Samsung Epic 4G Smartphone Review
Right now, it is a world of Galaxy S phones from Samsung and the Epic 4G from the company is not one of the finest phones around, which has nothing to do with the fact that it is the only 4G model in the group. The phone also holds in to a few of the Galaxy line’s very vital features, such as the 4” super AMOLED display and1GHz Hummingbird processor. This Epic is very light, which contradicts it being 1/3rd thicker than the other Galaxy S models that weigh less too. The slide-out keyboard takes up the Epic not only just on its predecessor, but also over the first 4G phone of Sprint, the EVO 4G, to which it is comparable to.
Having a glance at two other Galaxy S models of US, the AT&T’s Captivate and T-Mobile’s Vibrant, it should not take long for you to realise that this is totally a different beast. Being just the second WiMAX PDA phone to the released in the states, and the first one to have a physical keyboard, this will prove to be a very important release for Sprint as this a time when its subscribers count have started to pickup after several quarters of disappointment. As we just mentioned, it is quite important note that the Epic 4G is Samsung’s 1st WiMAX device and its direct rival, the HTC EVO 4G was simply mind blowing. And, Epic has lots to do and is it? let us find out.
Design:
Black: always in-trend
Out of most Galaxy S flavors in the market, the Epic 4G, despite its name and form factor, might just have the most nondescript appearance. If it is good or bad, totally depends on your personal preference, but FYI, we liked it. The fascia of the device is mainly dominated by an expanse of black gloss that is rimmed by a matching black bezel, making it an almost intimidating when it is just sitting in front of you with its screen switched off, as you will not be able to readily see the outline of the display or even the capacitive buttons below it. It will just be a whole lot of black with some tastefully proportioned logos of Sprint and Samsung at the top and bottom. In fact, it is so black that it is almost like you are looking at the rear of the phone.
Light:
Samsung Epic 4G PDA Phone feels very light at 15 grams less than the EVO, to be exact. To be frank, we really would not have cared it being a bit bulkier, which again leads us to wonder whether they could have equipped something beefier than a 1500mAh battery without causing any issues. Though the screen of the device is about three-tenths of an inch smaller than the EVO’s, the two are surprisingly close in length and width, and in other words, you should not consider this over the EVO simply because you think it is going to be easier to hold. At 14.2mm deep, the Epic is noticeably thicker, but still comfortable in the hand and it certainly does not produce that ridiculous bulge in your pocket, that is, unless you are wearing something skinny and fashionable.
AMOLED display:
The 4 inch Super AMOLED display at WVGA resolution of the Samsung Epic, is just the same as the one you will find on the Captivate and Vibrant, and as you can imagine, it is absolutely glorious. This display is capable of displaying about sixteen million shads and also possesses a WVGA resolution that allows it to produce some very vibrant and great looking graphics and video. This display also has got a wider viewing angle with a higher contrast ratio when placed next to a traditional LCD. If you are kind of not used to these kinds of displays, even if you are already familiar with standard AMOLED, we are sure that you will be pretty shocked by the insane black level and the rich, dazzling color saturation that you get from this display. Still, we would like to insist that it does not perform as well as a traditional LCD in direct sunlight, though it is not completely washed out; but you could always make out the contents of the screen if you squinted just hard enough.
The all-important rear:
Moving on to the rear of the Epic 4G phone, Sprint has got it right where its rivals went wrong. It has quite a subtle black soft touch, which is nothing like the cheap glossy plastic of Vibrant or faux carbon fibre weave of Captivate, giving you a bit of grip while holding on to it. One of the few concessions to style on the entire phone are the sparkling flecks on the back cover. And, though most of us will not like our phones to sparkle, we have to admit that it would have been a bit too plain, if they had just did it with a flat black. The only issue that we have with the rear of the PDA is that, it pries off, and most consumers will prefer the sliding style phone as it involves vell less of, “I am afraid if I will break this thing” feeling that you will usually get when you are trying to yank a flimsy cover straight up and out, but taking into consideration you will need to get in there, it is basically not an issue.
Keyboard:
The overall feel of the sliding mechanism of the keyboard is quite solid and not flimsy at any side. It is a flat five row type with some good separation in between the keys. There is some good strong action on each of the keys, sans any mushiness. However, we would also say that we could have put up with the space between the keys to enlarge the keys themselves. The layout of this keyboard is a mixed package, for instance, the instance access to Home, Menu, Back and Search buttons is awesome, whereas the locations of the Enter and Backspace keys are troublesome and, we cannot understand the need of a dedicated smiley face key. The slideout keyboard of the Samsung Epic 4G kind of falls behind the ones of its Android counterparts such as the HTC myTouch 3G Slide and even the Droid 2. This is not to say that it is not good, it is just that not every novice user will be able to get around it without some bumps.
The connectivity and ports:
One of the other very stylish part about this phone is that, in the sides, there is a thin chrome ring that surrounds it, which is quite tasteful and actually seems to be working in here. There is the standard array of slots and connectivity such as the volume rocker, power, two stage camera buttons, a 3.5mm headphone jack and also a micro USB port. As in the case of its Galaxy S siblings, the Epic too possesses a spotless retractable door that protects the port; which is an alternative that is much better than the flimsy plugs that you can find in some of the other ones.
Buttons:
Just below the display, there are four capacitive buttons including Menu, Home, Back and Search. Since these buttons are located below the Samsung Logo, there is plenty of separation between them and the bottom of the display; however, they seem to suffer from a couple of issues. To start with, they are just not sensitive enough and you might have to tap twice occasionally in order to actuate it. There was also the issue that showed up its nasty head on the other Galaxy S models; the buttons seem to be backlit on the different schedule than the display. They just black out after about five seconds and switch on back when a button or the display is touched. But, Samsung has also offered a good solution for that. You can actually change the behavior of the button backlighting; it uses the keyboard’s backlight timeout setting, which is six seconds by default but can be set to match the screen. Problem solved.
Package:
Sprint has neglected the cute or strange (depends on how you look at it), “TV Dinner” kind of packaging that EVO had and gone for a more traditional packaging. Though it might seem a little boring, on the positive side, unlike the HTC EVO, with this kind of set up is easier to keep closed, that is, if you really care and plan on hanging on to it for a while. It does not depend on a flimsy cardboard sleeve to keep the lid on and the good news is that, they have gone with a really thick and sturdy high quality material for both halves of the packaging. Inside the box itself, you will find the Epic 4G itself, a USB charger, micro USB cable and surprisingly, the same decent ear-buds that comes with the Vibrant and Captivate. No cables are permanently attached to the charger, which has become pretty common these days. If you are looking to have some serious fun with music, you can still use your own headphones or earbuds, but it is quite cool that Samsung has offered some buds that are high in quality; just enough to include a pair of replaceable tips too.
Features:
Android 2.1:
In most areas, the Epic 4G runs the same TouchWiz 3.0-skinned build of Android 2.1 that you find on other versions of the Galaxy S Phones, which also means that you have to deal with the same set of complaints. Most of the issues that we will be mentioning here, will not bother those who are going to deal with it for the first time. The greatest issue with the device is that, it has too much colour in everything, an issue that is enlarged by the fact that the display that make the bright colours look very bright.
Memory:
In the box, you will also find a SD to microSD converter which can be used with the 16GB microSD card that comes pre-installed under the phone’s rear cover. The nice thing here is that, you will not have to remove the battery to get at it. You might be wondering why Samsung is offering 16GB when its major rivals offer only 2GB, well, it turns out that the Epic has only a little over 400MB of internal storage or the Apps, which is nowhere near the capacious 16GB capacity of the others. Hence, Sprint just compensates by throwing in a beefy card. This might work OK for most users, but it is important to note that, this in turn means that you will not be able to get up to 48GB of storage by spending on a 32GB card. We were just left wondering why Samsung had left out the internal capacity when they had tried to make the device as Epic as possible. The only thing that we can imagine is that, they might have simply ran out of space with all the modifications on the model over the standard Galaxy S, such as the slider mechanism, LED Flash and the WiMAX circuitry.
Software:
As far as software is concerned, Samsung has done an average effort at holding back. When the phone is switched on for the first time, the installed apps consume two full pages in the launcher, which feels quite manageable. Besides the normal Galaxy S custom stuff like AllShare and MediaHub, you also get Qik with video calling capability, Sprint Football and NASCAR, Sprint Hotspot, TeleNav-powered Sprint Navigation, ThinkFree Office lacking the Google Docs integration of the version available in the Market, and Sprint Zone, which is basically a one-stop shop for finding Sprint stores, checking out your account, and getting quick access to apps the carrier recommends. Sprint TV’s also included, of course, but it just hangs on 4G whenever you try to watch a program.
Home screen dismal:
The annoyances continue to creep up on the home screen, where Samsung seems to has opted to display a large panel number indicator just below the status bar. Note that they use a seven panel setup. We do not mind that they are permanently displayed, and in fact, we would rather prefer it looking at the way Droid X and Droid 2 manage to do it. But the issue here is that, the one TouchWiz has is simply huge, just large enough that they could have managed to squeeze in another widget or icon row if they wanted. We thing Samsung should have taken a cue from Google, HTC or even Motorola’s first generation Blur UI, in order to implement this the right way.
Camera:
Yet another area in with the Epic wins over its other Galaxy branded cousins is, what is just below its 5 megapixel camera, a good quality LED Flash. Obviously, you cannot expect a lot out of the primary camera of Epic, given that its cousins do not even ship with any sort of flash and it is quite obvious that Samsung has managed to prioritized a thin shell over the heavy duty optics. Having said that, the stills were pretty good, with the shots looking clean and sharp with minimal artifacts and 100 percent zoom. We even discovered the hard way that you will get locked out of the camera app if the battery dips to 15%, hence, make sure that you have plenty of juice before heading out for some serious shots. As we had mentioned earlier, the Epic is equipped with two cameras; the 5 megapixel primary on back paired with a weakling VGA cam on front. Make no mistake, this second camera is not to be used for anything but video calling, and considering that the quality of your video call is limited by bandwidth more than by camera quality, it will work just fine there. The Epic’s camera app allows you to toggle between cameras, while the second camera is used for a “self portrait” mode, but trust us; you really will not want to do that.
Video:
The video capture was very less impressive than the still images. The real issue here is that, it has been advertised as a 720p recorder. It is true that you will be able to toggle a 720p mode, but in order to associate the quality of the output that you get with anything you get with anything you might consider being 720p is totally bizarre. It is simply not good. What Samsung should have done is to cap the op to 480p and just offered 1280 x 720 as something like and “extended Solution” mode, which would have eased the consumers at least a little bit. On the positive side, the audio quality is quite decent, though not as strong as the Droid 2 or the Droid X.
Performance:
Apart from an occasional stutter while scrolling in the browser, the Epic’s performance felt in line with what we should expect of its Hummingbird core. It was generally responsive and smooth. By Android’s nature, it is easy to gum up the works by installing too many apps trying to do too many things at once, but with a few of the essentials installed, the device fully synced to Google account and everything sped right along. There was some occasional hiccup with the phone’s many window transition animations where they would flash or stutter; it was hard to tell whether this was a performance issue or simply a bug.
Call Quality:
Call quality is very good most of the time. There is a little bit of voice distortion in the caller’s voice, but that did not wreck the overall call quality. It was loud and clear, though a bit tinny.
4G:
As far as 4G performance is concerned, it get quite tricky as the network performance varies highly by locations and other variables. But, generally we are quite happy with the on device data and hotspot mode. It will never cease to make you feel “WiFi Fast” both in terms of speed and latency, which is exactly what you will need to make a fantastic mobile hotspot. We managed to get 4Mbps down and 1Mbps up consistently.
Battery Life:
Moving to the battery power, we were able to get 3 hours and 43 minutes of use from about 97% power to shutdown with the phone in 4G hotspot mode while occasionally interacting with the handset, continuously streaming internet radio, and some other internet stuff. That bests the EVO by a few minutes. We checked Android’s built-in battery monitor shortly before the Epic shut down, which is the screen where you can see what components and apps have been draining your juice the most, and were surprised to see it report that the display had allegedly been responsible for fifty five percent of the drain, despite the fact that we had played with the phone for perhaps 10 to 15 minutes. We suspect the app is not properly accounting for the 4G radio, but that is just a guess, and if by some odd chance it is accurate, that paints a pretty scary picture for the power consumption of these Super AMOLED displays.
Value:
Understandably, the biggest issue with the Epic 4G is its price. At about 250 dollars, it is the dearest Galaxy phones ever from Samsung, this price comprises of a new two year service agreement and a 100 dollars mail in refund.
Warranty:
Samsung offers its Epic 4G one year warranty for parts and labor.
Verdict:
It is quite impressive that Sprint has already managed to release two very high-end, exceptionally desirable devices built specifically to take advantage of its 4G network. So, the question is, if it is the right phone for the job? Yes, it is a great phone.
Samsung Epic 4G Smartphone – Technical Specification Details
| Manufacturer | Samsung |
| Model Name | Samsung Epic 4G |
| Series | Galaxy S |
| Product type | 4G Android PDA |
| Dimensions (H x W x D) mm | 124 x 65 x 14 mm |
| Weight | 155 g |
| Color | Black |
| Phone Design | Candybar touchscreen |
| Candybar touchscreen | Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen |
| Size | 4.0 inches |
| Resolution | 480 x 800 pixels |
| Display Features | 16M colors Gorilla Glass display QWERTY keyboard TouchWiz 3.0 UI Multi-touch input method Accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate Touch-sensitive controls Proximity sensor for auto turn-off Swype text input |
| Alert types | Vibration; MP3, WAV ringtones |
| Phone Navigation | Multi-touch input method Touch-sensitive controls |
| OS | Android OS, v2.1 (Eclair) |
| CPU | ARM Cortex A8 1GHz processor |
| Memory | 512MB RAM, 512MB ROM |
| Storage | microSD, up to 32GB |
| Primary Camera | 5 MP, 2592 x 1944 pixels, autofocus, LED flash |
| Features of camera | Geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection |
| Secondary Camera | Yes, VGA |
| Video | Yes, 720p@30fps |
| Format support | MP4/DivX/WMV/H.264/H.263 player MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC player |
| GPRS | Class 10 (4+1/3+2 slots), 32 – 48 kbps |
| EDGE | Class 10, 236.8 kbps |
| 3G | Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps, HSDPA |
| WLAN | Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n; WiMAX |
| Bluetooth | v2.1 with A2DP |
| USB | v2.0 microUSB |
| Connectivity | Bluetooth Capability GPS Capability Internet HTML Browser USB Connectivity Wi-fi Connectivity |
| Internet Browser | HTML |
| Messaging | SMS(threaded view), MMS, Email, Push Mail, IM, RSS Corporate email Instant Messaging Predictive Text Input T9 |
| Highlight Features | Mobile TV Social networking integration Digital compass Organizer Image/video editor Document editor (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, PDF) Google Search, Maps, Gmail, YouTube, Calendar, Google Talk, Picasa integration Flash Lite v3.1 Voice memo/dial/commands T9 |
| Battery Type | Standard battery, Li-Ion 1500 mAh |
| Standby | Up to 300 h |
| Talktime | Up to 5 h 30 min |
| Warranty | One year |
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