FULL VIDEO: Sprint HTC EVO 4G Event in NYC
People are all riled up about the HTC EVO 4G (just check out the forums) and during yesterday’s event in NYC, tons of people were looking for live video coverage of the event. I knew you’d still probably want a peek the day after, so I wasted spent 30+ minutes with my hand in the air like an idiot, video taping the entire thing for your viewing pleasure.
Just after date/price were announced I fired up Skype to beam the info back to Mothership Phandroid, needless to say things get shaky for a minute or so, but the rest of the video(s) should be pretty stable. In this first 10 minutes, Dan Hesse takes the stage and one of his oh-so-true and interesting comments is how the EVO 4G could possibly be the best phone on the market even if it was the EVO 3G:
The second half of the above video features Senior Vice President of Product Management at Disney as he leads into discussing their show-stopper of the night – Prince of Persia. The next segment of the presentation shows the Producer Jerry Bruckheimer’s highlight reel of sorts, Disney’s closing statements, and then we quickly dive into the HTC EVO 4G and some product demonstrations including YouTube HQ (High Quality) and HDMI video-out:
I HAVE to point something out that occurs at 6-minutes in when they compare video on the EVO to video on the Droid – it is pretty misleading. They load up HD video on the EVO and Standard Definition content on the Droid and (at first) say they’re generically comparing HD to SD yet framing it like this is just EVO vs. Droid results from identical streams.
If you were to press “Menu > More > Watch in High Quality” on the Droid you would get a MUCH more similar picture. While the EVO screen/4G/processor/etc does give it a boost, the gap isn’t nearly as wide as they make it seem. Side note: the one presenter (who did a great job and actually made me chuckle several times) reminds me of Dennis Reynolds from “It’s Always Sunny”.
In any case, onto Part 3 of 4 where we see the docking station, Simultaneous Voice/Data, Google Goggles and some other fun stuff:
Now things get even MORE interesting. In the last segment of the presentation we see some gaming, the car docking station which automatically switches the phone to Car Mode, mobile hotspot, and video chat with Qik:
Unfortunately something went awry with the Qik demo which was disappointing. When it’s Microsoft announcing a new version of Windows, I can understand people secretly yearning for a blue screen of death, but I don’t think many people were hoping for this. I’ll give Sprint & Qik the benefit of the doubt in assuming it was just bad timing and/or a freak accident – Qik is a solid product and the 4G was pretty flawless except for this one deviation. That isn’t to say 4G and Qik are perfect, but for demonstration purposes, I wish they would have had better luck and don’t think this is indicative of a larger problem.
Right after I registered for the event I sat down on the couch next to a guy named Vijay Tella who worked for Qik. “I love Qik… what do you do for them?” I asked.
“I’m the CEO.”
How embarrassing. I spent the next 5 or 10 minutes talking with Mr. Tella about Qik, the EVO 4G and Android in general and have to say he seemed like a great guy. Coming prepackaged on the EVO 4G should help Qik get a lot of the attention it deserves on Android Market and I expect we’ll see some huge things from them in the near future.
By the way, I haven’t seen pictures of the Car Dock or Home/Video dock elsewhere so I thought some screencaps from the above video would be appreciated:
So there you have it folks – I hope now you feel like you were at the event in all its glory and didn’t miss a thing. And of course, if you want to be on the up-and-up with all the coolest of cool EVO kids, you’ll hit up the HTC EVO 4G Forum on AndroidForums.com!