Positives: The HTC Evo Shift 4G has a much better feel than the Evo 4G, great design, adequate features, affordable price, runs Android 2.2.

Negatives: Evo Shift 4G lacks many of the features since HTC planned to keep the price down. Besides this issue, there were no other problems found in the Evo Shift 4G.

Suggestion: For those users who always prefer a separate keyboard, this product is the perfect solution. With the features on offer, Evo Shift 4G is affordable and a product recommended for most users.

Review:

HTC Evo Shift 4G was launched before the CES 2011 and its Sprint’s third 4G smartphone which they have offered with 4G connectivity. Most users believe that this is the most affordable product in the line of 4G products.

The product is priced at $149.99 with a two year contract which is much lower than the price of Samsung Epic 4T and also of HTC’s own Evo 4G. Like most of you know, for something affordable you have to give on something as well. In the same manner, for a $50 less, you would have to settle with a smaller display, 800MHz processor, no front facing camera, and no HDMI port.

However, besides the above mentioned facts, Evo Shift 4G still has a great deal to offer. It comes with Android 2.2 OS, has 4G support and delivers great performance. It also offers an easy to use keyboard which is compact in design and does not hurt the look of the phone. Therefore, if you’ve been collecting money for a while then Evo Shift 4G would be a great purchasing decision.

Design

In terms of design, the outlook is same as that of the Evo 4G, however Shift 4G stands out on its own because of its eye catching look and feel. The measurements of the phone are 4.6 inches tall, 2.3 inches wide, 0.6 inches thick and weigh 5.9 ounces. The finishing of the phone gives it an elegant look and also because of its aluminum accents which give it a more premium feel while holding it compared to the plastic and slick feeling of the Samsung Epic 4G.

Features

In order to keep the price down for Evo Shift 4G, some of the features had to be sacrificed but despite that, the phone offers some very useful features. The name of the phone itself suggests one of the features, that is, 4G connectivity. It also offers 3G/4G mobile hotspot capabilities up to a limit of 8 devices.

Besides the 4G capabilities, the features offered are Wi-Fi connectivity, Bluetooth, GPS, smart dialing, speed dial, conference calling, voice dialing, text messaging etc.

Performance

After testing the phone in New York using Sprint’s service, it could be said that the result was satisfactory. On the speaker, the audio quality was great with very little or no noise or voice distortion and those hearing on the other end also said they could hear clearly thus removing doubts over its microphone.

One factor which might raise concerns is the quality of the speakerphone. The sound quality was just average and if the phone is used in louder environment then you would feel a bit let down. As we had previously stated, it has an 800MHz processor, when the test was done, the processor was responsive enough giving performance equal to 1GHz processor.