Sprint’s HTC EVO

I decided to put my Windows HTC Touch Pro 2 out in the pasture and go for the much hyped “first ever 4g phone”, the HTC EVO.  Best decision ever concerning a phone!

First and foremost, this is the best phone I’ve ever had.  The software is great, the responsiveness is amazing, and it has all sorts of randomly cool features.

The Pros:

  • Great screen.
  • Integration with Google products is flawless.
  • Turn by turn navigation with Google maps.
  • FM radio.
  • Sprint TV, great during the world cup.
  • Apps like Swype, NYT, Google Voice, Google Voice Search.

The Cons:

  • Dealing with Exchange invitations, not as clean as with Windows.
  • No unified inbox like WebOS.
  • Battery hog, but all smart phones are, will need to charge it after a few hours of heavy use.
  • Not enough widgets for shortcuts and displaying vital information on the screen.

 

~david

2 Months with Sprint’s HTC Touch Pro 2

If you recall last year I posted a few Tweets about the, then upcoming, Palm Pre and how much I was looking forward to this phone.  Later on I posted a story about about my impressions with the Palm Pre.  After a few months of sticking with it and really giving it a try I had to let it go and go back to Windows Mobile.  Yes, I am a Microsoft slave when it comes to phones.  I missed the integration with Exchange, I missed the seamless connectivity with Outlook, I missed being able to tweak it to try and make it far more efficient and faster.

It now has been around two months since I’ve made the switch and I can’t really complain, I got everything I expected from Windows Mobile.  First, let’s start with the phone.

The HTC Touch Pro 2 retails for $599.99 at Sprint.com.  Yes, that’s $600 dollars for a phone!  Yes, I thought it was insane when I saw the price tag.  Not only is/was the phone incredibly pricey, it was close to impossible to find it at Sprint stores.  The excuse I always got was that since it was so pricey not a lot of stores carried it and it was considered a specialty item.  Good thing I didn’t ask for diamond encrusted keys.  Regardless, I turned to my trusted friend Craig Newman and his awesome website http://craigslist.org/ and found someone letting go of their phone for $250.  Finding the guy, haggling with him, and finally getting the phone is a whole other story, but ultimately I paid the asking price and began my journey back to the dark side.

Happy with my purchase I decided that this phone had so much potential, which was being thrown away by the stock operating system provided by Sprint.  First and foremost, there was Windows 6.5 and the phone runs Windows 6 stock.  Second, there was HTC’s Sense UI, among other tweaks available which would put this phone over the top when it came to usability.

When it comes to hacking your phone and making it do things it might not be supposed to do, you head over to the always awesome and informative, http://forum.ppcgeeks.com/.  After a few days of research I decided to give Mike and his http://www.mightyrom.com/ a spin.  Flashing your phone is not for the faint of heart, I was pretty nervous something would happen in the middle of the flash which would render my phone useless, but thankfully everything has been great so far and I’ve enjoyed what my phone has become.

The key features I love about this phone:

– Great voice quality, including the speaker.

– A keyboard, I love having a physical keyboard.

– Very responsive, more than my Palm Pre.

Cons:

– This thing is a brick, it’s huge.

– It’s Windows, which needs a kick to restart it ever few days… well maybe about once every two weeks.

– Windows Marketplace sucks.

~david

Sprint Everything Plan (or How Sprint Enabled My Addiction

In case you remember my post from last year about my recent switch to Sprint Everything Plan, I wanted to provide a small updated on how my cell phone usage has increased.

SprintMinutesUsed

 

If you compare my usage from the year before I’m averaging around 1000 more minutes per month.  Now, at the end I’m getting a cheaper price/minute, however I sometimes worry about how much radiation I’m exposing myself to… oh well, just wanted to post something interesting and let me people know I’m still alive and kicking.

~david

The Palm Pre – Five Days Later

As many of you might know, I was an early adopter of Sprint’s Palm Pre here are some of my initial impressions.

palm pre

  1. It’s a completely new way of navigating and getting around to different menus.  You’ll either spend all your time running your finger across the bottom or figuring out how close to the corner to tap to bring up preferences.
  2. The screen is amazing and very responsive.
  3. Integration with Exchange is great, the only thing I’ve not found is how to edit meeting invitations acceptances or rejections.
  4. Setting up your initial contacts is a pain as it imports the contacts from every account which you set up.  I manage my contacts through Exchange and had to delete all of the Gmail contacts.
  5. The keyboard is rather small, but really shouldn’t be a huge issues unless you have monster paws.
  6. No T9 or similar program to auto guess what you’re trying to type.  You have to do it the old fashion way and type out the whole thing.
  7. When browsing the web and you zoom in and click on a link the page goes back to it’s tiny view and you have to zoom in again.  It would be ideal if once you zoomed in, all subsequent pages were zoomed in too.
  8. Palm decided to have a tiny little cap over the charging port.  I’m awaiting the days for this cap to fall of or be ripped out by accident.
  9. Palm didn’t really use a standard Micro-USB port.  I have 4 of these chargers and they are now only good for my GPS.  Thank you Palm for having me have to carry just another charger.
  10. Alarm clock will go off on the weekends even though it’s set for weekdays only.  Sprint acknowledged this bug and said an update should be out by the end of the first week of the Pre’s release.

That’s what I have so far.

~dmacias

Last six months of my cell phone.

It really amazes how something as simple as a cell phone bill gives you an insight on how busy someone’s life has been. Through out the years, this has been very true for me.

Price

Price

Minutes

Minutes

Ultimately, the above has let me to change my plan to Sprint’s everything plan. And while I used to try and not go over my minutes, now I make as many calls as possible from my cell phone… not sure if this was a good move by Sprint, but I’ll try my best to get my money’s worth.

~david

Oh Sprint How I Love You So, Let Me Count the Ways.

The last few months my Sprint bill had been in the multiple of hundreds of dollars. Usually above $300, so I finally decided to switch to their everything plan. $99 dollars + tax for all the calling, texting, and web is an excellent price and I will take full advantage of it. However, it just so happens that I have a corporate discount of 23%. Now, if you do the math, that would be a savings of at least $23 every single month! Yes, doesn’t that rock, simply everything plan for $77 + tax? However, I received my first bill today and the awesome savings came to a total of $0.18. Yes, that cents… 18 cents.

I picked up the phone and got in contact with Sprint (who btw has changed their IVR and gotten rid of ASR). The wonderful agent I spoke with, Christina, informed me that “since the simply everything plan is already so discounted, no further discounts can be applied towards it”. Well, isn’t that grand? In the long run, I will pay less, however I will miss that 23% discount. :(

~david

Sprint’s HTC Touch Pro is Out!

In case you didn’t know earlier this week (Monday) Best Buy got Sprint’s new PDA phone, the HTC Touch Pro. Then around Friday, all Sprint stores got them. I’ve played with it a little and love how responsive it is compared to the Mogul. However, I will still need to play some more with it, before making the decision to upgrade or not. Since I’m no longer under a contract, I’m hoping to get a good deal on it.

david