et lux in tenebris lucet

Plus the huge red rope pyramids, the horses on giant springs, the urine-smelling tube with a ladder inside it, climbing domes over hard packed dirt, and the splintery wood and metal multi-story structures of awesome.

I’ve had a long history of shitty HTC phones. Every one I’ve ever had in the past has been a slow, unusable piece of crap compared to the various Treos. So when I had a new Sprint EVO shipped to me I didn’t have high hopes for the device. However, I’m pleasantly surprised.

• The web browser actually works quite well. I haven’t come across a site I normally use that doesn’t work. This includes Flash. Love it or hate it, Flash is a part of the internet much like JavaScript. You have to be careful with passwords as it might try to remember them in the dictionary.
• The camera works. The flash is actually useful. It has touch to focus. I’m not a big “LOL Facebook!!1!!” person, but I will take pictures of idiotic things I see or for quick reference reasons (like a picture of a boot screen error, or lights on a fiber mux). It’s handy.
• The VPN function works. I never could get VPN on a Windows Mobile phone (and I’ve had several) to work properly, if at all.
• I’m one of those weird people who needs an SSH client on my phone for it to be useful. ConnectBot does the job, but you have to download the Full Keyboard app to get a CTRL key since the EVO does not have a trackball that ConnectBot uses as a CTRL and ESC shortcut. This is only mildly annoying.
• There is no 4G (WiMax) where I live, so I can’t comment on that part. This makes the $10 extra fee feel like I’m getting ripped off a bit.
• There is an extra $10 charge for this phone, and I think that’s crap. If it wasn’t useful enough to over come that, I’d return it solely on the extra charge requirement. I do feel like returning it on principle anyway but it really does work so much better than my Treo Pro.
• Typing on a screen annoys me, but I hate side-slider keyboard phones more and the nice large screen makes up for it a little. The edges of the screen are too sensitive though and I end up making it do random stuff sometimes by holding wrong.
• It uses the same USB port as my Treo Pro, so fortunately the extra chargers I have at won’t go to waste.
• I can get about 8 hours of use off charger. Just things I do like web and email, I don’t watch videos or facebook all day on it and I’m unlikely to ever do so. It does have an HDMI port, but I don’t have a cable to try it. I think that could be useful for presentations or something.
• I do not know what the durability is like, only time can tell that. I have not broken a phone yet. I’d probably get some kind of case for it like a rubberized wrap around.

After comparing it with the recently announced iPhone 4, the EVO basically does everything (and more) the iPhone will do, except for the higher resolution screen. I’ve recently referred to the iPhone as the “my first smartphone” compared to the EVO. Also, AT&T’s network is craptastically slow across the city, so it would be foolish to purchase a data-heavy phone on AT&T here. Sprint has always been pretty decent, and if not, at least functional. I can’t count the number of times at my last $dayjob where someone would complain about email or web timing out on their AT&T phone.

I’m pretty picky with my devices and resistant to getting something just because it’s trendy or cool, but I feel like I could use the EVO in my daily tasks. I will be having a discussion with Sprint about my account on Monday. If all goes well I’ll probably get a second one.

UPDATE: talked with Sprint about the extra $10 for the EVO. It’s basically similar to the extra $20 that BlackBerry users have for all the extra “stuff”. I’m still not a fan of extra charges, but I guess it’s better than what BB users have.

We are now IPv6 enabled and hosted at Roller Network.

So Google added this automatic closed caption thing to YouTube where it runs the audio through their voice recognition thing and translates it. It certainly has some interesting results.

Google's failed translation attempt.

One of these things is not like the other. See if you can guess which!

Click to play the game!

This statement by Google’s CEO is quite indicative of how they really feel about your personal information.

Yesterday, the web was buzzing with commentary about Google CEO Eric Schmidt’s dangerous, dismissive response to concerns about search engine users’ privacy. When asked during an interview for CNBC’s recent “Inside the Mind of Google” special about whether users should be sharing information with Google as if it were a “trusted friend,” Schmidt responded, “If you have something that you don’t want anyone to know, maybe you shouldn’t be doing it in the first place.”

Read the whole thing at the EFF.

Also see PC World’s article: Google’s Schmidt Roasted for Privacy Comments