This is easily the biggest phone I've ever handled, but it's all screen and tapers in the back, so it fits nicely in the hand. The back panel is rubberized and feels very nice, though the plastic trim looks a little bit cheap. The ginormous screen is unlike that of any phone I've ever used before; it makes browsing the web a whole new (and more usable) experience. For the first time, I can load real pc-formatted pages (versus the mobile counterparts) and the experience feels very natural. 
It is slim enough to fit into a pocket, but the size does have one drawback - it's very difficult to operate the phone completely one-handed when you have to use the same thumb to press keys on opposite corners of the screen. The back of the phone reveals a most curious design decision by HTC - the camera lens is NOT flush with the back panel, but protrudes by about a millimeter or so. That means that when you set the phone down on its back, it actually rests on the edge of the lens. I am not entirely comfortable with that.
Testing out the 4G, web pages loaded fast - very fast. I'm not sure ten times as quickly, as they claim, but certainly noticeably quicker. The Sense UI "wrapper" is similarly snappy, though it really irritates me that the only way to wake the unit from standby is to press the power button and slide the touch panel down. I understand why they implemented the hard button requirement, to keep your pocket from turning the phone on, but I wish that they had given me the choice to deactivate it when I want to. It's supremely annoying when you're waiting for a video to load and in that time, the phone goes to sleep and you have to press the power button and slide the control to turn it back on.
Other than that, I really like Android and the variety of cool apps in the Android Market, many of them free. That's one of the myriad things I hated about Windows Mobile - there's a tiny library of software, most of it stinks, and they all cost money.
Alas, as many have said before me, the battery is slightly subpar. And by slightly subpar, I mean super power guzzlingly piss-poor. I took the phone off the charger at noon today and got the 15% low battery warning at 7:00. Granted, I was playing around with it a lot and testing all the features, but it was on standby for a large portion of that time (no voice either), and even conservatively, it may be a struggle to hit more than 10 hours in regular usage. I could go two days without plugging in my old smartphone with very light usage. We shall see how it holds up. At the very least, the phone lets you swap out the battery. Kudos also for a standard 3.5mm audio jack.
Overall, I'm very impressed. This is not a phone they'll need to trick anyone into buying by paying a million dollars to shoehorn it into every scene of 24. Prior to its release I was torn between the dreamy spec sheet of the Evo and the upcoming iPhone of indeterminate capability but assured droolworthiness. Frankly, I sort of expected that I would test-drive the Evo for a month and then tire of its annoying quirks and get the iPhone in the end, but now I'm not so sure. It's not as polished or as sexy as the iPhone will be, but I'll say this: it made me smile...more than once. And I never smile.
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