HTC EVO View 4G Android Tablet (Sprint)

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Price: $314.99 $298.98   

Product Feature

• 4G-enabled tablet with 7-inch multi-touch screen and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system
• Wi-Fi networking (with optional hotspot capability); GPS for navigation and location-based services (plus optional Sprint Navigation)
• 1.5 GHz processor; 5-MP rear camera with HD 720p video capture; 1.3-MP front camera for video chats; 32 GB internal memory plus microSD expansion
• Bluetooth 3.0 stereo music streaming; access to personal and corporate e-mail; HTC Scribe Technology for note taking with optional digital pen
• What's in the Box: HTC EVO View 4G tablet, AC charger, USB cable, quick start guide

Product Description

4G-enabled tablet with 7-inch multi-touch screen and Android 2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system Wi-Fi networking (with optional hotspot capability); GPS for navigation and location-based services (plus optional Sprint Navigation) 1.5 GHz processor; 5-MP rear camera with HD 720p video capture; 1.3-MP front camera for video chats; 32 GB internal memory plus microSD expansion Bluetooth 3.0 stereo music streaming; access to personal and corporate e-mail; HTC Scribe Technology for note taking with optional digital pen What's in the Box: HTC EVO View 4G tablet, AC charger, USB cable, quick start guide

HTC EVO View 4G Android Tablet (Sprint) Review

This is a review I posted in another link for HTC EVO View 4G. The first part is to note Sprint's current plans in supporting View and Clearwire WiMax 4G technology, followed by a comparison of usability between View, iPad 2, and gTablet. Finally, some additional comments are at the end.

-First-

I love my HTC View. But buyers need to beware that Sprint just internally circulated an announcement that they will stop ordering new inventory (end of life, or EOL) as of the end of January. For those who are wondering if View will ever get Ice Cream Sandwich update, HTC left View off of it's November announcement, though tech support in France told a disgruntled customer to "Wait for ICS to be released".

Finally, as we are probably aware, Sprint is slowly moving off of the WiMax 4G standard in favor of LTE. But they have pledged support for WiMax 4G through 2015. So rest assured that in case you need 4G mobile broadband with your View, you will still have that option. That is, unless Clearwire declares total bankruptcy or something and abandon their current infrastructure. As for coverage area for 4G, Clearwire is not expanding much. However, 3G broadband would still use Sprint's CDMA network, so in the event that Clearwire does fold, your tablet would still have a mobile broadband option.

--Functional Review--

I've done a pretty thorough evaluation of my View versus my Viewsonic gTablet, versus my iPad 2. In general, here are some speed comparisons:

Browser speed (fastest to slowest):
iPad 2 (Safari)
HTC View (stock, Dolphin HD, and Mire)
Viewsonic gTablet (Dolphin HD)

Comment: Also noteworthy is that for some reason, some websites are not displayed properly for any of HTC View's browser in any configuration (desktop/iphone/mobile/ipad). Luckily, these websites are very few and if it weren't for my blogs, I wouldn't have noticed.

Game speed (fastest to slowest):
iPad 2 (N.O.V.A. 2, Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds)
HTC View (N.O.V.A. 2, Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds)
VIewsonic gTablet (N.O.V.A. 2, Fruit Ninja, Angry Birds)

Comment: Not really surprising here. HTC View uses a single-core Snapdragon 1.5 Ghz processor. iPad 2 has a dual-core A5. However, despite that I overclocked my gTablet's Tegra II to 1.5 Ghz, its games lagged NOT because graphics issues, but because gTablet's screen is not nearly as sensitive as HTC View. More on that in just a little bit.

App compatibility
iPad 2
Viewsonic gTablet
HTC View

Comment: This is somewhat surprising. For example, American Express for Android is not compatible with HTC View. gTablet's compatibility is pretty good because there's a large community of modders constantly tweaking custom roms for compatibility issues with common apps.

Screen:
iPad 2, HTC View (tied)
Viewsonic gTablet

Comment: Not really surprising here. HTC View uses a very vibrant LED-LCD screen that had some other reviewers compare to Super LCD. Based on head-to-head viewing of the same photo stills, HTC View's screen is more pleasing to the eye than even iPad 2's. But I suspect that's because of the resolution-to-screen size issue. So in other words, HTC View packs more pixels per square inch than ipad 2. However, in terms of viewing angle, iPad 2 is still slightly superior. Also about the screen, HTC View's rotation is not 360 degrees. Rather, there's ONE landscape view and ONE portrait view. It doesn't bother me at all though. Also, both iPad 2 and View have TRUE multi-touch. You can test it by swiping around with all 5 fingers on Fruit Ninja. gTablet's maximum is 2 fingers, which also explains why gaming on it is somewhat slow despite fluid graphics.

Storage:
HTC View (32 GB internal with up to 32 GB expansion via microSD)
Viewsonic gTablet (16 GB internal with up to 32 GB expansion)
iPad 2 (16 GB, I cheaped out on mine)

Comment: You can use a variety of cloud storage services such as iCloud, Dropbox, and Amazon's own storage solution, to enhance storage. They generally delete cached items after 3 days of inactivity so that your tablet doesn't keep a back up copy of everything you store on cloud storage.

Accessories:
iPad 2
HTC View
Viewsonic gTablet

Comment: Sprint is selling their HTC Scribe digital pen at a discounted $39.99 for a limited time. For most people it works out to be $55 after taxes and shipping. An external website called electroniccrap sells quality gTablet accessories. iPad 2 accessories are everywhere.

Camera:
HTC View (by far)
iPad 2 (More use for front camera for Facetime than back camera)
Viewsonic gTablet (a 0.3 MP front camera only that doesn't impress at all)

Comment: HTC View's camera features autofocus, which means that it actually functions like an actual digital camera minus the optical zoom. It deals with low lighting conditions fairly well with digitally enhanced lighting. However, that's not saying much. It's still vastly inferior to a dedicated camera. But it's far superior to iPad 2's camera that's pretty awful. The front camera performance between iPad and HTC View is negligible, though.

Final comment:

I would say that HTC View could replace my iPad 2 completely for everything I want to do, except for a few problems. One, I do a lot of online banking so the lack of compatibility with AmEx is a huge drawback. In addition, I also blog a lot so the fact that HTC View doesn't display it properbly severely hinders something I do twice a day, at least. Otherwise I'd love to get rid of my iPad 2.

--Universal Media Storage--

Something else I neglected to mention is that upon plugging the HTC View in with your computer, you have to option of either charging it via USB or mount it as an external drive. This is something that iPad 2 does not natively support. So for those who are used to using Windows drag-and-drop file transfers, HTC View is probably easier to use than iPad 2. iPad 2 is constrained to the iTunes interface.

Also, EVO View 4G seems to struggle with websites that have a lot of flash content displayed at once (such as Fox full episodes), whereas my gTablet doesn't struggle, perhaps due to its hardware acceleration. In other words, gTablet's CPU is more powerful for multimedia stuff, as long as no screen-touching is involved. iPad 2 doesn't do flash (which as you know).

--Connectivity and Battery--

To address something I've seen other users point out about Sprint nagging for activation, or turning cell receiver on/off, here's what I observed.

After upgrading to Honeycomb, I have not received a single notification from either HTC or Sprint. In addition, one of the pre-configured home screens contains the following options to toggle on/off:
4G
Wifi
Mobile
GPS

The mobile option is whether or not you want your tablet to be constantly scanning for signal, which very well does cause battery drain. But with the convenient toggle on/off feature, you no longer need to worry about battery drain or "permanent" disable. I also assume that having turned off Mobile, Sprint no longer contacts you to activate your View.

With that said, there is a trade off. Some users don't like the HC upgrade because it eliminates a substantial portion of screen space for you to stick shortcuts to. Also disabled is the ability to create folders directly on home screens. But so far I haven't found it to be that much annoying, probably because I didn't bother to use the GE edition firmware much.

-Additional Thoughts-

So, having had extensive experience using View over the past few months, some added thoughts:

1. Maybe Apple was on to something when it declined support for Flash content. The lag is very noticeable when Flash plugin is "always on", regardless of the browser I'm using. The lag is not as bad on my Tegra 2-based gTablet despite having 1/2 the RAM. So that while benchmark scores suggest that the single-core 1.5 Ghz processor for View should be adequate, it appears that real world use still faces constraints not testable by benchmark software.
2. The front-facing camera doesn't have very good lighting. I've used Skype side-by-side comparison with iPad 2's Facetime and View's camera, the iPad 2's picture is much brighter.
3. The HTC Scribe stylus gives View its saving grace. I have had more than a few occasions when I needed to take a quick note. The ability to snap pictures on the fly with added hand-written notes while I was out traveling made some awesome travel slide shows.
4. View camera's shutter speed is better than first thought. While I was taking some pictures of splashing water, the clarity was quite impressive (note that still nowhere near the level of a DSLR).
5. Four entire days of uncharged idling with Wifi being on dropped only 20% of View's battery, not bad at all.
6. I seem to experience forced closing of apps on a semi-regular basis, which is rather annoying, in particular Miren browser.
7. It's easier to achieve higher score on Fruit Ninja with View compared to iPad because processor limitations slow down game speed.
8. Although screen is true multi-touch, it's still not nearly as sensitive as iPad 2's, perhaps due to its single-core processor. This is especially evident based on Fruit Ninja: Puss in Boots Edition's "Finale" where player is asked to bust a pinata as many times as possible. Kind of an unexpected test of CPU+sensitivity, but hey whatever works.

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