but that's not suprising). Between 2.2 improvements and wonderful after market ROMs and tweaks, the EVO isn't nearly as bad of a battery vacuum as it was when I first got it so it's to the point that I just leave all the features enabled (except wifi ... i don't see a point when 4g is faster than _any_ free wifi spot that is always over congested).

The ONLY thing I really don't like about Sprint is that i don't get voice and data at the same time. 4G fixes that (another reason i leave it on all the time)... but it's coverage is honestly spotty ... unlike Sprint 3G this one really is location sensitive.

The phone itself ... is awesome. I just can't complain as it still feels cutting edge after 6 months of having it (or is it 7 now ... i forget).

Summary: the battery used to be BAD with 4g turned on. 2.2 improvements and a good community changed all of that... and the phone is flexible and powerful enough that I don't care what's been released sense. I would love a longer battery life (who wouldn't), but considering I basically have a PC in my Pocket I'm OK with that trade off.

EDIT: one other negative I should note: I noticed with the stock HTC ROM having 4G turned on would occasionally make the whole phone stutter and lag, even when doing trivial things like scrolling between home screens. It would actually made the phone feel slower with 4g turned on if i wasn't directly doing a data intesive task. Custom ROMs _completely_ solved that problem. For the record i currently use Myn's Warm 2.2 RLS4 on the HTC17 kernel with the battery tweak, and all sense ripped out I could get away with (rosie pulled out compeltely, gingerbread keyboard, etc), and those stutters are a thing of the past.