Here’s my unscientific and utterly subjective take on Sprint’s HTC EVO 4G versus Verizon’s Motorola DROID X, from the point of view of a normal user who has owned both of them. No hyperbole, no zingers, no spin, no glitzy photos… just unadulterated opinion.

Much has been said about their tech specs elsewhere, so I’ll leave such details out. Instead, I’ll focus on my personal experience with them, and what matters most to… well, me. This may go without saying, but it doesn’t escape me that everyone’s needs are different, so what works for me, may not work at all for you. So take whatever I write with a grain of… you know what.

I wanted to write about this topic since it was tough to find good comparative articles between these two uber-smartphones that weren’t focused on features and specs… and there were very few personal perspective pieces by a normal user who owned both. So maybe this will help some other geek out there a little.

First, a quick backgrounder on why I decided to move to the EVO 4G or DROID X… Basically, the time had come. Finally, it was time to try Android. As a geek at heart, I felt my geekish proclivities were being suppressed regarding Android, and frankly, that could not stand.

I had been an iPhone 3GS-toting smartphone user, and a more-or-less satisfied user at that. I enjoyed the iPhone 3GS — I think it’s an excellent phone — but I had various issues such as the AT&T network from time to time, and I’ve never been a huge fan of the walled garden owned and managed by dear ol’ Apple, a.k.a., “The Man,” now that they seem to rule the gadget universe.

Now, I understand why Apple operates the way they do, and I’m the first to admit that such <er-hem> “control” probably does increase the overall quality of the user experience for iPhone users. And I was willing to live with that. But I wanted to try something else, expand my horizons in geekdom, and was waiting for Android to mature and land on some exciting phone hardware.

I always felt cramped by the 3.5 inch screen of the iPhone, so when I saw that Apple had stuck with 3.5 inches with the iPhone 4 (notwithstanding the superb resolution and screen quality), and that Apple was still exclusive to AT&T, AND that AT&T still didn’t carry a high-end Android phone… well, I decided to take the EVO 4G and DROID X very seriously… those big 4.3 inch screens looked exactly what I wanted the iPhone 4 to have… so they were looking mighty tempting.

So, now on to the comparison.

In short: I ended up purchasing the EVO 4G, loved it, regrettably returned it, bought a DROID X, loved it, kept it. Here are the things that I considered, and why I ultimately ended up with the DROID X.

Features – Slight edge to EVO 4G

Let’s start with the basic feature comparison. They’re roughly equivalent to me in day-to-day use and technical features, but I’ll have to be honest and give the EVO 4G a slight edge on paper. Both are top-notch smartphones with great hardware specs, wonderful screens, amazing features, etc. Both even offer the uber-cool mini-wifi hotspot feature, which really attracted me to these models. You can get all that info from somewhere else to decide what matters most to you.

But why does the EVO 4G edge out the DROID X in features? At least on paper? Three things come to mind:

1) 4G! Obviously! However, I don’t live in a 4G area. In the reality of mid-2010, I will rarely use 4G (only when traveling to a 4G enabled area), and the 4G battery drain is so severe from what I understand, I may not want to use it anyway. So for me, this point is nullified… for now. Still, an edge to the EVO 4G on paper. May be worth more to you, depending on where you live.

2) The EVO’s kickstand. I thought it was silly at first, but then I actually used it, and thought how ingenious it was. Love the kickstand. I already miss it.

3) The EVO’s front-facing second camera. In theory, I want this. But in reality, I never used it, and doubt I’ll ever use it in the future. Truth be told, I’m not a video-conferencing type of guy and it’s merely a novelty to me for now. I reserve the option to change my mind later on.

To be fair, the DROID X has some nice advantages as well, from a supposedly more powerful CPU (even thought they’re both clocked at 1 GHz), more microphones for noise cancellation, etc. But I still have to give the edge to the EVO 4G for the 4G alone. That’s a great “first” — if only I could make use of it.

Design and Build – Slight edge to DROID X

Now I have to say, I love the the screen size of both phones. Just LOVE it. 4.3 inches is perfect for me. Both have great screens, and I’m now a convert to jumbo sized screens. I’ll never go back to 3.5 inches. The impact on the physical phone size is worth it. I find both phones easily fit in my pocket, but I don’t wear skin-tight jeans and I’m not a style maven, so it may be an issue to other people.

The design of both phones is excellent. I slightly prefer the basic x-y dimensions and rounded edges of the EVO 4G for my pocket… it just slips into my pocket slightly better than the DROID X. However, I prefer the weight and thickness of the DROID X overall, and I prefer holding the DROID X in my hand… which is something I like to do when I actually talk on the phone. They definitely feel different in the hand. For me, edge to the DROID X.

In theory, I prefer the dedicated touch/capacitive interface buttons (for menu, home, back, search) on the EVO 4G over the traditional tactile interface buttons of the DROID X, but in the end, I can get used to either. However, I do really like the dedicated camera button on the DROID X, so that easily makes up for the EVO 4G’s capacitive buttons.

The build quality is slightly better with the DROID X. I dislike the ease of removal of the back panel of the EVO 4G, and my unit didn’t sit flush and tight enough for my taste. I’m sure it was fine, but it bugged me a little, and felt spongy in the back. My EVO 4G unit had the infamous light bleed-through issue of the bottom of the glass as well. Minor issue, but made such a fine phone look slightly cheaper than it was. The DROID X, on the other hand, is very well built and feels tighter overall.

User Interface – Draw

Let’s make this quick and simple. The HTC Sense UI in the EVO 4G is more polished than what’s in the DROID X. I was impressed with what HTC has done to put its skin on Android. However, the DROID X feels snappier, and the DROID X keyboard was more responsive, which balances things out for me.

Camera Quality – Draw

I’m not an expert in this area by any stretch of the imagination, but I’m not going to be using a cell phone camera to replace a nice camera or HD camcorder any time soon. I mean, how much can we ask these devices to do well? Physically/optically, there’s only so far we can push this in such a small form factor… So for a cell phone camera, both smartphones are *more* than adequate for basic video and still shots.

Battery Life – DROID X

This one is easy. The DROID X has better battery life than the EVO 4G. This I can say from experience. It took some tweaking, and one over-the-air update for the EVO 4G to get reasonable battery life, and in truth, I could live with what I got (about one day per full charge), but since I’ve had the DROID X, the battery life is clearly better with the same usage pattern. Not *vastly* better… but still, noticeably better.

Call Quality and Cell Phone Network – DROID X

And here’s the kicker, the heart of the matter. Verizon just seems to work better in my area when it really matters… when talking on the frickin’ phone!

I actually preferred my Sprint *sales* experience much better. My Sprint salesperson (I’ll gladly mention her first name: Frances), was so totally awesome, I almost wanted to stay with Sprint just because of how she handled my experience.  However, my calls just did not work very well in my area. I had more dropouts than my iPhone 3GS with AT&T (which is not a good thing) and sometimes calls just sounded all jittery. Very annoying, and really, this ended up being the key decision point for me.

I might have been willing to live with Sprint, because of what I felt was excellent initial customer service, and the pricing plan I was on had more value than either AT&T or Verizon. In short… if the actual coverage were better in my area — and I live in Maryland — I might have not even bothered researching the DROID X. But alas, too many network issues pushed me to investigate other options.

Verizon, on the other hand, had a distracted and overly-busy initial salesperson (I won’t name names), who said they had the DROID X in stock, then had me come down to the store only to tell me they didn’t have any more, then later on, when they did get them back in, didn’t explain anything about my plan, and ultimately set it up incorrectly (which I had to straighten out over the phone with a nice customer service representative later on). Whew! Annoying!

However, once I got up and running with Verizon (I’ll mark it up to DROID X launch day issues), I have found the Verizon network to be superior in call consistency and quality from the instant I started using the phone. So in my area, this is the overriding issue. Your mileage may vary. In the end, call quality trumped customer service and even a slight price/value advantage from Sprint.

Conclusion – Had to go with Verizon and DROID X

In the end, the DROID X was the way to go for me. I do miss the kickstand and capacitive buttons of the EVO 4G, and I’m still getting used to the slightly different form factor of the DROID X… but all that pales in comparison to more consistent call quality. Which so far, is clearly in favor of Verizon for my area.

Truth is, if you want a bigger screen and want to venture into the world of Android, you can’t go wrong with either phone… and it boils down to which network you prefer (or perhaps, which network performs better in your area). Both are simply awesome, and I’m amazed by how much can be crammed into such portable devices. The real winners here are all of us, and also perhaps Android in general. These are two superb implementations of Android that will only get better once Android 2.2 (Froyo) is released for them.

I’m really enjoying Android so far; it’s been perfectly fine living outside the very pretty, but walled garden of Apple. And that’s not a cut on Apple, by the way. There are plenty of advantages to the iPhone, as anyone who has used different types of smartphones can fairly admit. But this is one geek that is happily living in Android land… for now. What I wonder is, what’s next? With 2GHz smartphone CPUs and 4G speeds on the near horizon from every provider, and the explosion of cloud technology and app development, we are really living in an amazing time. I’m blown away by what these current-gen smartphones can do… but I know that in no time at all, this awesome smartphone will feel… obsolete.

I love Linux. It is a fantastic operating system/platform with ridiculous power and flexibility, and I wish I could use it for all my computer needs. I’ve attempted to do just about everything with it, and try as I might, there are some areas where it just doesn’t fill what I need with my creative work. Don’t get me wrong, it’s more than capable in many areas, and I use it exclusively for production servers for my clients. But for creative work (such as for music production), I have yet to find a way to integrate Linux into my workflow. That doesn’t stop me from trying every once in a while.

True to my inner geek, I will admit that I periodically enjoy sitting down and relaxing with new Linux distributions and open source apps and seeing what they can do. Yes, I’m not embarrassed to confess that fiddling with Linux is one of my many strange, entertaining past-times.

If this post doesn’t interest you, dear reader, please skip it, but do come back some other day when I post something else that might fascinate you. For now, I will briefly engage my inner Linux geek and share my brief impressions of the current state of Linux on the desktop with Ubuntu Linux 9.04 Beta, while watching a sci-fi-horror-zombie-martial arts movie.

First, while I’m an advocate of open source software, that doesn’t make me a detractor of traditional commercial software or other operating systems not normally associated with the open source movement. I’ve paid my dues in the Windows and OSX universes (not to mention *nix, and earlier Mac OS, AmigaOS, OS/2, BeOS, DOS and others), but Linux holds a special place in my heart. I don’t completely know why. I just like it. I’ll have to explore why I like Linux so much in another post.

One of my areas of creative work includes producing music and audio. Unfortunately, Linux and open source software in general have yet to deliver what I need for music production on the Linux platform. Yes, there are some outstanding music and audio applications (and I’ve tried just about all of them), but out of necessity I have to continue to use commercial pro audio apps, like Sonar, Cubase, ProTools, Live, Reaper, etc. and my library of plugins and sounds.

I’ll discuss my platform of music production choice in another post, but for now I’ll just say that if I could do what I need to do with music in Linux, I would consider completely switching most of my computers exclusively over to Linux. But alas, for my personal music production needs, Linux is still out… which means that I must continue to straddle the OS worlds. But what about other computing needs?

What about writing, browsing, listening to music, burning, daily in-and-out things? Can Linux on the desktop handle all that? Well, the short answer to that is YES, of course! It’s been great at that for quite a while, if a bit quirky around the edges sometimes. What about the desktop experience? Is it easy to use? Short answer: YES, of course! Provided you invest a few minutes to learn your way around. Any user-friendly variant of Linux includes outstanding desktop interfaces from KDE and/or GNOME, and a vast array of awesome apps and tools, from office productivity programs to simple games. And it all works beautifully (for the most part), it’s FREE (in the open source way) and it’s fun!

Why hasn’t Linux taken over the world by now? Well, that’s a great question I’ll reserve for another post, and there are some very real, obvious and not-so-obvious reasons why it hasn’t and won’t completely take over the world any time soon. But is it a really usable platform for desktop users, today, in 2009? Oh yes, it can be, and the latest incarnations of Linux are better than ever. Compelling, really. Amazing, often!

So what about this famous Ubuntu Linux distribution? Is it that good? Damn right, it’s that good! I decided to take the Ubuntu Linux 9.04 beta out for a spin, and I can sum up my experience with it so far simply like this: IT ROCKS!

I was simply blown away by how smooth the whole experience was, compared to some other Linux distros I’ve tested and used in the past. Especially for a beta.

I decided to try out the Ubuntu 9.04 beta on my new little computing friend, my MSI Wind netbook. Like many people recently, I bought a tiny, cheap netbook that I take around with me when I don’t want to lug around a “normal” laptop or worry about breaking/losing something really valuable. A netbook plus Ubuntu 9.04 seemed like a match made in laptop heaven.

First, to begin my relaxing Linux installation evening, I decided to watch a movie. I discovered to my delight that my Tivo had recorded another mindless sci-fi channel special called “I Am Omega” that was just perfect for the task of installing Linux… not too riveting to prohibit me from multitasking, and not too idiotic to force me to channel surf. The film piqued my interest. After all, it had zombies, and was loosely (er-hem, very loosely) inspired by the excellent sci-fi classic novel I Am Legend, by Richard Matheson, from what I can tell. Yes, I Am Omega also appears to be a blatant attempt to profit off of Will Smith’s version of I Am Legend, while also hearkening back to the Charleton Heston classic Omega Man.

I Am Omega. Get it? Good. Oh, they got me without trying so hard. I Am Legend + Omega Man = I Am Omega. How could I not at least press play and see to what mysterious new heights these brilliant, original filmmakers would take such a venerable story?

On top of that, I was intrigued by the familiarity of the actor playing the main character of I Am Omega. He was driving me crazy, but then I realized — the Chairman from Iron Chef America! Yes, Mark Dacascos himself. So now I was hooked.

Mix classic sci-fi influence with an indie-film spirit, derivative script, impressive and yet sometimes glaringly out-of-place martial arts moves, then throw in a connection to one of my favorite Food Network shows, and I had the perfect background film for installing Linux and tweaking it to my heart’s content! With the subtly-refined acting skills of Mark Dacascos on display in the background, I was ready to begin.

I just had to get Ubuntu onto my netbook, and so I downloaded the ISO image from Ubuntu’s website (www.ubuntu.com).

But since I have no optical drive on my netbook (an MSI Wind variant, remember?),  I had to install the ISO onto a USB key. I was too lazy to do it the hard, normal way, so what about the quick and easy way? From Windows no less? Well, I found an awesome little utility called UNetbootin that was so insanely easy to use, I have to mention the original author’s name and send him a big thanks out of pure respect! Thank you, Geza Kovacs! Great work!

After installing the beta Ubuntu ISO onto an old USB key via UNetbootin, I rebooted off of the USB key right into a Live version of Ubuntu. Beautiful! How easy was that? Zero effort so far.

I threw caution to the Wind (pun intended), and I just installed it right to the hard drive. I allowed Ubuntu (a beta, no less) to handle the messy work and repartition my hard drive and install itself, right then and there. I decided I wanted to see how it managed the repartition and saving of my Windows XP boot partition, plus installation of a boot-loader. Now, folks, don’t try this without taking precautions! I had a backup and I urge you to do the same. While it went well for me, your mileage may vary (obligatory exculpatory comment).

Then, I rebooted the netbook off the hard drive and to my utter shock and awe, the simple interface of Grub bootloader came up and gave me the option to boot into Ubuntu Lunix or back into Windows, without a hitch. Nice! Very smooth, no hiccups so far!

I chose Ubuntu for boot, and in under 30 seconds I was running Linux off the hard drive… smooth as can be. Now for the tricky part… wireless. I was fully expecting I’d have to do some work to get the wireless adapter working, but oh no, not with this version of Ubuntu! Wireless worked without a hitch, right out of the box! Again, your mileage may vary.

Maybe I lucked out with the wireless adapter I had, but man, was that easy, and surprising. Prior versions of Ubuntu didn’t have compatible drivers ready for this model of netbook, from what I understand, so I was more than pleased with the results.

I spent 15 minutes customizing the desktop, and adding several packages for basic functionality, such as Flash 10, MP3 playback, Skype, etc., all without breaking a sweat.

Just as things couldn’t get more bleak for Mark Dacascos in I Am Omega, things couldn’t get better for me. I was up and running, surfing, testing YouTube, WordPress, OpenOffice, some games, audio playback, and so on. Wow! This beta of Ubuntu really is amazing. It actually works on this cheap little netbook. And it works well!

In fact, I was outright humbled by the collective skill of all the passionate experts and open source developers that made Ubuntu the perfect one-stop OS experience. As I sat there, waiting for the dramatic and disappointing ending to I Am Omega, I was stunned at how my little Ubuntu installation and testing session turned out to be as great as the movie was un-great.

Not to be disrespectful to the filmmakers, since I know how hard it is to make a movie… and I’m scoring an indie film this year that will undoubtedly be criticized by folks like me, but well, I Am Omega wasn’t exactly fine cinema, let’s put it that way. In other words, Ubuntu rocked, and I Am Omega un-rocked… but I’m still a Mark Dacascos fan!

Anyway, I’m looking forward to the “official” release of Ubuntu 9.04 but as far as I’m concerned this beta version is ready for what I need on this netbook.

In one ridiculously easy installation, I have a fully-featured Linux installation that does everything I need a netbook to do. I’m not done testing it, but for any basic cloud-computing need, it is beyond totally usable. In fact, maybe it’s ideal.

So far, it appears to boot faster than Windows, is inherently more secure, and in one quick install, I have a powerhouse little machine. Plus, it looks good. As always, I appreciate the attention to detail the Ubuntu and GNOME folks invest into their work.

Well, that’s it for now, my geekish friends who have made it all the way to the end of this post. I’ll install the final version of Ubuntu 9.04 when it comes out, and I’ll probably go so far as to kick Windows altogether off this netbook, with a few well-placed kung-fu moves inspired by Mark Dacascos himself. Hi-yah!