HTC Evo 3D review

Dimensionally, the Evo 3D is only fractionally different than its predecessor — about five millimeters taller and less than one millimeter thicker. The weight is exactly the same, and the design is more or less in line with family values. The back plate is all matte and textured on about three-fourths of the area. The pair of 5 megapixel cameras and dual LED flash are surrounded by the familiar red ring. (The interior, on the other hand, is a more subdued black than the bright red Evo 4G innards.) Feels durable, although I haven't had the urge to drop it from any height. The kickstand is gone, and as of this writing, I still can't decide if I miss it or not.

The display is a gorgeous 4.3-inch qHD (960 x 540) Super LCD with good viewing angles and max brightness. To the bottom there's a row of backlit capacitive Android buttons, and a 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera above the screen. There's a 3.5mm headphone jack, micro-USB port, physical volume rockers, a dedicated camera button, and an adjacent switch for choosing between 2D and 3D camera mode.

Internally, Evo 3D's got a dual-core 1.2GHz Snapdragon Scorpion MSM8660 with Adreno 220 GPU, 1GB RAM, 4GB ROM (expandable via microSD). Connectivity includes FM Radio, 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 3.0, GPS, an assortment of sensors, and of course tri-band CDMA / EVDO Rev. A and WiMAX. In general, the 1730 mAh battery seems to less less than six hours sticking to 4G and less than a full day over (10 hours or so in regular use) without. Call quality was okay — not great, but okay.

And then there's the flagship feature, a 4.3-inch glasses-free autostereoscopic 3D screen and a 3D camera comprised of two 5 megapixel lenses. To get the big question out of the way, yes, it works... but the viewing angle in which you can properly observe the 3D is pretty small. A bit smaller than the 3DS, I'd say. Outside that window, it's all a painful blur or some nasty-looking composition of two slightly different angles.

HTC bundles a demo of the game Spider-Man 3D and the full Green Hornet film, but by and large you'll probably be digesting your own camera footage. The farther away from the subject you're shooting, the better the image will turn out — and given the nature of the system (two separate lenses), there's a distance at about 12 inches out where anything closer just doesn't work. Shots are captured in 5 megapixels, video in 720p. If you've seen footage captured from a Nintendo 3DS, rest assured, this is much better.

So what about headaches, eye strain, or other health-related maladies? That's all still a risk here. After playing a game for five minutes, looking at my (decidedly two-dimensional) laptop screen feels a bit off (for lack of a better description). A few editors on staff complained of minor headaches after more extensive use.

One last thing to note about 3D: I hope this gets fixed soon, but there seems to be a glitch where the screen tries to "stay" in 3D after you hop out of the camera. Since the home and lock screens aren't in 3D, however, what you end up with is a pretty gross mix of the two. I'd say this happened only one out of ten times, and when it did, you could usually navigate through the menus until it corrected itself. That isn't the case for Spider-Man 3D; although the game rarely produced the same glitch, on at least two occasions the entire phone would lock up. Simply holding the power button didn't help, I had to physically remove the battery and reset. So yeah, really painful, but you probably won't being web-slinging through the game that often.