Opinion Poll: What Sevices Do You Use From Your EVO?

All the talk of the cloud, storage, data restrictions and general craziness regarding cell providers and where it's all going really got us wondering... What data services do you use on your EVO?

We want to know the basics from 5 categories...

1) Photo Sharing
2) Video Sharing
3) Music/Entertainment STREAMING (playing from your SD card doesn't count)
4) Off Device File or Document Storage
5) Wild Card Apps - These can be used for STREAMING or Storage but may not fit into the categories above.

We've heard from quite a few users about the issues/praises that some services offer and so far the top recommendations are... Drumroll please...

1) Photo Sharing - Picasa (Google+), Flickr, Peep, Tweetcaster, Twitdroyd and Facebook

2) Video Sharing - Qik, YouTube and Facebook

3) Music/Entertainment STREAMING - Pandora, Amazon MP3, Music (upgraded for Google Music), Netflix, Hulu+ and Crackle

4) Off Device File or Document Storage - DropBox, Skydrive (via Sorami or other), GDocs (Google), Amazon Cloud and ZumoDrive

5) Wild Card Apps - FilesAnywhere (document storage and faxing from your device), Smaba Fileshare (access your device over a Wi-Fi connection in Windows), SendSpace File Transfer and aDownloader.

So, chime in below and let us know what you use!

Horrible Battery Life? Check That Signal!

Since day one, the HTC Evo 4G has been ridiculed for it's, "Not so great battery life - especially with the 4G radio on." We found a little something that makes life better for those Evo users that have poor battery life - and realized how big of impact it can make when it's not working correctly.

The Airave Airvana from Sprint is designed to boost your CDMA voice and 3G data signals in a 5000 to 10000 square foot area around the box. We received one about 45 days ago from Sprint to help with our dropped calls and 'no ring' calls that we experienced indoors. For the first 30 days, the box was sheer perfection. Since then, we've had nothing but issues.

The Airave began with sending bulk messages, like 20-30 at a time to the same user. Then it moved on to not holding a connection for more than 2 hours. Finally, it stopped connecting all together. Sprint said it was the Airave and they would replace it. That leads us up to today.

Before the Airave, our battery life was terrible - 2 to 3 hours indoors would drain 60% of our juice. We could make it 5 hours with little use before the 15% warning popped up and told us to charge. Once the Airvana was online, the same 'sitting time' would leave us at 80% with no use or about 5% per hour of use. There was definitely something there.

This morning, I did my usual unplugging procedure where upon leaving home, I would be sitting at 94-96% battery and ready for the day. Today, without the Airave, I was at a lowly 82%. In 55 minutes, my battery had plummeted from 100% to 82% with minimal use. Then I saw the real shocker...

Yes, you are seeing that correctly, 99% of time without signal is the worst the phone will register. That means for the hour that I was unplugged, the battery burned 20% of itself looking for a radio signal. I guess what we are trying to say is before you start pointing fingers at the battery of the EVO, maybe start looking at the quality of your signal. If you aren't getting more than 2 bars consistently, it might just be time to call Sprint.

PrinterShare Site Overwhelmed With Amazon App Of The Day Users

When it comes to printing from your Android device, PrinterShare has been at the top of the selections for some time. The $14.99 investment made you able to print a few different formats at first, but recent updates brought Gmail, Docs, PDF's and more into the fold. It was, for all intents and purposes, a lifeline for business users that needed hard copies of documents from their devices. You simply paid your fee, downloaded the PC software and you were good to go.

Late last year, Google released their 'cloud print' service that worked with the device and Chrome and could be set up to print to any computer that was synced to your "G" services. While we had decent results, we still preferred the ease of PrinterShare and still recommend it to everyone asking.

Today, the impossible happened, in that Amazon is giving away PrinterShare premium as their App of the Day. While this is an amazing freebie application and everyone should go get it, the one thing that stood out to us is the download times on the PrinterShare website. Normally, we can log in and download the software in seconds - today, it was almost 30 seconds before the site loaded. It also took nearly three minutes before the software was downloaded. The servers obviously weren't ready for this influx of customers.

Hopefully this isn't a sign of things to come for a software program that we love dearly (although can we have a refund since it's free now? - hey, doesn't hurt to ask does it?) and a team that gives wonderful support. If the App of the Day continues to kill developers with 100k users that take advantage of the offering and straining their systems, we just might see the end of useful apps being offered. For now, head over to the Amazon App Store and grab PrinterShare - then head to printershare.com and grab the desktop software for your computer and enjoy the printing!

Sense 3.5 Coming To An Evo Near You?

In a wonderously shocking development, a few of those amazing developers have managed to cram the latest and greatest version of HTC Sense on to the Evo 4G. Check out the video above - and for the first 10 minutes or so, it's a bit tedius, but the last 2 minutes sure does have some excitement to it.

Maintenance Update Hitting Evos Now

Lucky Evo users woke up to a new OTA update this morning. Firmware version 4.53.651.1 is now making the download rounds for all the Evo 4G patrons. The firmware is a minor update to fix bugs and craziness that some users have been experiencing. These include:

The "Out of memory, Unable to send SMS error" has been corrected. If you are a Picasa user, they fixed the "Images cut off in Picasa issue". They also fixed "Group contacts not in alphabetical order issue". The "Image size issue with contact transfer over bluetooth" has also been resolved. Most importantly, the "Integrated voice recognition accuracy with voice search and voice-to-text" has been corrected.

Version 4.53.651.1 is available right now via automatic and manual download. If you want this update earlier than scheduled, simply press Menu - Settings + System Update + HTC Software Update and watch for bit to become available. You can expect to do the manual check more than a few times before it finds the update.

A quick word of caution to Root and Revolutionary users, it's not known if this destroys the root access or not. If you need to be rooted, do not take the OTA update until it's fully checked out.

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Post #100 - Thanks for Following

It's not often that a blog is written almost entirely about a phone - from a phone. While there are plenty of EVO blogs out there, we've tried to remain true to a non-rooted, non-modified EVO 4G. We've covered news, how-to's, and even what you can do to make life easier with your EVO.

Today marks our 100th post on the device and we just wanted to thank you for following us. As the EVO's speculated EOL date comes closer, we'll continue to help everyone make the most of their device. Until that day comes though, keep tuning in to see advice, how to's and more!

Again, thanks for reading and we look forward to another 100 posts soon!