That was fast – Sprint HTC EVO hype wanes

Sprint’s “iPhone Killer” has received a lot of attention and even exposed the great number of passionate Android fanboys. This may even be the device that buoys Sprint to avoid an implosion.

But a clearer picture has emerged that the HTC EVO hype may be waning. There’s no doubt that the smartphone was a best seller and is now out-of-stock nationwide. But now we learn that initial sales figures of over 200,000 sold over the launch weekend were largely incorrect — it’s more like 150,000. Still sold out, but it’s all about numbers in this business.

The real bomb, I think, comes from Michael Arrington and TechCrunch. Months ago Arrington abandoned the iPhone for Google’s Android phone, Nexus One. That was very big news coming from a high profile blogger. But lately he and his crew are advising against the purchase of the EVO:

Well, I’m an Android Fanboy, and I’m telling you not to buy this device. The battery life is abysmal –MobileCrunch calls it a “dealbreaker” and I agree. Yes you can do a few things to get a little extra time out of it, but this device routinely runs out of power while sitting on standby overnight next to my bed. You aren’t just charging this once a day. Or twice a day. You need to be thinking about your next power fix just about any time you are using it. I keep chargers at home, in my office, in my car, and an extra one to suck power from my laptop. That keeps it going, but it isn’t fun.

And it’s more than that. The HTC Sense user interface and all the extra HTC and Sprint software on this device just makes it a joke for anyone that wants to fully control and customize their device. You can get rid of or at least turn off much of it, but it’s a pain to do that. And worse, you can’t upgrade the Android OS to new releases until HTC and Sprint are ready to let you do that. SeeGizmodo for a full analysis of the problem.

And all this software trying to work together and in layers really does result in lots of bugs – particularly with photos. Quite often they fail to save and you have to reboot the device.

Ouch.

It appears that the only saving grace was Sprint’s decision to sell the EVO before WWDC’s imminent iPhone 4 announcement.

Related articles by Zemanta

• HTC Evo Android Phone Breaks Sales Records For Sprint (S, GOOG) (businessinsider.com)
• Don’t Buy The HTC EVO, It Is A Seriously Flawed Device (techcrunch.com)
• Whoops: Sprint Got The HTC EVO 4G Sales Figures Wrong [Android] (gizmodo.com)

• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 
• 

Tagged as: Apple, EVO, Google, iPhone, Nexus One, Sprint