It was a little over a year ago that the marketing staff at Apple decided that the iPhone 4 would, “..Change everything. Again”, but now that a year has gone by, what has it really changed? Pretty much nothing. But, while the iSheep were celebrating a new iPhone, the Android faction was celebrating the HTC EVO 4G, the phone that really did change everything. Let’s just see how this single phone changed the entire market, and how it destroyed the iPhone’s edge in new technologies.
The first thing that the EVO 4G changed was front cameras. Sure, both the iPhone 4 and the EVO have front cameras, but the EVO was announced months before the iPhone 4, so the EVO had it first. That makes the iPhone 4 the first phone to follow HTC’s idea for a front camera. Motorola, Samsung, LG, and many more manufacturers now have phones with front cameras, and it seems like every new flagship device has one. But front cameras are only one feature that the EVO has brought to the market.
It also brought high quality cameras. The EVO had an 8mp shooter, and it was almost unheard of to have a camera that good on a phone. When the EVO was announced, the Droid was a pretty popular phone on the market, and it had only a 5mp camera onboard, and the newest iPhone had a measly 3mp camera. Now, 8mp cameras are the norm on most new heavy hitting devices. Didn’t see the iPhone do that, did you?
The EVO was also one of the first devices to have a monstrous screen. 4.3″, it was unheard of in the Android world and only the HD2 had it. But, once the EVO packed the giant screen, everyone else wanted to as well. Samsung is a perfect example, as the new Infuse has a 4.5″ screen that is even bigger than the EVO, and Apple is really being pushed to follow the EVO’s footsteps and make a giant screened phone. You could say that it was just because screens seemed small and manufacturers decided to go bigger, but when you look at it, just a year earlier it was thought a 3.7″ screen was big. The EVO just raised the bar higher for other manufacturers, and now, there are tons of monster phones out.
The EVO also had a curious feature where you could share internet with devices around you with a Personal Hotspot, the first of its kind that was available without any hacks or jailbreaks. Every new Android phone has it, and even the iPhone 4 on Verizon has it too, thanks to the EVO.
And, quite possibly the single most game changing feature the EVO had was 4G. 4G is now all the craze in the mobile world, as every major network in the US has 4G today, and every new major device has 4G connectivity. From the Thunderbolt, to the Atrix, to the G2X, 4G is seen more often than not in new phones. And the EVO was only the very first device to spark that fire. Now, even the next iPhone is suspected to have 4G.
As you can see, the EVO changed a lot, and this year, we can watch the EVO 3D do it again with 3D. Only a few phones have been made with this feature onboard, but they are nowhere near release. The EVO 3D simply beat them to the market. And, the EVO 3D will push the market into faster, greater heights with a 1.2GHz dual core processor.
Try and beat that, iPhone 4S/5. I dare you.
Nicolas Wiggins
Android Correspondent
