FIRST 3D TECHNOLOGY IN MOBILES

              HTC's Evo 3D, the Country's First Glasses-Free 3-D Smartphone

HTC Evo 3D: Cameras Here you can see the Evo 3D's dual-lensed 3-D camera on the back of the phone, as well as that excellent shutter button Dan Nosowitz

HTC's Evo line of Android smartphones is big on firsts: The Evo 4G was the first 4G phone in America (by current definitions, at least), and its sequel, the Evo 3D, is the nation's first to pack a glasses-free stereoscopic 3-D display, like the Nintendo 3DS. It's actually a very nice phone, but it doesn't do much to convince us that stereoscopic 3-D is good for anything but gaming.

                                                What's New

The Evo 3D is changed in some subtle ways from its predecessor, the Evo 4G. It has a dual-core processor, rather than the Evo 4G's single-core, along with more memory. The software has been upgraded as well; the Evo 3D has the newest version of HTC's Android skin, Sense 3.0, laying on top of the newest version of Android, Gingerbread. But the big addition is the 3-D: its screen can display glasses-free stereoscopic 3-D, and its dual-lensed camera (on the rear; it also has a regular 2-D front-facing camera) can take both video and still photography in the third dimension.

 

HTC Evo 3D: Gallery App: The phone's face, showing its gallery app. The brick pattern is a reflection, rather than a background image--the phone is pretty reflective in natural sunlight, though actually quite nice--in 2-D--indoors  Dan Nosowitz

                                       What's Good

The phone itself is pretty good! HTC changed the aspect ratio to 16:9, making the phone taller and skinnier than the Evo 4G. the design is really nice--much thinner than, say, the HTC Thunderbolt, and with a more interesting look. The textured back and Evo-trademark circle-enclosed buttons are a nice touch. The added horsepower and upgraded version of Android make the phone very snappy to use. Sense 3.0 is kind of overly complicated and showy--expect lots of completely unnecessary animations and a bajillion very-similar widgets--but it does offer some nice features and a sense of cohesiveness that Android sometimes lacks. The lockscreen, which shows the weather and gives you a shortcut into the camera, phone, email, and messaging app, is a good example: It's pretty, and useful on paper, but it's not actually any more efficient to use than a simple unlocker.

The included 3-D game, Ultimate Spider-Man: Totaly Mayhem, is pretty fun--about as good as a mid-tier Nintendo 3DS game, which means it's worth playing. Not to brag, but this further proves our theory that 3-D is at its best in gaming, rather than movies or TV.

Oh, and the camera button is perfect. Other phone makers: Steal this button en masse. It actually feels like a camera's shutter button, two-stage picture-taking and all.

                                                  What's Bad

The 3-D is bad. Ithe homescreens and all of HTC's custom apps are in regular 2-D, including HTC's replacement Twitter, email, calendar, and messaging apps. It's jarring to turn on a phone with "3-D" in the name and have to dig around in the app list to find something that's actually in 3-D.

But once you do find the 3-D stuff--there are a few games in 3-D, the Gallery app displays 3-D images, and you can watch movies in 3-D--you might wonder why you even bothered. The effect is noticeably worse than the Nintendo 3DS: images are very shimmery, shifting around if you change your perspective even a tiny amount. The proper viewing angle is far too specific--if you move to the side, up and down, or back and forth, you'll lose the effect.