Sprint HTC EVO 4G LTE hands-on

The HTC EVO 4G LTE will be coming to Sprint later this month and the handset promises to be quite a powerful device. We got our hands on a review unit at CTIA 2012, so let’s take a quick look before our official review.

Think of the EVO 4G LTE as the Sprint version of the One X internally but its design is all its own. I actually expected to not like it because the backing seems to be made of three different materials: a glossy top, metalic red band and then a softer plastic for the bottom half. I never thought I’d say this but it works. The EVO 4G LTE feels remarkable in the hand and the design stands out from the crowd of me-too full-slate smartphones.

The front of the device definitely carriers the EVO DNA, as the speaker on top of the screen evokes images of previous HTC EVO devices. This one rocks Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich with Sense, so its capacitive buttons include the back, home and multitasking button. Those who want stock Android may still be put off by HTC’s software flourishes but I believe that it’s a nice addition. You can look forward to a few pre-loaded Sprint apps too.

Like the One X, the EVO 4G LTE seems to have some awesome camera software which makes it simple to fire off a bunch of high-quality pictures at once. The early results indicate that the pictures come out pretty well but we’ll have to dive deeper into this in the review.

That “LTE” part means exactly what you think but unfortunately, Sprint’s LTE network is basically nonexistent right now. That should be changing soon, though. We’ll have a full review for you shortly but take a look at the shots below and let us know if there’s anything in particular you want us to focus on.