been a long time since I posted anything, but I just compiled this list for a friend who is just now purchasing the Evo and thought I would share (note the numbers may go to 20, but that is because I omitted one for the public.

Ok, here are some tips and misc info I have found

1. do not put any (this means delete the default) widgets on the home screens that constantly update, kills the battery and make your phone run slow

2. go to menu –> settings –> accounts and sync | setup ALL accounts you might ever need to use from your phone, then put all of them to manual sync, except for email.turn off email (under google, then gmail, it is just a check box unlike the others), do this, because even with the recent updates the HTC mail app is still better (works with attachments, the gmail one has issues with attachments, sending and receiving), you can configure the HTC mail app to have 2 schedules, peak and non-peak. I set peak to 730am-9pm every 5 minutes and off peak to every 4 hours. If you do this your phone can sit (idle) on standby for an extra 3-8 hours then if you don’t.

3. live wallpapers are cute and fun, but drain your battery about 1.5% per hour +/- get some if you want, but only use them if you want to show your phone off, or for the first month or so, until you get tired of having to plug your phone in.

4. use the airplane mode widget I have (it is faster than the HTC one by a good 15-20 seconds or so), and turn it on when you go to bed, you should only go down 1% of battery over night if you do this. You do not need to periodically restart the phone. Right now I am at 670 hours uptime (menu –>settings–>about phone–>battery remember this, you will look here often).

5. use the HTC built in widget power control, it gives you 5 widgets in one, Wifi, BT, GPS, mobile data/sync = on/off button, plus brightness 0%/25%/100% toggle – I just recently stopped using that in favor of the brightness widget on my list, as this gives you a slider to adjust the brightness.

6. keep your brightness set at 12% or less all the time. you only need more if you are standing outside, the phone looks good with 100% brightness while outside, I am happy with that, with the new widget I normally set it to 60%-80% outside and that is good enough for me. This will add 1.5-3 hours to your battery.

7. Radio Shack has a good screen protector that I recommend, bad news it needs trimming and may have a jagged edge (you get 5 in a pack so try twice if you need to, got mine on the first try, but it is not perfect), good news is, it is long enough to go from just below the HTC logo all the down to just past the buttons. most of the ones for sale only cover the main display area, not the touch buttons. the screen won’t “scratch” it has gorilla glass, but you can get “nicks” in it, I have one or two I got in the first month I had it, about the size of a straight pin point (not the head). I got a replacement phone as mine had a bad USB connector, so I put the screen protector on, after what happened to my first one. (free replacement, it is a known hardware defect). This screen protector does not affect the touch sensitivity and does not use water to stick (some need water, if you use water, you will void any warranty through sprint and HTC, there are water detection strips on the batter, facing the USB port, so if water splashes or drips in there you are screwed, and another one just under the kickstand, so if water gets there, you are screwed.

8. Many games will kill your battery in 2-4 hours from a full charge, but do not display the battery meter in game, if you play games a lot, plug in while you do it, same with you tube and videos. Sometimes games are hard to see at <12% brightness, play the game first and if it s hard to see, just turn it up before you play and back down after.

9. you do not need to train your battery by power cycling it, it is ready to go the first time you use it, fyi they say to charge for 12+ hours with the phone off before first use, not sure if this affects it, I did not, and my battery life is worse than most report on the web. I could not resist, I waited for this phone from Sept 9th 2009 (give or take a couple of days first news about it on Engadget) until launch. Do not use task killers or startup managers, the first update after 2.2 got pushed made them obsolete and useless.

10. to install apps that are not directly from the marketplace (including archived apps from the market) you need to enable them, menu-->settings–>Applications and check the “unknown sources” box. While you are there, go to the development option and select debugging mode (necessary to use Easytether so you can use your phone for inet access on your laptop, good in the car too, I’ve maintained a connection from South Carolina to Virginia without dropping off once (was logged into citrix and an IM system for work)

11. omitted due to personal info

12. one of the reasons I got the extended battery, is with it installed the back is big enough to keep the camera lens off the surface the phone is sitting on, without it you will want to ALWAYS use the kickstand or put it in a pouch if you have one (I do not). a few people have reported scratched lenses, I don’t know how hard it is to scratch, but it is NOT gorilla glass. and it is not covered by the warranty. I bought the Seidio 3500mAh battery from mobile city online, they are an authorized HTC OEM manufacturer and are carried in the Sprint Stores (although they did not get the OEM HTC logo for this battery)

13. the 8GB SD card is fine unless you want to do movies and music on the phone (the HDMI out is barely acceptable and on auto detect mode, it only sends out 720p when I’ve tested, yes I bought a cable. It also ONLY shows movies and slideshows (not pictures, slideshows. Through the HDMI out. You can do remote streaming from your PC of music (not sure about video) using both Media player and Winamp, so no real reason to store a lot of music on the phone, other than ringtones, I have no music stored on my phone.

14. I set the default screen timeout to 2 minutes and the lock screen to 5 minutes, that way if the screen shuts off during use, you don’t have to unlock it, just turn it on and swipe the bar down (I use the pattern lock, which without the screen protector leave a distinct mark on the screen making it almost useless)

15. I use google maps and navigation, not sprint’s. sprin’s REQUIRES an active network connection and will actually just stop working and give you a loading progress bar if it loses the connection, but it does constantly check for faster routes and traffic, but it is really slow.

16.if you install more than 100-125 apps the app chooser runs slow and jerky (trying to load the cached icons), so I try to keep most apps archived.

17. If you install an app not from the marketplace, you can use AppBrain to find it on the Marketplace to check for updates.

18. when using the camera turn on GPS BEFORE launching the camera app, then go to settings and turn on Geo-tagging, from then on the Geo tagging will automatically enable IF GPS is on before you launch it, unless you touch the setting later while GPS is off (this brings you to the system screen to turn on GPS, but also disables the auto geo-tagging feature I just described). This allows you to decide if you want Geo-tagging simply by hitting th eGPS widget before launching or not, it will always try to geo-tag, even if you use the camera several times with GPS off. (verifiable by looking for the GPS icon on the camera display in the top left).

19. if you charge by USB port on your PC or laptop, check the output specs on your USB, standard on a laptop is only 300-450mAh and a desktop is normally 600-700mAh (on a 300-450mAh your battery will drain faster than it can be charged if you use the phone while it is plugged in, personal experience 7 hours plugged in while using the phone for pandora and constantly rating the songs, my charge went down 2% over that time, no wifi, no GPS). some Gigabyte MB’s have 3x USB power and send out a minimum of 1mAh (recommended charging Amperage for the Evo 4G and any crApple mobile devices) The extended battery I have and the stock battery are safe to charge at up to 1.5mAh but keep an eye on the heat levels (batterytime app I have shows the battery temp on your notification bar) anything over 112F and you need to find a way to cool it off (I have seen 118F on mine when charging by USB to cigarette adapter, and I quickly turned the AC on high and held the phone in front of the vent until it dropped to 89F, the air can go in through the rear speaker hole or the USB/HDMI ports to cool)

20. go to menu–>settings–>dock and turn off auto-launch, very annoying, many charging methods trigger this and it blocks you out of most of the phone features until you unplug the USB cable. (supposed to be an anti-texting feature when using a car dock)

I’m sure I’ll think of something else, but it can wait…