Despite these omissions, the Inspire is a great media player, especially with the inclusion of Dolby Mobile surround sound. I sideloaded a clip of Iron Man on the Inspire and was impressed by how rich and clean the surround sound was.

The Inspire 4G also supports Flash, so you'll be able to watch Flash videos, view Flash-enabled pages, and play Flash-based games. Flash sites loaded up pretty quickly over AT&T's network and videos ran smoothly. YouTube videos looked as good as they could ever look, but the ability to easily switch between regular and HQ (High Quality) YouTube videos with a simple tap is very nice. But one strange thing happened: I paused a YouTube video and when I tried to continue playing it, the video did not load. It gave me an error message and started the video back up from the beginning.

I'm not a huge fan of HTC's Sense music player. The album art doesn't take full advantage of the Shift 4G's display while the app is in Now Playing mode; instead, the art remains thumbnail-size. The Sense player is slightly prettier than the dull-as-dirt Android player, but I prefer both iTunes and Samsung's TouchWiz player.

Camera

Like the EVO, the Inspire sports an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and a flash. Image quality was pretty good. My photos taken outdoors had bright, natural colors and crisp details. Photos shot indoors looked pretty good, though the colors were a bit oversaturated.