EVOlution?

I apparently have the hottest Android Phone on the market. And by hot I mean sizzling. And by sizzling I mean untouchable. And by untouchable I mean you can't even FIND these things in stores. I'm speaking of course about the only 4G phone available... the EVO. When I first bought the phone, I was impressed... the shear amount of features crammed into this puppy is enough to make you wet yourself... a 1GHz Snapdragon Processor, Ginormous Screen, 8(?!) Megapixel Camera PLUS a forward facing 1.3MP Camera, Video Chat(?!) AND a Kickstand to boot!? Someone pinch me!

Then the first day of use went by and I was a little less impressed. Battery Life, which I had believed was going to be much improved over the Windows Mobile PoS I had been using, was not exactly as advertised. By 1pm, the battery had reached 20% left and started giving me warnings. And right about here is where I started to panic... Does this thing drain FASTER than the Windows Mobile devices I've had in the past?

I quickly went through all the settings and realized the issue. By default... everything is turned on to sync with the net... Facebook, Twitter, Gmail, GChat... it's like the device is perma-connected to the interwebz download your entire universe every hour, on the hour. No wonder it was dead by 1pm! I immediately reduced or stopped the syncing of every network under the sun and voila... my device now lasts all day. And i'm not talking moderate use... I'm talking heavy use... as in use the GPS Navigation from Google Maps for 4 hours and still have battery. I'm talking turn on the WiFi Hotspot and an hour later still have battery left!

So really... does it have poor battery life? While not being entirely as good as the iPhone (pre the iPhone 4's energy drain issue), the EVO definately can hold its own throughout the day without finding the AC plug until the end of the day. It's been running all day and right now I'm just below 50%... that's with about 40 minutes of navigation use, GMail syncing all day, and me playing about 30 minutes worth of games and an hours worth of websurfing... AND still taking a couple phone calls (I know, who TALKS on your smartphone, right?)

Do i wish it lasted longer... sure. But it's not as terrible if you get the syncing a little more under control.