Post Tagged with: "epic 4g"

The time has come. The two years are up, and it’s time for me to move on. In all of my smartphone reviewing, I still keep my own phone line, and for my last contract the Samsung Epic 4G has been by my side.

For all of our talk, trying to stay on the pulse, trying to scoop new devices, I think it’s important to take a quick look back. We’re so impressed with the bleeding edge, we don’t follow up to see if those gadgets ever lived up to the hype.

Here are my experiences, good and bad, as I say goodbye to an old friend.

So this is crazy exciting, and honestly, something I never thought I’d see.

The Epic has proven to be difficult to create good custom ROM’s for. It’s the only member of the original Galaxy S family to have both WiMAX and a hardware keyboard.

Thankfully, intrepid coders working on the Cyanogen project have graced us with an incredible experimental Alpha build of Android 4.0. Check out the video! I especially like the part where my old Epic 4G beats a Galaxy Nexus in booting to the home screen…

For those of you interested in taking the plunge (and mind you this is still VERY experimental), you can find more info (and links to support the project) on the CM Epic 4G blog.

If you’ve read Juan’s reviews of Samsung’s Epic 4G and Epic 4G Touch, you know how fond he is of the Galaxy S (and Galaxy S II) family of phones; but rather than have him tell you how they stack up head-to-head, he thought he’d show you. Click past the break to see exactly how these 2 powerhouses fared in a battle of the benchmarks!

Have you heard of Sprint ID? Launched in October on the LG Optimus S, Sanyo Zio and Samsung Transform, Sprint ID separates apps, widgets and ringtones into what they are calling “Lifestyle ID” packs; these packs target specific interests in an effort to tailor more services to your specific lifestyle. Now that you know what Sprint ID is, you may be happy to know that it’s available on the Samsung Epic 4G and Samsung Galaxy Tab. Starting March 21^st, customers who own either of these devices can take advantage of the lifestyle packs and hopefully find content that, well…suits their lifestyle. Check the full release after the jump.

I haven’t covered a lot of widgets in this feature, so to make up for it, here’s the widget I use the most.

Pure Grid Calendar is one of the best home screen widgets I’ve found yet. I don’t like calendar widgets that only show me a couple days or my next appointment; I like being able to see the whole month ahead of me.

Tapping on a day brings up an expanded view of that day, and can take you to your calendar to add or edit appointments.

There are a tremendous number of customization options, size, view, and there are skinning options as well.

This doesn’t replace the calendar app on the phone, but it does provide very quick access to your itinerary.

Available in the market for about $2.

I baby my gadgets.
At the end of a 2 year contract, my phones look brand new (aside from the occasional scuff). My laptop has never traveled without a case, and I take care to clean it and use a cooler. I use a blower on my camera while swithching lenses, and I always put the lens cap back on while not using it.

My last two phones have been a challenge as they’ve both been keyboard sliders. The Epic has been especially challenging as it’s already a large phone.

However, OtterBox thinks they’ve got the challenge settled with their Commuter Series Case.

Let’s see if their solution will stay on my phone!

Though holiday shopping has officially ended for some, it’s just beginning for others; some folks are looking to spend holiday gift cards, while others will be returning gifts they received, in order to get the gifts they actually wanted. No matter the reason, shopping after Christmas has become almost as popular as shopping before–and we’re here to help. We’ve taken the list we published before Black Friday and added some items that we didn’t have before–so even if you’ve seen our original piece, there’ll still be new content for you–and if you didn’t see our original Shopping Guide? Shame on you–we have some great gift ideas! We hope you all had a wonderful holiday, and hope that all of you post-holiday shoppers find some great gear to enjoy; so sit back, relax…and enjoy the tech!

I woke up to find my Epic 4G had downloaded an update to enable the Samsung Media Hub.

I’ve only had an hour or so to play with it, but the layout is really clean (think Netflix meets iTunes… in a good way), and they already have a pretty decent collection of movies and TV shows to choose from. Movies can be rented or purchased (so far it looks like $2.99 and $9.99 are the going  rates respectively), and TV shows are purchased by individual episode. No word yet on whether or not a season pass will be offered.

The service works exclusively over Wi-Fi or 4G, which is a kind of a bummer, but firing up the Iron Man preview was a jaw dropping experience. Movies. Look. GOOD. I used 4G to stream, and the preview buffered in a matter of seconds, with no lag, and playback was buttery smooth.

In researching apps for our new Android App of the Week posts, I’ve found one quirk of the Android app market that is fairly aggravating.

Apps aren’t marked with any device compatibility.

See, this isn’t a problem for iPhones as Apple only needs to support two different aspect ratios, but Android phones come in a VARIETY of shapes, sizes, and hardware configurations.

We’re currently playing with a Samsung Epic 4G here at YourTechReport, and driving around LA looking for 4G signal TOTALLY takes me back to my days of war-driving for wifi. Not that I EVER mooched other peoples wifi… [wink-wink]

It’s kind of a thrill when you fire up the 4G radio, and see the phone obtain an IP address, and when you can get it, 4G is stinking FAST.

So far I’ve found pockets of 4G at:

Hollywood @ Sunset & Vine – Very good signal 4Mbps streaming download speed

Culver City @ Venice & Sepulveda – Good signal 3Mbps

Burbank @ Burbank & Buena Vista – Poor signal, phantom connections, can’t keep sustained signal long enough to test download.

So my fellow Los Angelenos, is 4G lit up anywhere else I should test? Preferably someplace with really good pubs?

And for those of you NOT in LA, have you jumped on the 4G bandwagon yet?