Review: HTC EVO 4G

Alright people, I know the review was supposed to be up last week, but honestly I did not feel that I could have given the HTC EVO 4G a proper review after only spending a week with it. As it stands, of all of the phones I have had in my possession this phone is the most impressive. The phone is a powerhouse, but it does have shortcomings as does any piece of technology. So alright now for the breakdown.

Hardware:

-4.3'' TFT LCD screen with 480x800 resolution

-1 GHz Snapdragon processor

-512MB of RAM

-8 Megapixel camera, and 1 megapixel front facing camera

-Runs on Sprints WiMax 4G network

So the hardware is incredibly impressive as far as specs go. The 4.3" screen offers ample space for anything from internet browsing, to watching movies. The pixel density may not be as high as the iPhone 4, however the screen is still very impressive. THe 1 GHz processor combined with the ample memory offers plenty of processing power for anything that you would want to be able to do with your phone. The phone handles 3D graphics fairly well, but when compared to phones like the iPhone 4 and the Samsung Captivate the graphics underwhelm. But that is not that the phone cannot handle 3D graphics, they just are not as shiny as you would come to expect from such an otherwise impressive phone. The 4G antenna offers some impressive speeds and you can definitely notice the bump in speed when compared to the 3G speeds.

Software

-Running Android 2.2, FROYO build

-Using the HTC SENSE

The user experience here is the same as it has been for a while now. The normal Sense UI here is all you get and if you are a fan for it you will fall in love with it. The processor makes this the best HTC Sense experience that I have ever had, and I have tried plenty of other versions of HTC Sense. FROYO offers some nice features, like bluetooth searching, dialing and the works. The update also adds Adobe's mobile Flash. Flash works seamlessly on the phone but at the cost of a huge drain on battery. Honestly its something that you would only use, if you REALLY needed to view something in flash and could not wait until you got home. The phone also offers you a YouTube widget that allows for viewing high quality videos which is definitely something thats more useful than it seems at first. So one of the biggest things to come with this phone is the 4G mobile hotspot feature. This allows you turn your EVO 4G into a wireless hotspot, where up to 8 other devices can connect to it and use Sprint's very fast 4G network. The phone can give you about 3 hours of hotspot goodness of a full charge, which is very impressive.

Design

Well what can I say about the phone that pictures cannot show you all, its honestly one of the best looking phones on the market, hands down.

Here is the phone compared to the Motorola Droid (sorry guys did not know anyone with a Droid 2 would have made for a better comparison), as you can see the phone is large but still very thin.

One of the coolest things about the design of this phone is this kickstand on its back. This seems like one of those features where everyone says, "What am I ever going to use this?" The fact of the matter is that the kickstand allows your phone to become a small screen to watch your movies or TV shows. I found the two times I used the kickstand the most was when I was listening to music while doing homework, right in front of me I could see which song was playing and could change songs without actually having to pick up the phone. The second use for the stand that I found was to use it as an alarm clock. You can get a desk app that acts like an alarm clock with weather information and your twitter and Facebook profiles, this was very useful especially when you do not have a normal alarm clock on hand.

Final Verdict

The phone is awesome, it is a powerhouse and offers some very nice features. The graphics may put some people off, but honestly the quality is there the graphics are just not as smooth as they could be. The battery life on the phone is impressive, but it still falls into the same pitfalls as all smart phones, you are going to have to charge this one on a daily basis. Honestly a daily charge is definitely an easy price to pay for the amazing feature set you are getting with this phone. We definitely want to hear from you all about your thoughts and feelings about the phone. We will have another poll up soon so we can figure out what you guys want to us to review, also feel free to leave comments here for suggestions on things to review.

Hardware- 9.0

Software- 9.25

Design- 9.75

Overall Rating- 9.25 (Note: this is a rating of the phone, not an average of the three categories)

Next Week Special Presentation!

Just as a heads up. Professor Gao, Shawn Kerns, and Brett Little recently attended the Nvidia GPU Technology Conference (GTC 2010) in San Jose, California. During next week's meeting, they will be presenting a brief overview of the conference, the latest technologies, and other fun and enlightening information bits! Please plan to attend this meeting and see what High Performance Computing has to offer! There will also be a major announcement during the presentation from NVidia!

Shawn Michael Kerns
Pacific ACM President 2010

Pacific ACM presents: Network Games #1 Recap

This past weekend, September 18th to be exact, Pacific ACM held the first official Network Games of the Fall 2010 semester! The event was held in the University of the Pacific Mc Cafferey Center Pine and Spruce rooms. Attendance to this event was higher than average and attracted many new faces. We are pleased to see new faces and hope they will continue to join us for this venue.

Also, a very big thanks to Graham Heaton, Pacific ACM's current Event Coordinator, and David Benefield, Pacific ACM's current ICPC Coordinator for making this event a huge success!

Here are a few photos from the event:

Have more pictures from this event? Please send them to s_kerns@u.pacific.edu

Thank you all again for a great LAN and next one is in a few weeks!

Shawn Michael Kerns

Pacific ACM President 2010

Pacific ACM Speaker Series is Back! In Full Force!

Over the past few months, the first initiative I have made was to bring back the Pacific ACM Speaker Series. To date, we have had three different speakers from a very diverse set of disciplines in computer science and related fields speak to Pacific ACM about what life is like after graduating and in the real world.

Just as a recap for those who may have missed the ACM Meetings. Our first speaker was Dr. Zhu from the Chinese School of Computing Technology. Dr. Zhu presented how to make 3D animations of Fire and Water fit over a skeleton frame of a human analog. His presentation was very fascinating and we are very lucky to have had Dr. Zhu visit ACM.

Our second speaker(s) were from Pacific's very own Office of Information Technology department. Robert Henderson and Rebeca Stovall came to Pacific ACM to enlighten us on the many different services Pacific offers, as well as tell us a little more about the network infrastructure and hardware. As a follow up, Pacific ACM will be touring the OIT facilities in the coming weeks.

Our most recent speaker was from Oak Ridge National Labs. Pacific ACM was very fortunate to have Dr. Cui stop by after the NVidia GPU Conference to tell us a little more about how Swarms and Colonies can be used in computer search problems. Also, how optimization can be done by studying natural phenomena, like bird swarms. Dr. Cui also held a Q & A session with Pacific ACM and told us a little more about the research and employment opportunities at Oak Ridge National Labs.

A very big thank you to Professor Jinzhu Gao for helping Pacific ACM with inviting these great individuals and providing Pacific ACM with an excellent resources list.

In the comoing weeks, look for speakers from Pacific, Students at Pacific, and researchers from Lawrence Livermore National Labs to stop by.

Shawn Michael Kerns
President - Pacific ACM

Upcoming: EVO 4G Review

So as requested the first tech review is going to be an HTC smartphone. So I thought what better phone to review than the BIG ONE, and by that I mean the HTC EVO 4G. So far the phone does have some impressive specs, such as a 480 x 800 4.3 inch TFT LCD screen, a 1GHz Snapdragon Processor, 512MB of RAM, 8 megapixel camera as well as 720p video recording, the real important feature is the introduction of the wiMAX, or 4G network. Running on the hardware is Android 2.2 or "Froyo", with one of the most impressive android skins called SenseUI. This is just a first look at the phone, the full review will be coming within a week once I get to mess around with this behemoth of a phone.

Friday Nights in Anderson 101

Hello Pacific ACM!

Just a quick post on last Friday's gathering in Anderson 101...

The night started off with a few access troubles, but after a little sorting out and searching, we finally gained access to Anderson 101. Apparently some cards work, and some do not. This will be addressed but a huge thank you to those who showed up and had card access!

A little after 9pm, and we had a room full! Not really playing too many games, but a great gathering nonetheless. Around 9:30pm, we started watching a few episodes of Stargate (from the beginning to get the new watchers up to speed) The night went well into the early morning hours, so I am told.

Thanks to everyone who showed up and joined in on the fun! Remember, this coming weekend is our first official Network Games! The officers and myself are looking into which games to go with and if you have any input, please bring it to the meeting on Thursday. Also, please be present to this weeks meeting, as we are having our first speaker! I want to fill CTC 113!

Thanks and I will see everyone around this week!
PACSWIMMR

ACM Minutes for Thursday, September 2nd, 2010

Hello Everyone,

Here are the minutes for this week and the upcoming events:

ACM Minutes 9/2/10

Attendance: 20

* We're starting a blog at pacificacm.blogspot.com. We'll be posting news, pictures, upcoming events etc. Come check us out!

* Join our facebook group, PacificACM.

* If anyone has ideas for events they would like to see, please e-mail the event coordinator at gsheaton@gmail.com

* We'll have Friday night ACMs at Anderson 101. We'll be playing games, movies, etc.

* We have speakers coming in next Tuesday and Thursday.

* OIT is coming in to speak to us during our general meeting on Sept. 16

* Network games planned for Sept. 11 at Noon in the Pine/Spruce Room.

* Keep in mind that ICPC is on November 13th. There are practice meetings on Monday(7:30pm), Tuesday(7:30pm), Thursday (4:30pm).

* We have 7 speakers planned for this semester!

* We're working on getting field trips to Nvidia, Intel and Lawrence Livermore Labs.

* Whoever Rickrolled Shawn is supposedly in trouble.

Enjoy!
Shawn