Your questions about the HTC EVO 4G LTE answered: Part 4
Since I picked up the HTC EVO 4G LTE last Friday, I've been answering all kinds of reader questions about all aspects of the device, and I've been having a lot of fun doing so! (Be sure to check out Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of the series, in case you've missed anything.)
There are more questions and answers below, so take a moment to check them out as you get yourself hyped up for what's bound to be a very exciting weekend, in which EVO-less spouses, partners, and significant others are bound to feel very neglected.
Marc: When the OG EVO came out we had to turn off a number of features to increase battery life, such as WiFi notifications. Could you please see if we are going to have to do this or other wierdness with the EVO 4G LTE?
Adam B.: How is the battery life without 4G? I'm curious because I want to upgrade my OG EVO, but not if the battery life is worse.
Tom: John, after a day or two of you playing with it, heavy use, please report the battery life you got.
Dan: I second the questions about the battery. I'm rocking the 3500mAh on my OG EVO, so battery is super important to me. Will this device survive without an extended battery?
John: Questions keep on pouring in about the battery life. I already gave you my initial impressions after a day of use, but after four days of use I can honestly say that the battery rocks. You will still need to charge it every night, but it's more than enough to get you through the day.
Last night, after 15 hours and 46 minutes, my phone still had 25% of its charge left. This was with 4G turned off and with average usage: about an hour of phone calls, an hour of streaming music from Google Play Music, around 25 texts sent and received, and with WiFi on only half of the time. I also used Google Reader throughout the day to check various news feeds, browsed the internet for a total of about an hour using Chrome Beta, and updated and downloaded some apps from the Google Play Store, along with a few other miscellaneous tasks.
The average user will definitely be able to get through an entire day, and then some. Heavy gamers or video/music streamers might not have as much success, although I have heard whispers of integrated battery cases on the horizon.
Brandon: I'm a little confused by the phone storage shots; they seem to suggest that you only get 2GB of space for apps, and the other 10 gigs is for storage of media. I'm a bit disappointed if 2GB is all I get for apps.
John: That's a great question, and I'm happy to clarify. I actually just addressed it last night in the video walkthrough, but it's worth revisiting here, too. Apps are automatically installed to "internal storage" (that's the 2GB you were talking about), while around 10GB of "phone storage" is set aside for anything else you want to put on the phone. However, it's really easy to move apps over to phone storage: just go to Settings > Apps > On phone storage. You'll see a list of apps that you can move to phone storage, if you want, freeing up more space in your internal storage. It works exactly the same way as moving apps to your SD card.
BDevo: Any idea if this will come out soon in white?
John: Sprint and HTC haven't announced anything, but it's likely that this device will follow in the footsteps of the OG EVO 4G and EVO 3D, so I'd expect something later this summer.
Adebayo A.: Do you have ocassional screen redraws? Some of the One Xs had that problem.
John: No, I haven't experienced that on either my EVO 4G LTE or my HTC One X. For the most part, it's been smooth sailing on both devices.
Keith: One thing that I am really curious about is, did HTC include Face Unlock? If so, is it the one they filed a patent for or the original Google Face Unlock?
John: Yes, Face Unlock is included, and it's the same one that's included on all Android 4.0 devices. I actually find it really useful, and you can expect a more in-depth review of the feature in a future article.
Frank: Can you jump into the camera by pressing the shutter button? The manual states you can do so from the lock screen, even with a password set. However, someone else said the button does nothing at lock screen.
John: Right now, the shutter button does nothing at the lock screen. However, if you have the camera set as one of your shortcuts, you can jump directly to it without entering your password; you'll have to enter your password to do anything other than take photos, though.
Just keep in mind that this is pre-release software, and I'm expecting a launch-day OTA update (or one perhaps even earlier), so there's still time to fix any shutter-button weirdness that you might have read about.
