Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/06/07/htc_evo_debuts/

Battleship of an Android phone sets Sprint sales record

4G, 4.3-inch display, no Steve Jobs

By Cade Metz

Posted in Personal Tech, 7th June 2010 18:05 GMT

As Steve Jobs prepares to unveil the latest Jesus Phone, Sprint says that its mega Android phone set a single-day sales record for the company when it debuted on Friday.

According to a statement from Sprint, Friday sales of the HTC EVO 4G topped the single day sales of any other phone in the company's history — though the company didn't give exact numbers. The previous record was held by both the Samsung Instinct and the Palm Pre.

The HTC EVO has a 480-by-800-pixel 4.3-inch display, which gives it more screen real estate than the iPhone and any other Android phone. That, of course, means the phone is rather chunky, but The Reg can confirm that the trade-off is more than welcome. The device also offers two cameras – an 8-megapixel on the back and a 1.3-megapixel on the front — and there's a kind of kick-stand for propping up the device for hands-free viewing.

As the name lets on, this is Sprint's first 3G/4G phone, offering both EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX hardware. It also includes a GB of built-in memory, 512MB of RAM, a Snapdragon QSD8650 1GHz processor, and an HDMI port for output to an HD television.

Having spent two weeks with the device, we'd argue the interface is (only) a step or two behind the iPhone. And unlike the iPhone, it connects to an American wireless network that isn't complete rubbish.

The EVO bundles the Qik video service, and according to the Qik blog, the debut of the phone meant it's servers were hit with unprecedented demand over the weekend. "When we were preparing for the launch of Qik on the Sprint HTC EVO 4G, we had anticipated significant growth as the device was just so great along with the 4G network," reads the Qik blog. "But even the significant growth assumptions were not enough and we are seeing some unprecedented number of new users joining and Qikking. It truly is beyond what we had imagined."

Qik says its server were hit by twenty times the normal amount of traffic, and the company had to, um, un-publish its application from the Android market is it sought to deal with user connection problems.

The HTC EVO, it should be noted, does not run the latest version of Android, version 2.2. It uses version 2.1, and at least for the time being, those wanting the added benefits of 2.2 – which includes Wi-Fi hotspot tethering — must upgrade on their own. ®