First Look review: HTC Evo 3D is eye-popping fun, if a strain

The HTC Evo 3D, available on the Sprint network on June 24 for $200 with a two-year contract, is the first phone with a special display and cameras promising a "glasses-free" 3D experience in the palm of your hand. (LG's Optimus 3D is another, and it's slated to launch on AT&T later this summer.)

I've been using an Evo 3D press sample for a day, and I generally found the 3D-video effects very cool, particularly when the subject is lunging toward the camera. But the extra effort required to keep my eyes focused on the display's eye-popping images soon became a strain. Viewing its 3D videos was much like looking at one of those cheesy foldout greeting cards, though with images that move. On still photos, the visual effect is a lot like viewing slides on a View-Master.

Other notable Evo 3D features include a lightning-fast 1.2-GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon dual-core processor, a front-facing 1.3-MHz camera for video chats, and support for Sprint's 4G data network. Like the recently reviewed HTC Sensation, the Evo runs the latest versions of the Android OS (known as Gingerbread) and HTV Sense.

The phone itself measures 5.0 by 2.6 by 0.48 inches and weighs 6 ounces. It has a grooved plastic back that to keep the phone from slipping out of your hands.

The details:

The 3D effect has issues. The Evo 3D captures still photos and videos in 3D using two 5-megapixel cameras that are about 1-1/4 inches apart--so, like two eyes, they have slightly different perspectives. These images are shown simultaneously on the Evo's display, but a filter in the screen called a Parallax barrier makes sure your right eye sees only what was recorded with the right-side camera, and your left eye sees what was recorded with the left-side camera.

Trouble is, the Evo's 4.3-inch autostereoscopic (the technical term for glasses-free 3D) display requires you to hold the phone a specific distance and angle from your face to enjoy a good 3D effect. Move the phone out of position by an inch or two, and the cool 3D image becomes a blurry 2D mess.

Even holding the phone in the ideal position, your eyes need a few seconds to adjust, and they must readjust with every new photo or scene within a video. Even when your eyes are adjusted, things can get blurry in a blink of an eye.

Another challenge: Objects closer to the camera seem to have a different sweet spot than those located farther away, which makes it nearly impossible to focus. To illustrate, I recorded a model train approaching the camera from a distance. If you happen to have a 3D display on hand, go to the video I posted on YouTube and note that the tracks in the foreground make it almost impossible to focus on the train in the background. And for some reason, even 3D photos appear in 2D when you try to view them as a slide show on the camera.

The phone comes preloaded with gorgeous 3D photo samples. You can also view streamed 3D trailers and other content from the Web, such as from YouTube. Generally, content from these sources looked significantly better than that taken with the Evo's 3D cameras. But I found that even these "perfect" videos gave me a headache after about 20 minutes.

2D video is good, if not true 1080p. Early Evo spec sheets claimed the Evo 3D could record 2D video at up to 1080p (full high-definition) resolution, but Sprint recently downgraded that claim to 720p for both the 3D and 2D modes. That's still pretty good, as my 2D video shows.

The Evo 3D has a handy sliding switch on its lower right side that lets you easily shift between 3D and 2D modes. Next to it is a rather large hard button for launching the camera. The camera has a dual-LED flash/video light. Other camera controls and features are standard Android.

The interface is top-notch. The Evo 3D's Gingerbread operating system provides lots of personalization options, including half a dozen home-screen templates optimized for travel, work, social media, and other modes.

The best improvement of all comes via HTC Sense interface, which allows you to launch a favorite application such as the camera, e-mail, or Web browser without the need to first unlock the screen. You do this by dragging any one of four always-visible app icons into a little circle at the bottom of the locked screen. The default apps are phone, mail, camera, and messages, but you can swap those out with any others on your phone.

One quibble: In Week View, the calendar shows appointments as blank color-coded blocks. Other Android phones I've used at least show you some text to give you a hint of what the appointments are for.

Data entry. The phone comes with two keyboard options: Gingerbread and Swype. The Gingerbread keyboard has excellent tools for selecting and editing text. For example, like the keyboard on the iPhone, words are magnified when you to touch them, allowing you to place the cursor with precision and ease. That mode also presents convenient options for selecting text, from one word to the entire document and anything in between. When typing an entry in the Google search box, the predictive-text feature summons contacts, apps, and popular Web searches as you type.

The Swype keyboard, which lets you type without lifting a finger and has a very intuitive predictive-text feature, is the easiest and fastest method for composing simple text messages when you're holding the phone vertically and entering data with one hand.

Bottom line: The HTC Evo 3D will go down in history for pioneering three-dimensional images on smart phones, though this technology clearly remains a work in progress. Nevertheless, the Evo 3D's top-notch hardware and intuitive interface make it one of the best Android phones I've ever used.

—Mike Gikas