HTC EVO Phone

Yesterday I ended up buying a new phone. It was a pretty difficult decision, and I’m not nearly as sure that I made the right decision as when I bought my Palm Treo 755p over three years ago.

Initially I had planned to buy a BlackBerry because it is great with text, and text is what I do. However, I got the feeling that BlackBerry OS had started to fall behind, and I didn’t want to replace an old phone with one that was also already on the way out. It also seemed like I wouldn’t be able to customize the phone as much. BlackBerries look like they have exactly one way of doing things. And I figured I would miss the touch screen.

I didn’t really want to buy a Korean phone (“Buy North American or European!”), but there isn’t much else left. So it came down to the Samsung Epic and the HTC EVO. I liked the idea that the Epic had a physical keyboard, but it turned out to not be so good. I’m also always a bit skeptical of devices with hinges. The user interface of the HTC phones also look better. So the HTC EVO it was.

Getting the new phone involved upgrading from the SERO 500 plan for $30 a month to SERO Premium for $40/mo plus $10/mo 4G data surcharge. But $50 a month before taxes isn’t bad for an unlimited everything plan.

There are many things the EVO does very well. Watching YouTube videos use great. Browsing the web is amazing. Reading RSS feeds and listening to podcast is slick. And in landscape-mode, even writing this blog post with the on-screen keyboard is enjoyable.

I have experienced a few downsides too, though. The SplashMoney application for Android is terribly slow, almost unusable. And for both SplashMoney and SplashID, the desktop sync is a lot worse than for the Palm. But maybe that will improve.