Having owned the iPhone 4, Sprint EVO, and iPad for a while now, I have tried several times to post my thoughts on these devices, and a proper review, but I simply do not have the time to do these reviews justice.

So, here I am going to try very hard to do a brief writeup on my top-level thoughts.

1. The iPad is not a fad. The iPad is for reals.

The iPad is real and I use it every day, as does my wife and mother in law.

The iPad has several important usability aspects which make it unique. First of all, it is *more* portable than a notebook, much more – and the battery lasts longer. It is an ideal companion for the train, much more so than the iPhone or a netbook. It’s quick to open, does not ‘boot up’, the battery lasts all day and the larger screen makes video playback and web browsing a much better experience than an phone.

As an e-Book reader it is unbeatable. Its a better Kindle than the Kindle. I have a lot of PDF books and the iPad is the first device which is just perfect for reading them.

The iPad’s only major problem now is the lack of multitasking. What was annoying on the iPhone is infuriating on iPad, as you could actually get some major work done with this device if it weren’t for losing state when switching apps.

Prediction: A future version of the iPad will also have application windows and a desktop like MacOS. The iPhone model of multitasking and app management holds the iPad back.

2. The iPhone 4 is not a failure, but a major misstep.

Yes the display on the iPhone 4 is gorgeous, and the battery life and camera are much better. Facetime is a nice novelty but its embarrassing to Apple to have this launch in the US without 3G support – its just another footnote in the long list of abysmal AT&T service iPhone users have to deal with.

However, the iPhone 4 did not fix ANYTHING that users had clamored for, and broke some stuff that worked fine.

CARRIER

Steve, we would give back every iPhone 4 feature there was and pay an extra $100 to just have Verizon in July. Seriously, 4 years with a carrier you and every iPhone user knows does not deliver quality service is turning a blind eye to your customers.

FORM FACTOR

Everyone has always loved the form factor of the iPhone, and haven’t really complained that much about a lack of serious refresh. Yet, here we have a new iPhone which neither feels as comfortable in your hand or can withstand drops, and aesthetically its little more than ‘just different’.

RECEPTION

From the very first review of the very first iPhone, the major complaint was data speed and dropped calls. It’s always been a mystery to me why iPhone originally shipped with EDGE when 3G was well-established in the marketplace (I never even considered buying an iPhone before the 3G). The problem continued however with the poor QOS of AT&T service and what was probably a reception shortcoming of the iPhone as well.

Again, at this stage in the iPhone’s development to ship the 4th generation product with a reception issue is beyond belief. Stop testing the iPhone in Silicon Valley – it works fine there – test it in NYC.

MULTITASKING

I don’t have a problem with the iPhone’s ‘limited’ multitasking concept – in fact, I think its a great idea – not just for phones, but for computers as well. It a process isn’t doing anything it shouldn’t be using any resources at all as long as you can switch back to it quickly. That’s a tough engineering problem but a very worthwhile goal for energy conservation. Apple’s implementation is sound.

However, they don’t do task switching as well as Android, and it’s not leveraged as well either. With Android, users can select their own default mail app, web browser, what have you, and most of your task switching involves not running back and forth to the home button/app selection screen but simply by pressing the ‘back’ button. It’s a seemingly subtle difference but in practice makes multitasking – and overall usability – much more efficient on Android.

3. The Sprint EVO isn’t perfect either, but it is absolutely on par with the iPhone 4 and has 2 MAJOR secret weapons…but first lets get this out of the way….

ITS BIG AND THE BATTERY SUCKS

The Sprint EVO is big – people with small hands will probably hate it – and the battery life is indeed an issue. However, neither are deal-killers. In fact, I am seriously considering returning my iPhone 4 and canceling my AT&T service, because it just doesn’t return any value for me relative to the Sprint/EVO combo.

APPS LOOK SLOPPY

The other shortcoming of EVO is related to Android. The Android SDK, unlike iOS, does not result in a lot of pretty apps by default. You *can* make a great looking app on Android, its just that unlike the iPhone SDK, its easier ‘not to’. It reminds me a lot of linux desktop in this regard. It has loose and unenforced design guidelines that make for a sloppy-looking catalog.

One of the major reasons for this is that unlike the iPhone, the iPad has no fixed display resolution (notice how interface elements on iPhone 4 did not change size or result in more ‘real estate’ for UI elements- they just scaled them 2:1 to avoid this issue).

OS AND APPS ARE MORE POWERFUL

As for apps, you will have no problem finding the apps you need in Android Marketplace, and most of them will have the same if not more features than the iPhone version thanks to the lack of restrictions imposed by the iTunes App store and AT&T on what an app can do.

For example, when I commonly take a photo on the iPhone, I want to upload it to Facebook. So I pull up the send menu, and…no Facebook. This is because you can only send the photo to places which have been ‘blessed’ (EMail, MMS, and MobileMe). Now you have to leave the app, find the Facebook app, go to your profile, click the camera, select the photo, and post it as an update.

This is unnecessary on Android – the camera app can send photos wherever you want and the locations are extendable.

Similarly, you can use Gmail as your default mail app on Android, and stuff like the ‘Archive’ button will actually be available, unlike using Gmail sync on iPhone.

Beyond that, the entire OS is open source and there are no real limits on what parts of the OS can be programmed. There is a program ‘ROM Manager‘ which basically lets you point and shoot completely unique builds of Android right on the phone.

YOU CAN USE THE APPS YOU LIKE BEST AS DEFAULTS

Most importantly is the ability to use any app as your default for web browsing and email (or viewing images, etc..). I have been using ‘Perfect Browser’ on the iPhone and iPad for months now as it actually has ‘features’ unlike the very bare-bones Mobile Safari browser. Using tabs on the iPad works perfectly, I have no idea why Apple decided to use their tiresome window-switching scheme on the iPad.

I cannot make ‘Perfect Browser‘ my default browser on iPad, however, which cuts my opportunity to take advantage of this much better browser in half. This is really important, because the iPad is so large, you might find yourself choosing to use a regular web version of an service you used as an app on the iPhone (example: Facebook – I suspect this is why they haven’t bothered to make an iPad app).

On the EVO, I use Dolphin HD as my browser – its not perfect, but its jam-packed with features and under constant development and update.

THE EVO’S ‘SECRET WEAPONS’

The EVO has some secret weapons that the iPhone doesn’t even come close to competing with. These aren’t just ‘features’ but serious cornerstone elements of the device which are of unique and of massive value.

#1 WIFI HOTSPOT

Before the first iPhone was even released, I had enjoyed unlimited 1.5+ Mbps USB tethering for free on my Sprint Blackberry for over a year. It worked amazingly well. 4 years later, the iPhone is just *now* getting USB tethering – for a fee, and with a download limit.

Not that I would ever pay for that service, because:

a. data throughput on the iPhone 4 is awful
b. tethering is usually unlimited and/or free on other carriers/handsets
c. USB tethering is obsolete

The last one is the biggie. USB tethering is obsolete. It’s awkward, requires you to have a cable with you all the time, only works with one device at a time, and that device is pretty much limited to a computer.

With the Sprint EVO, I just press the ‘hotspot’ button and I am a walking ISP. My iPad works (using my EVO as a 3G hotspot with my iPad is *much* faster than my wife’s AT&T 3G iPad service!), My MacBook works – and none of them need a cable or any special config at all. Heck even 6 other people sitting around me on the train can use it – what do I care? It’s basically as fast a a mid-level Verizon DSL account, and costs less.

Also, when my power goes out at home, we still have internet! We have a squirrel chew through a line on our street a week ago and lost power or 90 minutes – my FiOS was down. I just fired up the EVO and we surfed it on our iPads for an hour.

I would even go so far as to say the EVO hotspot feature could completely replace a DSL line for casual users (not gamers or heavy downloaders of course, but emailers and web surfers absolutely).

Other Android phones with Froyo have the hotspot feature now also – for free – although its unclear how long the carriers will allow that before charging for it.

#2 GOOGLE NAVIGATION

I guess that I never knew about Google Navigation because it sounded ambiguous and I figured it was the same thing as Google directions on Google Maps.

Its not.

Google Navigation is nothing more or less than the best realtime GPS navigation app I have ever used on ANY platform or standalone device, period. It so good, I commonly set the EVO on its (indispensable) kickstand in my car and use it in place of the Nuvi already on the dashboard!

The screen is bigger, the maps are better and always up-to-date, it has real-time traffic (!), and the voice instructions are SO much better than other apps – you can drive 100 miles with it, and it will not speak unless it has something you need to hear, unlike a Nuvi, which will tell you to ‘stay right’ if there is a slight bend in the interstate, or warn you 10 times of an upcoming turn.

But best of all is inputting locations – you can do it BY VOICE. Voice search is the next ‘secret weapon’ we will discuss, and its most powerful implementation is with Google Navigation. Anyone who has tried to find a location on a Nuvi will understand – it doesn’t know about ‘all’ stores and stuff, and you need to drill down POIs and categories to find them anyway. Keyboard input on the Nuvi is slow and cumbersome. Its slow to find stuff and build routes.

With the EVO, you just press the ‘search’ button on the phone, and speak the destination. Of course, its also tied into Google Local so the power of what you can do just goes on and on.

#3 VOICE SEARCH

I’ve always liked Google’s app on the iPhone with Voice Search, but because its buried in an app and is limited to the SDK browser I never used it as much as I could have.

On Android phones, there is a dedicated search button, and it can use voice as input anytime. Its also *contextual*, so when you click search in a restaurant app it implements search in that app.

It’s very clear to me that every phone should have this.

#4 MORE BANDWIDTH NOW, EVEN MORE LATER

A lot of people have complained that the EVO’s 4G is kind of a bust locally since we don’t have 4G yet.The thing is, I commonly get 3x better 3G speed on the EVO over my iPhone 4 anyway – but the idea that will only get better in the future is a feature no other phone has right now. Future proof data is just nice to have anyway you look at it.

IN CONCLUSION

OK, well, I tried to make it brief and of course I failed once again.

Contrary to what I have written here, I don’t recommend the Sprint EVO over the iPhone 4. I prefer the EVO, but that’s me, and I *know* many people will be happier with the iPhone 4.

Everyone wants to know which is better, etc. Well, neither is better, of that I am certain – not only that, but there is an argument for other Android phones on the market now. The Droid X for example, is much like the EVO but with Verizon service. The upcoming Samsung Galaxy on T-Mobile should have great service and a more affordable plan than EVO.

I would even go so far as to say that a lot of people would be better off keeping their iPhone 3GS.

The iPhone 4 has a serious reception/carrier service issue, and IMHO always has. Its bad, and it needs to be fixed – both on the handset and with a new carrier. The tethering option on iPhone is uninteresting and uncompetitive. The new display is great but really only comes to bear with photos and apps which make unique use of it (See the new game ‘Archetype‘!).

The iPhone 4 also has a faster processor, but 3GS upgraders who already have iOS 4 will not really notice – again, unless there is an app which makes good use of it.

The EVO has battery life issues (but you can swap batteries and buy third-party extended batteries) and is a bit large and clunky (it took a few weeks but I am now accustomed to the size, thought I never would be). Its larger screen may not fool your retinas but I would absolutely say the larger screen size and resolution is way more *functional* then the retina display – especially when using it as a GPS or viewing streaming video.

The kickstand is a ‘why does every smartphone NOT have this?’ feature. Hotspotting is a game-changing feature. The Voice Search is a mobile phone paradigm shift but you have to remind yourself to use it.

Oh, and what about the iPad? That was part of this review also.

It’s great. No one *needs* an iPad, but train commuters will absolutely love it. If you get one, you will see it replacing notebook, phone, and notebook usage all around the house every day.

Because of the limited flexibility, performance, and cost of the 3G iPad with AT&T service, the EVO’s hotspot makes it the perfect companion for the iPad.

The iPad is screaming for multitasking and multiwindow app management. The first will come in October.

Another thing the iPad needs is mouse support. It supports an external keyboard, but using the iPad with a keyboard and swiping while sitting at a desk is awkward. Mouse support combined with many of the great remote desktop apps on the iPad would create entirely new use cases in the replacement of desktops and notebooks.