EVO vs Droid

For the past few weeks I've been enjoying HTC EVO 4G that Google lightheartedly passed out to all 5000+ participants of Google I/O during the conference. I've been comparing it with Motorola Droid that Google carelessly passed out to all 5000+ participants of Google I/O before the conference.

For those who reads the news from the bottom, I'm strongly considering the switch to Sprint.

The nitty-gritty comparison details are below.

Call Quality
I use Google Voice and it works well on both phones.

Coverage
No substantial difference in the parts of Washington, DC area where I dwell.

4G
For many, me included, it's a marketing gimmick as 4G coverage is not widely available yet.

3G
Same speed on average.

Operating System and User Interface
Droid comes with a stock 2.1 Android while EVO rocks HTC Sense. I found Sense to be buggy(er) that the stock version. The most annoying thing is EVO routinely "forgets" it has an SD card, the only workaround being to reboot the phone.

The stock Android 2.1 Gallery application comes with Picasa integration baked in so that you can access your Picasa albums right from the Gallery. Sense's gallery replaces that with Flickr and kinda breaks the smooth Google experience.

The built-in Sense widgets look nice and work as expected most of the time. Some of them, such as Weather widget, lack functionality while others, like Calendar, don't behave as expected.

The integrated Clock application that includes the timer and the stopwatch among other things is definitely a plus.

7 home screens of Sense are something that I've yet to feel a need for but the home screen overview via pinch zoom-out is a nifty feature that I use a lot for no reason.

More often than not I wish I could replace Sense with the stock Android and remove much of the bloatware that comes pre-installed on the phone.

Hardware
Even through EVO boasts 1GHz processor (vs Droid's 600 MHz one) I don't see eye-popping difference in the performance of the two phones under my typical usage pattern.

8 megapixel camera with 720p recording works as advertised and is probably the best camera I've seen on a smartphone. Auto-focus is fast and in many cases focuses correctly in a wide range of distances. With my Droid I have to manually select macro mode for close-ups.

720p video looks good for a smartphone and can be viewed in HD on YouTube with a fair amount of pleasure. The 3gp format is problematic for non-linear editing but QuickTime Pro does the basic job of cutting and gluing.

Overall I find the camera to be one of the most compelling reasons for using EVO.

Screen
EVO's 4.3" screen is gorgeous. Large and clear. Easy to tap on correctly. You'll enjoy it.

Keyboard
We all know that EVO doesn't have a physical keyboard. It happened to be less of a problem than I originally thought though. One of the side advantages of a big screen is you can tap-type on it with fewer mistakes reasonably fast. The virtual keyboard that comes with Sense is tangibly better that the stock Android one. Auto-correction works well in many cases. You have to look at what you "typed" though - sometimes you are up to surprises.

The auto-correction somehow does not apply to search and some other input-heavy areas and there I found a lot of room for improvement of my thumb-typing skills.

The Looks
EVO is an eye-candy. Designed after iPhone, it's basically perfect.

Conclusion
I'm sitting on the fence and looking at EVO's territory. Two more weeks to go before the final decision is to be made.