The most powerful Sprint cell phone (but just by a nose), the HTC EVO 4G LTE ($199.99) is both fabulous and frustrating. It has a powerful processor, the best camera on Sprint, and a long list of great little convenience features that make it our Editors' Choice for a Sprint phone. But not knowing where Sprint is installing 4G LTE is getting old.

Physical Features and Call Quality

The EVO 4G LTE  is a large, slim phone at 5.3 by 2.7 by .35 inches (HWD) and 4.7 ounces. The front is a typical black slab, dominated by a 4.7-inch, 1,280-by-720 Super LCD screen. It's bright and not PenTile, if such things matter to you, and colors are a bit less saturated than on OLED screens.

The back is a little more controversial. The bottom half is anodized matte black, all well and good. But above that you have a bright red stripe, a glossy black panel and a red ring around the 8MP camera; I've heard that called garish, but it doesn't bother me. The red stripe flips out to become a metal kickstand. The black panel at top snaps off to reveal a microSD memory card slot, and the camera's actual lens is recessed so it won't scratch. In any case, this feels like a premium device, and it's considerably slimmer than the LG Viper ($99, 4 stars) or the Samsung Galaxy Nexus ($199, 4 stars).

The phone is closely related to HTC's One X for AT&T ($199, 4.5 stars) and One S for T-Mobile ($199, 4.5 stars), but has some Sprint customizations. For more on that, read "Why the EVO 4G LTE isn't an HTC One X ."

The EVO 4G LTE is the first U.S. phone with HD voice calling, but that's impossible to test right now. Sprint says HD Voice will come online in early 2013. As a regular standard-def voice phone, the EVO is very good, although I like the Samsung Galaxy Nexus a touch more. The EVO is certainly loud enough, with a bassy voice quality that verges on (but doesn't achieve) muddiness and no side tone. Transmissions had decent noise cancellation, but voices with background noise became a bit computery and distant. I had no problem triggering voice dialing through Bluetooth, but the voice dialing wasn't very accurate.

Battery life was acceptable on CDMA, at 6 hours and 22 minutes of talk time. That said, it's unclear how battery life will fare when LTE is in the mix, but I'm encouraged by the relatively large 2000mAh battery.

The Irritating Mystery of Sprint LTE

For now, the EVO 4G LTE runs solely on Sprint's nationwide CDMA EVDO 3G network, which is a lot like driving a 365hp Ford Taurus SHO solely on narrow side-roads with traffic. According to our Fastest Mobile Networks 2011 report, Sprint had the slowest nationwide 3G network, with average download speeds of 480kbps. If it helps, I got consistently faster 3G speeds on the EVO than on a Samsung Galaxy Nexus in the same location, though none of them were worth trumpeting about.

This is called the EVO 4G LTE, right? Sprint has so far only announced six cities for LTE service: Atlanta, Baltimore, Dallas, Houston, Kansas City, and San Antonio. The carrier has also said it will cover 120 million Americans with LTE by the end of 2012, but steadfastly refuses to say which 120 million Americans.

So if you pick up a Sprint LTE phone now, you might be speeding along on fast 4G LTE soon. You might have to wait until 2013. Until then, it's a good thing this has Wi-Fi, supporting 802.11 b/g/n networks, excitingly including the faster and less crowded 5GHz band.

Processor and Apps

The EVO 4G LTE is packing the most powerful processor available in a U.S. phone today: the 1.5GHz dual-core Qualcomm S4. We've benchmarked the S4 against Nvidia's quad-core Tegra 3, and they're pretty much a wash. The Tegra 3 has more cores, but each Qualcomm core is faster, using a newer 28nm process compared with Nvidia's 40nm.

Handsets based on this chip deliver the best overall performance benchmarks we've seen from Android phones, and the Chrome browser running on Android 4.0 is a huge leap faster than previous Android browser versions. Games should also run well here, with the Nenamark graphics benchmark topping out at 58fps.

You get Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich" with HTC's Sense 4.0 extensions here. They include attractive widgets and relatively little bloatware (a lot of HTC's old apps are gone), and they fold Facebook and Twitter back into your contact book where they belong. That said, HTC's look is busier than the very spare stock Android look on the Samsung Galaxy Nexus. Different strokes for different folks.

Google Play offers up more than 400,000 Android apps, and all the ones I tried ran well on the EVO. The only thing you might miss are the few dozen high-end games exclusive to Nvidia's Tegra phones. The EVO integrates NFC and supports Google Wallet.