Over the weekend I made the switch to the HTC Evo 4g on the Sprint network.  I still have the iPhone, but will be using it as a glorified iPod Touch after a serious run in with AT&T’s much Byzantine labyrinth of customer support.

The good:

• Both front and back facing cameras
• It seems like a more serious piece of technology
• The screen is better than the iPhone
• The camera is 8 megapixels, with built in flash
• Turn by turn navigation
• Tremendous integration with Google apps
• Speech recognition that works – I can actually do things by voice now
• Wireless hotspot – now my old iPhone and iPad can work in wireless mode
• This seems like a much more serious piece of gear than the iPhone

The bad:

• Lots of apps, but missing some of the ones I liked best on the iPhone, like Concert Vault
• The battery life is incredibly short – seriously, an add on battery pack is needed here
• I see a lot of error messages from the background
• On error messages the buttons say “force close” which is a term that will be foreign to most users

For the record, the AT&T Customer Disservice guy I was talking to went the extra mile to make sure I’d have an extra hard time transferring my line.  Luckily, after my Twitter tirade,  the ATT social media crew helped to get me fixed.   This all on the same day that the WSJ reported Verizon was days away from having the iPhone.

For the record, AT&T should learn a few newspaper terms: “Churn”, “Retention” and “Honkin’ Big Loss of Revenue”.