My HTC EVO 3D review

[howard]

I recently reviewed the LG Optimus 3D. The Optimus has a 3D display that doesn’t require glasses plus it had dual cameras to capture 3D images. While I had a lot of fun with the Optimus the 3D capabilities had a lot of caveats. Now I have the HTC EVO 3D. A phone with similar 3D capabilities. Read on to find out which is better.

I like how the EVO is a little thicker than the HTC Sensation 4G. It makes it easier to use. Still, I found myself accidentally pressing the menu buttons a lot them a lot - especially when whenever I tried to use the EVO with one hand. Hopefully HTC’s designers will realize this problem and fix it by either leaving more space at the bottom or putting them closer to the center.



On the right are volume buttons, a slider that switches between 2D and 3D modes plus a camera shutter button. I’m very happy that HTC included the shutter button.



There’s a micro USB on the left. You can hook up a micro USB to HDMI adapter to this to connect it to a TV. I didn’t have on handy to try it.



On top are a power button and a headphone jack.



On the back are two 5MP auto focus cameras with a dual LED flash. I like the design of the back. It looks interesting.



Compared to other recent phones the EVO’s a little thick so HTC has tried to keep it thin by using a very thin back cover - it’s quite flexible!


HTC EVO 3D, LG Optimus 3D

The display has a resolution of 960x540 which is higher than the Galaxy S II and LG Optimus 3D. That said the display isn’t very good. It doesn’t have very good colour and while I find it slightly washed out looking it looks really washed out if you’re viewing it more than around 10-15 degrees off center.


LG Optimus 3D, HTC EVO 3D, Samsung Galaxy S II

I gave it some thought and I suspect that the fact that it supports 3D viewing may be the cause. You see the EVO uses a parallax barrier to enable glasses free 3D (same as the LG Optimus 3D). I suspect that the barrier is either too thick or is too far from the actual screen so it’s catching the backlight and reflecting it back in causing it to wash out. Of course that’s just a guess. After all the Optimus 3D also has a parallax barrier and it’s display looks much better than the EVO’s. If you never view your phone off center than the EVO’s display isn’t terrible. Otherwise it kind of reminds me of a higher resolution version of a display you’d find on a Pay-as-you-go phone minus the ghosting.

There are 2 points about viewing 3D on the EVO: It only works in landscape mode and when viewing 3D images the EVO’s horizontal resolution is cut in half. Half the pixels are viewed by your left eye and the other the right. So in 3D mode the EVO’s screen resolution is actually 480x540. This is one area where the EVO has a big advantage over the Optimus 3D. While I do notice the extra resolution in 2D mode I really notice the extra res in 3D mode. 3D on the EVO is display is much sharper.

The EVO I’m reviewing is running Android 2.3.4 with HTC Sense version 3.0. Between Samsung’s, LG’s, Motorola’s and Sony Ericsson’s customizations HTC Sense is probably the most useful. Some examples are that their email client and browser reflows text depending on how zoomed in you are. That said, to me Sense makes the EVO feel a tad bloated. There are too many extra icons in the menus.

I’ve already covered Sense many times in previous features so I won’t say much more about it beyond that Sense is a good thing.



In order to capture 3D pictures and videos you need 2 cameras. The EVO has dual 5MP cameras that capture 5MP photos and 720P video in 2D mode and 2MP photos and 720P video in 3D mode.


an example of a scene that would have a strong 3D effect.

I mentioned the ins and outs of 3D cameras in my LG Optimus 3D review but in case you missed it here they are: In 3D mode the EVO can’t focus on subjects that are closer than around 1.5 ft away because the cameras can’t move closer to each other. To illustrate this stare a pencil and bring it close to you. Notice how you become cross-eyed. The EVO can’t do that because the cameras can come closer. There’s a sweet spot from around 1.5ft to a couple of feet away (sorry I couldn’t measure) where the 3D effect is most dramatic. To make your photos pop out more try to make sure the background is far away. In 3D mode the EVO appears to stop the lenses down so that they have as much depth as field as possible. This can make it challenging to take pictures indoors since stopping the lenses down means a lot less light gets through. Luckily the EVO can use it’s flash in 3D mode (the Optimus 3D can’t).

The EVO captures 3D video in mpo format while photos can be saved as either mpo or jps. I don’t know how to view mpo on my computer but jps files are just 2 jpeg’s saved side by side. I looked around and while it is possible to convert mpo files to 2D it’s not the most straight forward thing to do. I’m sure that will change in the future.

I had a couple of beefs with the EVO. The autofocus takes too long, the AF isn’t always accurate and because it uses really slow shutter speeds which means most indoor photos will be blurry. One feature I like is that you can tap the screen to tell the EVO where to focus.



That said, if you tell it where to focus and can hold it still enough and have a cooperative subject the EVO can take pretty decent 2D photos.

2D videos look awful. Videos are jerky, soft and colours are splotchy.

I wasn’t able to view the EVO’s 3D videos on my computer so I’m not able to critique it as much as I can with the images but they looks okay when viewed on the screen (which is true of most phones).

One thing I like about the EVO over the Optimus 3D is that the EVO captures 3D images with an aspect ration of 16:9. This means that the images have the same AR as the display so that the sides don’t need to be letterboxed. This makes the 3D effect on the EVO much more dramatic since the 3D effect gets turned off when you zoom in.

You get Polaris Office which can view as well as edit and create Office Word and Excel files.
There’s an icon for Wi-Fi calling. It appears to be VOIP that’s separate from the voice capabilities you get from your carrier. If you go out of range of your WiFi network the call will drop.



Battery life is awful. Even though the EVO ships with a 1730mAh battery it has a hard time making it through the day.

Sound quality was decent. Both incoming and outgoing are pretty clean sounding. RF performance was average.




It’s a tough call between the LG Optimus 3D and the EVO 3D. While down in the resolution department the Optimus’s display looks much nicer than the EVO’s. It’s hard to capture the difference in pictures but in person the difference is very dramatic.



The Optimus captures better video plus it takes higher resolution 3D photos. While the EVO captures lower res pictures their 3D effect is more pronounced because the pictures take up the entire screen. The pictures also look better because the EVO has a higher resolution display The EVO has a newer version of Android 2.3 vs 2.2 and more RAM while the LG has more built in storage (~6+1GB vs 1GB). Speed-wise they’re similar. I’d give HTC the edge when it comes to their software layer on top of Android. HTC Sense over whatever LG is calling their layer.



So here’s the thing, the EVO is actually a very good phone with 2 big problems. Considering the EVO’s market positioning as a top of the line phone the screen isn’t good enough. I also didn’t like using the EVO because I was constantly pressing the menu buttons by accident it’s definitely better than the HTC Sensation 4G in this regard - I don’t really have these problems with the LG Optimus 2x, Optimus 3D, Samsung Galaxy S II and Infuse 4G.

[wirelessgal]

Great review. Howard, I have a question. I have the HTC EVO 3D as well. When the phone is not in use, it's on 3G. When I start using the browser, check my emails or use gps, it slowly kicks in to
4G. The browsing in the beginning takes a few seconds for 4G to kick in, but when it does, the page loads pretty fast depending on what site I go on. Is this normal or is this a bug?

Thanks

[ender666666]

That's normal, and the same with my EVO. As I understand it, in this case, "4G" is HSPA+ which is really only a data enhancement, and has no purpose running when your data connection is idle. When you fire up your phone's data engines, it starts sending and receiving right away through regular HSPA (3G) and then switches over once the phone obtains a 4G signal, if there is one available.

[wirelessgal]

Thanks for clarifying that. On my Bold 9900 it's on H+ all the time, so I thought all 4G phones were like this. But since BlackBerry has push content, it
makes sense to be on 4G all the time.

[GSMYaPPer]

Any one getting shutting down randomly or can not start the phone with out removing the Battery ? my friend bought this phone last week. Rogers wont take it back because of 30+mins used on it which is crap 20min of it was to *611 relating to this problem, at the P.N.E. it turned off about every 2 hours so they called to see if they can fix it they reset it on the network end, and it turned off 45mins after that.

[wirelessgal]

I haven't had any problems with my phone. Could it be an app that's causing this?

[ender666666]

Agreed, I haven't had any similar issues either. So far, this is one of the best phones I have used in a long time.

[wirelessgal]

I didn't think I would ever buy another HTC. But this phone has been pretty solid so far. I'm very impressed.

[saltorio]

Coming from an Xperia X10 and all it's issues, I'm extremely happy with my EVO 3D.

Question: Did you turn the brightness to full on all three phones when comparing screen brightness? The EVO 3D seems darker than my does at full brightness.