EVO 3D Day 5 Spotlight Update

It is the start of day 5 with the EVO 3D and wanted to touch on a few areas:

Device Update: 

I’ve had a chance to run wild with Android market downloads and I basically have everything loaded that I had on my Epic, which is roughly 40 applications.  A pretty wide range of stuff, which I won’t go into here, but includes everything from reading apps, financial tools, widgets, gadgets, and of course games!  On the subject of games I would highly recommend purchasing the full version of the preloaded Spiderman content, the 3D imaging is subtle and game play is addicting.   Getting back to device mods, on top of my familiar widgets from the Epic I’m leverage desktop folders to categorize app shortcuts.  I find that this system allows me to locate what I need quicker than pulling up a massive app list.  Now that I have the old familiars in place it is timed to start getting familiar with HTC’s goodies, stay tuned.     

HTC Sense UI:

In my previous post I commented on how much I liked HTC’s UI, and the more I interact with the phone the more I like it.   The processor and available RAM have a ton to do with it but the screens just seem to flow together extremely well and the options to customize the screens, including the lock screen, are much easier to manipulate compared to my previous Android based devices.  There is a laundry list of key features included in the Sense UI but I wanted to highlight a couple of them here:

1.       Carrousel window navigation-   This might seem inconsequential until you see it.  Gone are the days of having to scroll back the opposite way once you have reach the far right or left home screens.  The UI was designed to simply continue through your home screen progression continuously and the view changes depending on how fast you swipe.   The faster you swipe the smaller the home screen tiles become creating a carrousel like view of all at maximum warp speed. 

2.      Animations-   Sense’s use of screen transition and app start/end animations are the second piece of the secret sauce that makes the device so fluid.  Several other reviews have commented on the 3D aspect of the UI but you really won’t catch it unless you pay attention during home screen scrolling.  (nice touch but not visible when viewing set screens)

3.       Friend Stream-   The stream allows you to update the status on all of your social medial accounts simultaneously.  Nice little tool if you are over extended with social media accounts and want to provide quick updates.    

4.      People Widget-  This feature allows you to choose a group of contacts  and display them in widget form on one of your screens.  The widget provides updates with the latest from their social network status, and any missed calls or SMS messages from them.  This one is on my to do list so I will comment further in future posts.

Battery:

Unfortunately I have bad news here, on average I’m getting anywhere from 2-4 hours of use before my battery life meters starts to make me antsy.  In standby mode and extremely limited use the battery life is a little better ranging 4-6 hours.  As mentioned above I do have a ton of apps loaded to my device, which I’m sure has an effect, but I am rather diligent about connecting to WiFi when available, leveraging the task manager to kill unused apps, and only activating GPS and 4G when necessary.  I really don’t like modifying my usage behavior to make sure my battery will last so an extended battery can’t come soon enough.

That’s it for now, expect to see an update from me by on other topics by week’s end and again if there is anything you would like to comment on just let me know!     

Link to original HTC EVO 3D Post  
http://mblspt.blogspot.com/2011/06/spotlight-on-htc-evo-3d.html