Ornoth

I finally took the plunge and picked up a real smartphone. Rather than give in to the soulless Apple empire, I went with an Android phone, the HTC Evo 4G. Although its design is a year old, it was a groundbreaking phone back then, and I’m very pleased with it so far.

It’s nice to finally have a device that not only offers diverse services—a mobile computer connected to the internet, a mobile WiFi router, a phone, a pocket camera, a GPS, a music player, and so forth—but one that delivers on the promise of integrating all those services, and does so in a very user-friendly fashion. It’s like what Palm Pilots aspired to be fifteen years ago, but so much more.

There’s so much to like about the phone, it’s hard to narrow it down, but my favorite new features would have to include the awesome Swype keyboard, voice transcription to outgoing text messages, great Google Calendar integration, Google Goggles’ funky visual search engine, and Qik’s potential for webcasting live video from anywhere.

On the other hand, the device’s sheer breadth of potential also made for a seriously intense setup process! All told, I probably spent over a dozen hours customizing the phone’s settings, then downloading and configuring various third party apps, plus merging and cleaning up my contact lists (which is an ongoing process).

Other than setup, I think my main issue with the device also derives from its breadth of capabilities. Basically, I’m not used to a phone that can do so many things, so I often overlook instances when it could be really helpful by solving an immediate problem. But over time I’ll get more accustomed to relying on it when those opportunities present themselves.

Finally, I’m going to list out the apps I’ve installed, both to record a baseline configuration as well as to provide pointers for other Android users who might be looking for similar information. So here’s what I’ve added. No, I’m not going to provide links to all these; if you can’t find them in the Android Market, go find them yourself!