HTC Evo is finally mine!!!!

Let me preface this posting by saying that I was impressed and eagerly awaited the Snapdragon-powered HTC phone long before it was ever was released to mobile carriers. I was then stoked more than ever to hear that Sprint would get it and the model would be called the Evo.

But nowadays I am more a cheap bastard more than a technophobe. So when Sprint changed the Sprint Premier program which before the change would in exchange for lengthening my contract would give me a new phone annually. With the change though now I would have to wait 2 years for a new phone, so I was like no HTC Evo for me if I had to pay full price for it and at $549 there was no one I was springing for it.

So I was having problems with my previous phone – the HTC Snap. So after numerous calls to Sprint’s useless Support I finally bit the bullet and decided to head to the Sprint Store. Mind you the HTC Snap on the Sprint network is a Windows Mobile 6.1 phone and since I had hacked it to Windows Mobile 6.5 I really didn’t want to go the Sprint Store because I knew what their answer would be. Even though HTC supported WinMo 6.5 on this device, Sprint had written this device off in favor of the WinMo7 devices on deck.

So needless to say I was in the neighborhood at another store waiting to get my new Apple MacBook Pro no less so I had a little time to kill so over to the Sprint store I go. I walk in totally committed to only getting the Snap worked on; then the rep starts talking to me about a new phone. Normally I am unflappable when I have my mind set on something, so the only thing I can say is that I must have been a little off my game that day because the only thing she had to say was “There’s a promo until the end of the month so you can get it for $99” and baby I was in!!!!

So with the new $10 monthly up-charge for having a true “smartphone” in addition to $10 for the mandatory insurance I walked out with a new HTC Evo (see the other specs here) and a whole new more expensive monthly billing plan. So for all you folks thinking of going to this phone either on Sprint, Verizon or AT&T (each of them have a comparable phone under other model names) just keep in mind that they have these mandataory add-on charges. Want to use the USB tethering?… extra charge! What to use the phone as a wifi hotspot?… extra charge!

The good thing about Sprint is they don’t have a charge for going over the 3G and 4G monthly usage tops like some of the others – remember the iPhone users who got bills for hundreds of dollars because they went over the network allowances.

So the HTC Evo 4G is finally mine and after upgrading it to the Android Gingerbread 2.3 OS it is really snappy and a plucky little phone! Now if only the Android OS could stop churning through battery power like a druggie at the coke store.

Yahhhooooo!