If you didn’t catch the news yesterday, Sprint has announced a new phone called the Evo which is getting everyone excited. At least those that have huge pockets are getting excited because the Evo is the same size as the HTC HD2 and that’s HUGE! I tested the HTC HD2 out a while back and just a few seconds with it told me it could never be an all day phone for most people. I had the same experience with the TG01. It turns out that many of you think a 4.3 inch phone is OK though. 50-60% of you to be more exact. I’m not sure how many of you have actually tried using such a big phone but I’ll admit there are plenty of people out there that would use this as a ‘pro phone’ for the daytime which keeping a smaller, more practical phone for social use.

Availability and cost will be the next issue because clearly this is a flagship phone. Not only for Sprint but for WiMax too because 4G and 3G are included in this phone. Not only that; check out the spec list known so far…

• 1 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon CPU
• 8 megapixel camera with HD video recording capability and HDMI out
• 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera
• Google Android 2.1
• Wi-Max, EVDO, Wi-Fi and a mobile hotspot utility to share mobile broadband with up to eight devices over Wi-Fi
• 4.3 inch multitouch capacitive display at 800 x 480 resolution.

(Via JKOntheRun)

That’s pretty much the most highly specified phone in the world right now so you can imagine what the unsubsidised price is going to be! I guess buyers are looking at a $100 per month contract here and as for the phone, I find it hard to believe it would be less than $400 in subsidised form. That’s close to $3000 total cost of ownership over 24 months.

There are three other major questions too:

• Wimax battery life (Evo only has a 5.5wh battery) / Coverage / Speed
• U.S. / Sprint Only
• Summer availability (could be up to September 6 months away)

There’s also no keyboard which might put off pro users.

Choice is great and its also great to see Android smartphones reaching up into ‘2nd-device’ and MID territory so we’ll be watching to see if all the excitement translates to purchases or if people back-off based on price, new competitors or the size issue.