The EVO eclipsed the sales of the Palm Pre and Samsung Instinct, Sprint’s previous record holders, by a huge margin.

Update: Sprint has .

A tried to quantify the amount of EVOs sold:

Friday sales of HTC EVO 4G marked the largest quantity of a single phone sold in one day ever for Sprint – the record was previously held by both Samsung InstinctTM and Palm PreTM. In addition, the total number of HTC EVO 4G devices sold on launch day was three times the number of Samsung Instinct and Palm Pre devices sold over their first three days on the market combined.

So, take the two previous record holders, tally up both of their sales for their first three days.  The EVO sold three times that total in just one day.

e for 50,000 to 100,000 Pres at launch so that would put EVO somewhere between 300,000 and 600,000 units.

There is no other way to slice it: The EVO is off to a very successful start, even at .

Along with some activation server overloads, Sprint also said that it had sold out of stock at many of its 22,000 locations including RadioShack , Best Buy , and Walmart , but was replenishing supplies daily.  They also seemed to indicate that they were upping their orders from HTC.

It will be interesting to see how the EVO does after Apple CEO Steve Jobs launches the fourth generation iPhone later today at WWDC.