The Epic-ly Epic Review of The Samsung Epic 4G

OK.

If you’ve listened to any of the YTR Podcasts, you would know that I LOVES me some smartphones. I’ve been a mobile tech junkie since the 5^th grade when I saved up to buy a Texas Instruments Pocket Organizer. Later, I of course moved to TI graphing calculators (WAY earlier than I needed to for school), and just out of High School I split my gadget obsession off into Palm Pilots, and later Windows Mobile PDA’s starting with a PocketPC2000 HP Jornada.

I’m a little obsessed.

For the last several years I’ve stuck with Windows Mobile. I like the iPhone, a lot in fact, but I don’t want to be locked into one carrier for a phone, and I do actually like to customize my phone more than what Apple will allow. Because of those two points I was willing to stick with under-powered hardware running really laggy software. It wasn’t all bad though, as WinMo came in a VARIETY of hardware designs to satisfy even the pickiest of gadget gearheads. I eventually settled on the sideways slider. Blackberrys have excellent keyboards, but I like the expansive keyboards found by turning the device sideways, and thanks to all that space, we eventually got dedicated number rows on devices like the HTC Touch Pro (the phone I’m currently using). Going back to a tic-tac keyboard, where I have to hold a function key to get a number, can feel a little claustrophobic…

Then Android arrived.

Offering the same customization and hardware options as WinMo, but with a MUCH more pleasant user experience, much closer to the iPhone. I waited for Sprint to get an Android phone. First came the Hero, but I was still under contract. Next came EVO, and I LUSTED after the screen, but I REALLY wanted a hardware keyboard…

Enter the EPIC 4G.

It’s everything I’ve been looking for in a phone for the last two years, officially goes on sale TODAY, and I’ve gotten to play with it for the last week. How does it stack up to the competition?

The Epic 4G arrived in a conservative enough box, housing the phone, battery, manual, 16GB SDHC card, and a set of earbuds with a built in mic for phone calls. The included earbuds are pretty nice inner-aural buds, but I still opted for my own Shure SE115K’s for music listening and my Plantronics Bluetooth headset for phone calls.

The hardware is gorgeous. All of the Samsung Galaxy S phones are attractive, but the Epic takes the Galaxy line to another level. Gone is the fake carbon fiber of the Captivate and the glossy smudge magnet back of the Vibrant, instead replaced with a soft touch matte textured surface that’s really easy to hold on to. There’s a slightly concave shape to the back that helps it fit in the hand a little better than some of the larger smooth back phones I’ve used.

I’m really happy that the back cover “pops” off instead of “sliding” off. On a slider phone like my Touch Pro, where you have to slide the back cover off to get to the battery and memory card slot, I’ve always felt like I was going to rip the screen off trying to remove the cover. I don’t feel like I’m going to break the Epic when I want to swap memory cards…

After all the iPhone copycat designs of the last year, I’m happy to see dedicated camera buttons return. There’s also a volume rocker, and the power button is in an odd location on the right side of the phone instead of the top. That does eventually make sense though as the top of the phone has the micro-USB connector (with a nifty sliding cover) and the head phone jack. The side of the phone is accented with a simple chrome strip, and the front of the phone is black. In fact, with the screen off, it’s hard to see where the screen stops and the bezel begins. It’s like a pool of ink. For as simple as the design is, it makes a bold first impression.

The Epic is a large phone, but in the world of smartphones, it’s not THAT big considering what you get. It’s almost exactly the same size as the HTC EVO, which is impressive since the Epic includes a slider keyboard and the EVO does not.  Compared to the iPhone 4, the Epic is taller by 9mm, and is 5mm thicker, again extremely impressive given the included keyboard, removable battery, and 4″ screen. This device is pretty sleek, and even if you were to NEVER use the slider, you wouldn’t suffer any additional bulk over competing phones in this category. The phone genuinely feels good in your hand once you get used to the shape, and going back to my Touch Pro feels a little hand-crampingly small…

The keyboard is a little slice of exceptional. Spacious, large, dedicated number row, and clicky keys keeps me using the hardware more often than ANY software keyboard. This is the BEST non-HTC hardware keyboard I’ve ever used, and it easily rivals the previous slider champ the HTC Touch Pro 2. With screens as large as they are these days, a phone without a dedicated number row is something of a failure in my opinion. Those numbers make text entry so much easier, especially in password fields.

The keyboard extends with a satisfying spring loaded snap, and feels solid, with only a little screen flex when fully extended.

The phone’s QWERTY also has dedicated arrow keys and the same Home, Back, Menu, and Search keys that you can find on the phone’s face.  Lastly, I think I like the keyboard so much because it reminds me a LOT of the buttons found on TI graphing calculators. Maybe not the most stylish design, but it does give the phone a “down to business” feeling, and I’ve easily written long emails (and part of this review) on the keyboard.

Of course with the keyboard extended, it’s almost like having TWO Blackberry Curves in your hand side by side. It’s bold. I love it…

Samsung designed its own processor for the phone. Unlike HTC which uses Qualcomm’s Snapdragon processor, Samsung uses a design they call Hummingbird. The two function very similarly, but the Hummingbird does have a more powerful graphics co-processor (sort of like the video card in a gaming computer). This seems to make the phone a touch more responsive than the HTC EVO with things like animations and menu transitions. iPhone users will know that feeling when handling other phones, where menus just don’t scroll as smoothly. Even with a dozen apps running simultaneously, the Epic still feels smooth and responsive. Movies and games also benefit from this extra processing.

I’m not going to do a full review of the Android operating system, as there are plenty of online reviews, but Samsung has done a few customizations of the software for the Galaxy S line. They call their overlay “Touchwiz”, and like HTC’s “Sense”, and Motorola’s “Moto-Blur”, the idea is to add functionality to the stock vanilla Android software, and to create a “brand” that consumers can recognize. However, compared to Moto-Blur and Sense, Touchwiz is a fairly tame overlay. The biggest differences between Touchwiz and stock Android seem to be the number of home screens (TW uses seven home screens), and Samsung has written a series of widgets for you to use that don’t come with stock Android.  I actually appreciate this, as sometimes that extra functionality of Sense can feel like it’s getting in my way. The Epic user experience isn’t quite as exciting, but the operating system is more transparent without other software trying to “help” me do things.

It’s something the iPhone does really well.  Once you get used to a computing device, you shouldn’t notice the OS. It should be there to help you get other things done. The Epic gets really close to that level of transparency.

Sprint has also avoided the urge to slather on a bunch of bloatware. You get Sprint TV, Sprint Football, Sprint Navigation, Sprint NASCAR, Sprint Zone (to keep you up to date on Sprint services), and a special Hotspot app to share your internet connection. I wish I could un-install apps like NASCAR and Zone, because I’ll never use them, but at least they stay out of the way once you disable their widgets.

One other useful Samsung addition is the inclusion of a different software keyboard called Swype. For those few times I use the onscreen keyboard, it’s substantially faster than the standard Android keyboard. Instead of typing individual keys for each word, you slide your finger from letter to letter, and when you lift your finger off the screen the word fills in. It’s easy to see how the Guinness World record texting time was done on a Swype keyboard.

In terms of general usability, if you use Google services like GMail, Google Maps, and GVoice, then there is no better platform to use than Android. Just like with the iPhone and MobileMe, or Windows Phone and Hotmail, the OS integrates Google services directly into the phone. Nice touches with services like Picasa (my favorite photo organizer), where after putting in my three different GMail user names, the phone’s Photo Gallery auto-populated with ALL of my Picasa folders.

I do have a few software nit-pickies that may or may not affect other users, but bothered me.

*No “Read All” option in GMail. You have to read individual emails to mark them as being read. A selection option (like the one found on the desktop version of GMail) would be nice.

*Email attachments can slow down the phone quite a bit. While attaching an item like a pic or MP3, the phone slows WAY down until the email is sent.

*No voice dialing over Bluetooth. This one is actually a little dangerous if you talk on the phone while driving. This should be fixed with the next version of Android, but the version currently shipping on Samsung phones omits this feature.

One of the first things people ask about the phone is how the camera works.

In two words? Very well.

This is a perfectly functional 5MP shooter, with a great set of controls to customize photo output (like sharpness and saturation), a dedicated camera button that also functions as auto-focus and shutter control, and a really good auto white balance for accurate color. Thankfully, unlike the other Galaxy S phones, the Epic includes an LED flash to help with low light pictures. It’s likely to blow out faces more often than properly illuminate, but it’s MUCH better than NOT having a flash. Walking around with the Epic, I feel little need to have a separate point and shoot camera on me.

While the stills created are solid, the video is another matter entirely. It does shoot 720p HD video, but does so at such a low bitrate, that it’s just not very impressive. It’s nice to have, and I probably will use it from time to time in a pinch, but I wish it could save just a little more information. If the iPhone scores any victory here, it does save to a higher bitrate, and that does make the video look a little better.

The screens on Galaxy S devices are incredible. The Super AMOLED panels that Samsung is now reserving SOLEY for their own phones are vibrant, captivating, and … well… epic (see what I did there). Saturation is incredible, colors POP off the screen, and the blacks are bottomless. Remember how I said it was hard to see where the screen stops and the bezel begins when the screen is off? Well, it’s the same when the screen is on! The iPhone 4 wins with resolution, but I like the color on the Epic better. The “better” screen will largely be determined by how close you hold your phone to your face.

I’m really liking this new trend of 4” screens. It makes everything just a little more usable. If you do use the virtual keyboard, the keys are larger. Icons have a little more space, menus are a little easier to flick through. The iPhone’s 3.5” screen is no slouch, but can feel a little cramped in comparison. The 2.8” screen on my Touch Pro feels like I’m looking at the Internet through a port hole… half covered in duct tape… at the end of a LONG tunnel… In a bad way…

As a Phone?

The ear piece is loud, and no one ever complained about having a hard time hearing me. I don’t believe it uses any tricks for noise cancellation, but even in The Haight (during a Critical Mass) on a really windy day, there were no complaints on call quality. Contact and calendar sync is seamless, and you can voice search for just about anything. The only Phone concern is one of my nit-pickies from above. I really hope we can get voice dialing over Bluetooth headsets soon.

Data

Oh baby. 4G. Yes. Win.

EVO owners will know what I’m talking about.  Playing with the phone in San Francisco, and war driving for 4G in LA, this thing is fast. In Hollywood my Touch Pro was consistently getting about 800Kbps download speeds, about the same speed as DSL. The Epic on 4G was pulling down 4Mbps downloads, or almost as fast as my home cable internet connection. The phone is also powerful enough to make use of that bandwidth. Web pages leapt into action, Twitter and Facebook updates were instantaneous, and media downloads were wifi fast.

The Hotspot function was painless to use. I can see no reason to have a laptop connect card anymore, and if you routinely do business in a 4G area, keeping a team of people connected to the internet on ONE phone signal is pretty compelling. Sprint has certainly had its issues of late, but it has soundly beaten every other carrier to the 4G punch.

Surprisingly, battery life is pretty decent. I have no problems making it through the day on 3G (couple phone calls, LOTS of email and text, a little gaming), but I do need to charge up every night. Add in 4G however, and you will need more power.  There’s just too much hitting the battery all at once between the separate 3G and 4G radios, Bluetooth Radio, GPS, true app multi-tasking, and the expansive screen. Investing in a car charger, secondary AC Adapter, or a spare battery should give you PLENTY of room for heavier usage.

I guess one of the biggest problems with the phone is, it just WANTS to be used. It’s sitting right in front of me on my coffee table while I write this, and I keep looking at it, just want to turn its screen on, and check my email even though I know I don’t need to. It’s no fault of the phone that battery technology really hasn’t advanced enough to compete with that kind of desire LOL…

So here’s the skinny, this is the best phone on Sprint right now. EVO is neck and neck with a lot of features, but Samsung’s ability to keep the phone within a whisker of the EVO’s total size AND include a keyboard, plus the Super AMOLED screen, means it ekes out a victory over HTC. What remains to be seen is Samsung’s ability to deliver on OS updates. Android 2.2 has already arrived on EVO. The Galaxy S line is supposed to be a premium line of phones, and that means support. Samsung’s official UK Twitter account announced updates in September, and if they can meet that, it’ll make a lot of users very happy.

Is it enough to switch to Sprint? That’s a tricky question. Every carrier now has a good Android device, but if you live in a 4G area, you tend to get more bang for your buck with Sprint’s data plans over AT&T or Verizon. I’ve been a Sprint customer for a while now, but thanks to EVO, EPIC, and 4G, this is probably the first time I’d ever recommend Sprint as a carrier.

It really is that good…

Tags: 4g Android best android phone best samsung phone best sprint phone cell phone epic epic 4g review galaxy s review Samsung samsung epic 4g samsung epic 4g review samsung epic review smart phone sprint sprint epic Super AMOLED what is the best android device