HTC EVO 4G – A week later
I wanted to hold off writing my review of my new phone because I wanted to spend a week with it and learn all about it. I got the HTC EVO 4G on launch day and I immediately fell in love with it. I'm not the only one either, because I ended up ordering my wife one 2 days later.
So far the phone is amazing. Yes, I will admit that there is a bit of a battery life issue, but with a screen this size and the fact that you're going to spend every extra second playing with the damn thing, you're going to burn through some battery. You can get 2 spare batteries and a charger on eBay for about $11, so it's no big deal to carry an extra in your pocket.
Android and HTC Sense are amazing. With the 1Ghz Snapdragon processor, everything runs like a bat out of hell. In fact, I can't say anything bad about the software on this phone. It's very intuitive to use and you pick things up very quickly. It took me all of 3 days to figure everything out, but I'm an experienced user. When it only took my wife the same time to figure the phone out, I knew it wasn't just me. The phone is that easy to use.
My wife told me "I've never been excited about a cell phone before, but I am out this". I feel the same way. Going from the Treo Pro to this is like going from a Yugo to a Ferrari. It's that good. The camera puts out some excellent pictures and now that Qik is up and running, the video calls are really good. I've also tested video calling on Fring with my friend Jef and it seems to work great too. Everything on this phone is snappy and beautiful. From what I've seen about the specs on the new iPhone 4, the EVO 4G should kick it's ass in everything except resolution.
If you're on the fence about getting an EVO, I'd say go for it. You won't be disappointed.
PAM (Phone as Modem) using Samsung Instinct
Wow... 2 posts in 1 day. This is almost unheard of for me! This past weekend I picked up a Samsung Instinct. It's a really cool phone with all kinds of cool little gadgets, but if you just go plugging it in, it won't work as a modem. I've figured out a little way around that.
First, you'll notice that when you plug your phone in using the USB cable, it turns off the phone completely and accesses the SD card in the phone. A simple way around this is to just remove the card. Easy, right? Now you're going to need to change a setting in the phone. You're going to type ##DEBUGMENU# on your keypad (##332846368# for those of you that can't spell). You'll need your MSL next. You can normally get this by asking the person at your local Sprint store very nicely. It'll be a 6 digit number that you'll type in and it'll bring you to a menu. Go to "Toggle NAI" and Toggle modem off. Yes, I said turn it off. Trust me, this is the only way it's going to work. Once you've got all of that done, create a new Dial-up Networking Connection using your Samsung modem. Leave the Username and Password blank and use #777 as your dialup number. That's it! Pretty simple, eh?
I'm still working out some bugs with this. The connection doesn't stay up very long, but it will auto-redial, so it doesn't go down for long. I'm getting about 1.5 Megabit down and 256k up, so it's not blindingly fast, but it works. Hell, as I write this, I'm sitting in at the bar drinking a beer. And yes, I'm using my new Samsung Instinct as a modem to do it.
BEWARE! According to Sprint, even though you have an unlimited data plan, you still have to pay for a PAM plan. I'm not doing this currently as I'm only testing out the functionality. I suggest that if you want to use your Instinct as a modem, you buy a plan with Sprint.