Ladies and Gentlemen, I would like to introduce myself to you.  I am the Sprint EVO 4G.  Today is my birthday, and you can find me on CDMA carrier Sprint.  There are several exciting features that I boast, including 4G network speed capabilities, a huge screen (4.3 inches if you are too shy to ask) and a few other goodies.  Check out more about what I will offer you here.  You can also check out my full details and specs, including my HTC Sense UI enabled Android 2.1 operating system, at the Sprint website, albeit right now my page is a bit slow to load.

Aside from my awe inspiring feature set that is generously integrated by my manufacturer HTC, I modestly present myself to you as a fine specimen of tech beauty.  Here are a few of my photos, gathered from around the web.  Enjoy!

This is me, rocking my integrated kickstand in horizontal layout. Courtesy of The-Gadgeteer.com.

Here's my camera. Did I mention it's 8 MP?! Courtesy of IntoMobile.com.

Here's another shot of me, this time from the front. Courtesy of IntoMobile.com.

In case I haven’t mentioned before or made it known, I’m the Sprint EVO 4G.  Today is my birthday, and watch out world!

[img 1: PC World]

Question of the Day:  What phobias do you have regarding your phone?

My HTC Touch Pro serves as an alarm clock, running SPB Time at 10:30 pm to tell my wife and I to go to bed after dosing on the couch.  It also wakes me up at 4 AM to start my consultant work.

Occasionally, and more times that I would like to admit, I find that a few minutes to 30 after the alarm goes off, I spring up to find that the Touch Pro is laying beside me.  Talk about your rude awakening.  Quickly I check to make sure that the screen is not smashed, or that the phone has not met with some other horrifying fate.

And there you have it – my phone phobia.  I’m afraid my phone will become an expensive pancake due to my inability to rise when the alarm sounds.  What are your phone phobias?  Hit the comments below and share them with us!

Question of the Day:  What is your preferred means of communication?

Used to be, if someone wanted to get in touch with you they had to meet with you face to face.  Then came the writing of a letter, from horseback to postal carrier and next in the line, the telephone.  We had landlines and party lines.  Then there were cordless phones, gigantic (at least by today’s standards) cell phones and car phones.  We were blessed with email and instant messaging.  Now we have texting, Facebook, Twitter and so on.  It seems that there are countless ways that you can get in touch with someone, rather be it for a quick “hello” or a full blown conversation.  Ushering in with each new wave of technology, we are saddled with one or seven more ways to contact someone, and for them to contact us.

Of these methods, what are your preferred means of communication?  If you can find me in person, I’ll talk to you… especially over a glass of iced tea.  You can call my cell phone and I’ll (likely) answer.  I send text messages to my wife, and occasionally a family member, but not everyone that texts me gets a response.  You can email me.  It’s my preferred method.  You won’t find me, however, on Facebook at all, as I just don’t understand it.  I’ve posted about two things to Twitter since getting my account, both stating something along the lines of “Hello World”.  Am I able to be contacted for communications?  Sure.  By every means available.  No.

What are your thoughts on this?  How accessible are you, and via what means?

I just went through the process of choosing what the best phone is for me and to a certain extend still am.  But here the operating word is YOU!

As soon as Palm merged the PDA with a phone I had one!  Before I carried a Palm and a phone.  It made sense to carry one gadget that replaced two!  I currently use an unlocked Treo 680 (my second one) on the T-Mobile network.  The phone has served me well but it’s time upgrade!

As I started to consider what was the best option for a new phone for me, I came from a different angle: the must have functions and features, the “would be nice” and the rest.

For me the must haves are: the ability to sync with my computer, good power and memory specs, internet, camera, a decent screen (size & resolution), a day’s worth of battery life, software I need and let’s not forget, good phone functionality.  Now, the “Would be nice’s”:  GPS, document editing, and maybe the ability to work with my favorite books and music.

What is the best phone for you also depends on how you plan to use your smartphone, how many contacts/data you have as well as how you feel about having someone else keeping that info (read Google Buzz intro fiasco!) and how comfortable you are with that idea.  Android seems to be an interesting OS with good performance and integration BUT personally, the idea of a data mining company (Google) keeping all my contacts and personal info kind a freaks me out!  But, hey that’s just me…   They may not want to do any “evil” but stuff happens and I don’t think they would be held responsible if it does.  I don’t want to clean-up that mess!

I don’t think Palm has came out with a desktop syncing software for WebOS – so Palm is out!  And since none of my current software will work with the Pre/Pixi I am no longer tied to Palm.

I am a contractor and use several pieces of software from SplashData: SplashID, SplashMoney and SplashShopper (because it was free, and because it’s useful).  All three of these have a desktop companion that makes it very convenient for backups.  (See more info here)   Syncing with my computer came in handy the day I broke the screen on my first Treo 680 and I had to get a new one in a hurry. After plugging the new one in, I was good to go!  You can do that with the Cloud too, but you know how I feel about that.

Years ago (20+) I was looking to purchase my first computer.  I looked a PC’s and Apple.  Apple was a problem for me:  you could only buy hardware and software from them and at my, what a price.   As such, I got a PC!

Fast forward 20+ years and Apple has very sexy products with pretty much the same mentality, unless you go to the Dark Side in jailbreaking your iPhone.  A friend of mine got the 3GS last year so I asked him if I could play with it – I depleted the battery!   It works well, plenty of apps etc… but to me the screen size is an issue – it’s not big enough.  It’s also connected 100% of the time to the internet with no possibility to turn it off (I would like to be able to do that).  Apple could be a contender in a new iPhone for 2010 came with a larger screen?  Unfortunately, I don’t know if I can wait that long (June or July).

I also seriously considered Nokia’s Maemo. It’s an interesting OS that seems to work well.  However, because it’s a new OS it does not have a lot of apps, though more are appearing every day.  The N900 screen is also too small. I would LOVE to get my mints on this one and play with it for awhile though!

Windows Mobile is all that’s left, I think. The 6.5.x.x version seems to fit my bill.  Since I first saw the HTC HD2 I have been drooling over it!  The more I learned about it the more I wanted it.  I can’t wait for it to come out.  There is plenty of software out there for it and it has a 1 GHz processor (in a PHONE!!!) and they are now seriously talking about 1.5 and 2 GHz processors!  The screen size it good (4.3 inch – it looks awesome in the videos).  Windows Phone 7 Series seems interesting but very social networking centric which, at this time, does not really interest me.  I’m not big on texting either, but things could change.

There is not magic bullet my friend.  And like the previous comments it all depends on you, your pain threshold for your monthly bill, which provider you like/tolerate, the phone(s) you like and yes, the operating system you like/must have.  All this factors in with what you’re planning on doing with/on it.  Now you are starting to even see locked or unlocked (subsidized or not) phones like this in Europe. I have been waiting for a long time for this day to come. Smartphones are finally starting to be interesting now… and there is plenty of competition – in hardware and software/OS’s.

That’s my 2 cents. Thanks for staying up until the end but there is a lot to consider now in choosing the best phone for you.