Half Baked Phone March 18, 2011

Reviewer:  Jason Liu 

This is a half baked phone. Its not fully complete in my opinion and will steer me away from android for quite some time. I've had this phone for roughly 3 months now and I cannot wait till a newer CDMA blackberry comes out.

About me:
I am a former Sidekick 1,2,3, Palm Treo, Palm Pro, Blackberry Curve and Tour user and I've been with Sprint for quite sometime. I live in New York City and as much as people say the service is bad I've been nothing but happy with sprint.

The GOOD:
Let me get start with all the good and mediocre things that are good about this phone. Being that its Android with HTC sense, the integration is absolutely wonderful as far as Facebook and Twitter. Both gets synced with your contacts quick as a breeze. Google Maps is wonderful, the load speed of this is amazing and with Google Navigation you will never need a GPS ever again(that if you can lock onto a GPS signal, more about that later on in this review). Google Voice is great, its good for texting or calling on the fly.

BAD:
This phones again as I've said "half baked" its not complete in my opinion, some of the minor things that play a big role in a phone should've been fixed before it was release(whether this is because of the HTC sense or Android OS).

-Random text messages
The phone sends my previously sent text messages randomly
(I believe this might be a glitch in android as I've heard it with 3 other users I know have the same issues, under different carriers T-mobile, Verizon)

-Text box randomly pushes down so you cannot respond to text
When I am typing a text and the chat box automatically pushes the chat box down, forcing me to scroll it back up so I can type again, it does it every so often and annoys me.

-Bad Design
The hinges get loose and makes the phone feel like its going to snap apart.(better off with a HTC EVO)

-Small Community, Small support.
This phone wasn't too popular, so community support which is a big part of android is small for the shift, you are better off with a EVO.

-Calender
If you depend on you phones calender to plan your schedule get another phone. The stock calendar on this phone is complete garbage. For example in a weekly view it shows you busy schedule as blocks, but if you wanted to see what you needed to do, you tap on it and go directly into that day, then tap back out to see what you have to do on a weekly scale again. If there was only a way to see what you had to do instead of going day by day. I have tried four different calendars on the market place and only Jorte comes close to it, but its still nothing compared to the Blackberry.

-No short cut keys
I am a former blackberry user and short cut keys are one of the reasons I chose a phone with a KEYBOARD. There is completely no keyboard shortcut support at all.

-HTC Sense
The layout and design is utter crap, having used iPhone's OS system the HTC sense is its not polished at all. Icons get randomly shift from time to time, there are also lack of useable widgets.

The inability to organize apps into folders once you are past the widgets. So for example if there's a program that you for example don't use too often and don't want to create a shortcut on the widgets page, you must scroll through all your programs (including crapware like all the sprint apps) and find it. It is really that hard to create a system so you can make folders?

-Market Place
There is a lack of apps for the android phone because android is still relatively new, but this might change and until then I would recommend a iPhone.

-GPS Problem
There are times in which I have to reset my phone in order to get the GPS to work. There is apparently a fix for it, but it requires a bit of tweaking and rooting. Unless you plan to learn every aspect of this operating system get another phone.

So in conclusion, don't get this phone. There are better alternatives for this if you are an android fan (EVO, Epec) , I have learned through this experience that I am not an android fan and will be switching back to Blackberry once the Touch Bold comes to Sprint sometime around September.

HTC Phones Are Very Buggy December 22, 2011

Reviewer:  William McMullin 

I bought an HTC Evo Shift wireless and have had nothing but problems with it. Most recently, when trying to send text messages, a delete message screen pops up or it will take me all the way to the top of the message. HTC promised to call me back on a certain date and time, but they did not. I e-mailed an HTC executive at Peter_Chou@htc.com. In the end, HTC could not fix the problem, because they could not reproduce the errors on their end.

HTC sent me a HTC Design phone, and I sent them the Evo Shift back. When the phone arrived, it would not turn on. I tried an Evo Shift battery in it, but it wouldn't fit in the phone. I took the phone to the Sprint Store. Jeremy T. waited on me. He could not get the phone to turn on with the battery that came with the design. He asked a repair technician there, and he said the battery was bad. Sprint was nice enough to swap out the battery for me. When I got home, I tried calling people with the phone with the same earpiece I used on the Evo Shift, but people could not hear me. I will not put the phone to my head, because I don't want the risk of getting a brain tumor. I contacted HTC. HTC told me he would send me out a new Design phone. Then, 2 days later they sent me an e-mail saying he changed their mind and they won't send me out a new phone, because I tried the Shift battery in the Design phone.

HTC was very rude. They told me that they cannot make better phones if they're always trying to fix the defects in my phone.

Youtube crashes every time! March 25, 2011

Reviewer:  Paul Arensburg  (San Francisco, CA) -

Love the phone for the most part. Don't love the fact that I (or you if you buy this) can't watch youtube videos over 7 minutes in length. Sprint (sucks) says HTC is aware of the problem and is working on a fix but it has been at least a month since HTC became aware of the problem yet nothing has come out. When this problem has been resolved I'll update my review but until then the phone gets 1 star for everything that does work, which is basically what you'd be entitled to expect. But since 10 minute youtube videos are so important to me, and because they may be important to you too, I'm going with the worst star rating because 1 star reviews on Amazon and everywhere else are where people should start when considering buying something.

Oh yeah, Evo Shift also can't stream .pls audio and there's no app that just does this although there is vlc remote, but that's a pain in the butt to set up judging by the description and your computer must be connected to your vlc player and the internet. Having your computer connected to the internet and running vlc all the time doesn't seem safe and secure to me. Without capability to play .pls then this phone is to me definitely inferior to an iphone since I love somafm and could listen to it through itunes. ffs!

If you must have a Droid phone and consider full featured youtube a must, skip the HTC Evo Shift!