Daily News Magazine from India & around the world.

HTC Evo 4G, a phone that was released in the US on June 4, four days after the announcement of the Apple iPhone 4 and 20 days before its launch on June 24, a date that eventually may be pushed to July 12 because of the unprecedented demand.

In complete contrast with the fanfare that accompanied the iPhone 4 launch, the Taiwanese telecom manufacturer launched its Evo in the quietest manner possible. But can it match up to the iPhone 4? In three words, the answer is: It sure can. And in some feature sets, it’s even better than the iPhone 4. There is one small problem, though.

Purists don’t call it a 4G phone yet; its protocol is half a notch below actual 4G speeds. But who cares as long as it is faster than 3G? And yes, just in case you wondered whether the iPhone 4 has 4G network access, no, it doesn’t.

Compare the two phones. The iPhone 4 has a 3.5 inch display; the Evo 4G has a 4.3 inch screen. Both phones have a dual camera set up for live videocalling, but the iPhone 4 camera is only 5- megapixel while the Evo camera has 8- megapixel resolution.

Apple has not specified the front camera resolution; the Evo has a 1.3 megapixel camera in the front.

Both phones have live videocalling, but the iPhone Facetime video calls are restricted to Wi- Fi networks and Apple said it is working on building new software that will allow it to run over the 3G network too. The HTC Evo is evolved; it already works on 3G and 4G networks.

For the first time since Apple decided to reinvent itself, it is facing the strongest competition in terms of design as well as in content and engineering. As renowned technology writer David Pogue said in his review of the Evo in the New York Times on Thursday: “ It’s another great- looking, blazingly fast app phone made by HTC and running Google’s Android operating system.

Android gives the phone more complexity than the iPhone ( its obvious rival), but also provides some sensational features: speech recognition that lets you type by speaking, almost anywhere; an excellent, free turnby- turn GPS navigation program; and a wireless app store stocked with more than 70,000 little programs.” And lest we forget, it can also run Flash video content which means you can access most of the videos that are on the Web.

The iPhone can’t because of its CEO Steve Jobs’ hatred for Flash and love for the rival software called HTML5.

Meanwhile, another review on Engadget added: “ A big, big part of the EVO's draw is the 8 megapixel autofocus camera with dual LED flash and— drum roll, please— yes, 720p video recording. The shots had a little bit more splotchiness and noise ( er, make that noise reduction) than we would've liked, but they still looked just great scaled down to monitor size; as with pretty much any phone camera, you're not going to want to blow these up and frame them for an art exhibition.” The guys at HTC are leaving no stone unturned to beat the iPhone 4.