Gadgetory

hi this is Brian Bennett for cnet.com and if you are a loyal sprint customer or a die-hard fan of the original HTC evo 4g I've got a real treat for you this my friends is the all new HTC evo 4g LTE a phone a lot of android lovers are excited about based on HTC's latest flagship smartphone the 1x the HTC evo 4g LTE available on sprint for 199 offers the same cutting-edge components but with even more design Flair and yes it has a kickstand it's light years ahead of the Evo's before it in a worthy successor to the evo franchise first let me say the design of the evo 4G LTE is stunning fashioned from anodized aluminum and sporting a black and silver color scheme with flashy red accents the evo 4G LTE is a real looker the phone has a big bright 4.7 inch super lcd2 display with 1280 x 720 pixel HD resolution the screen uses IPS technology too so viewing angles are nice and wide and even with its massive display the 4g LTE is only 0.35 inch thick thinner than the HTC One X in fact software is state-of-the-art as well with the phone running android for dough ice cream sandwich and HTC's latest version of its sense UI version for that feels lighter and faster of course that extra speed is also due to the Evo's 1.5 gigahertz dual-core Snapdragon s4 CPU and one gigabyte of RAM above the screen is a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera while below it are three Android Ice Cream Sandwich buttons on the right is a very slim volume bar that can be tricky to locate since it blends in with the black background there's a dedicated camera button to which looks very slick with its silver etched spiral pattern too bad it doesn't wake the phone up and launch the camera from standby on the left is the evos microUSB port while on the back is the 8 megapixel camera with LED flash here you'll find a revamped spring-loaded kickstand an iconic Evo feature that can be used with the phone resting either on its left or right side just like the other HTC One series phones including the One X the evo features HTC image sense essentially that means the device has a special process or just for processing images has very Swift shot to shot times and comes with a wide selection of scene modes special settings and filters my favorite is the continuous shot mode for birth shots the camcorder function also captures video in full 1080p HD quality and lets you snap stills while recording the evo also features beats audio processing technology and will automatically recognize when you connect beats branded headphones and launched a matching equalizer audio profile unlike the HTC One X the evo 4G LTE does have a SD card slot for extra storage but the battery isn't removable the evo 4G LTE s major Achilles heel right now though is it remains a 3g smartphone though the phone will link to Sprint's 4G LTE network it's not operational yet that's a huge detractor from an otherwise stellar device hopefully Sprint will flip its LTE switch soon I'm Brian Bennett and this has been a first look at the HTC evo 4g LTE be sure to check out our full review at cnet com