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Samsung Epic 4G Review

Filed under Reviews by Kenneth Pennington on August 26, 2010 at 6:04 PM

The next 4G phone is here. First started it all with the EVO 4G, and now Sprint’s pulled in yet another industry-dominating device. When the HTC EVO 4G was originally previewed, people were in awe over it’s feature-focused approach. With HDMI out, 720p recording, a kickstand, 4G connectivity, and more, the EVO 4G quickly became a best-seller for Sprint. But, at the same event that launched the EVO 4G, another phone was born — the Samsung Galaxy S. This phone featured a front facing camera, HD recording, DLNA support, a Super AMOLED screen, and the fastest mobile processor on the market. While the buzz surrounding the EVO 4G initially drowned out the Galaxy S’ launch excitement, Samsung made an exciting comeback by announcing full six-carrier support for the Galaxy S series. Sprint’s device — the Epic 4G — is the premiere device of the Galaxy S line. Today, we’re reviewing that phone to answer that long-asked question: should I buy an Epic 4G?

Feature Overview

  • 4″ Super AMOLED screen
  • 800 x 480 resolution
  • 190 ppi w/PenTile Matrix
  • 100000:1 contrast ratio
  • 1 microsecond response rate
  • 1 GHz Hummingbird Processor (1 GHz Cortex A8 by Samsung-Intrinsity)
  • Full QWERTY keyboard
  • Power VR SGX 540 Dedicated GPU
  • 90 million triangles/sec.
  • 512 MB LPDDR RAM
  • Android 2.1 Eclair
  • Upgrade to Android 2.2 Froyo by end of 2010
  • 16 GB microSD included
  • Accelerometer w/ Gyroscope
  • Front-facing VGA camera
  • 5 megapixel back camera
  • 720p high defintion video recording at 30 fps
  • LED flash
  • 802.11 b/g/n WiFi
  • DLNA Support
  • Samsung TouchWiz 2.5, SmartLife Android Skin
  • Comprehensive video/audio codec support including MKV, DivX, Xvid, etc.
Screen

The screen on the Samsung Epic 4G is a 4-inch Super AMOLED display from Samsung. With the standard Android 2.1 high resolution: 800 x 480, this display is arguably the best on the market. In a showdown versus the Apple iPhone 4, the Epic 4G’s Super AMOLED screen would dominate in color quality and power saving.

If a phone’s screen quality is important to you, this device is a must have. The screen’s colors pop… the display is bright… the text is crisp. Super AMOLED screens are beautiful.

But, the Super AMOLED screen isn’t just for looks. The 4-inch beauty also contains a layer of the patented “gorilla glass” from Corning Incorporated. That means your devices display is far less likely to shatter from a simple drop of the device, unlike the Apple iPhone 4 which shatters almost immediately upon dropping if on concrete. In addition, the Super AMOLED display is so thin, that the Epic 4G is one of the thinner keyboard-equipped smartphones on the market. Plus, Super AMOLED screens have their multi-touch sensors built right into the display, so touch accuracy is extremely high. The screen features five finger capable multi-touch, which is extremely impressive. And the response rates are far better than the iPhone, Nexus One, or EVO 4G.

All in all, we believe the Super AMOLED screen on the Epic 4G is the best display on the market.

Speed, Power, Graphics

Samsung’s Galaxy S line features their custom-built mobile Hummingbird processor (created by Samsung-Intrinsity). The Hummingbird processor is clocked at 1 GHz and features a dedicated Power VR SGX 540 graphics processor that is capable of pushing 90 million trangles per second. To put that in perspective: the Hummingbird can push about 68 more graphical triangles per second than the Google Nexus One’s Snapdragon. Essentially your games and movies will play cleanly.

We can confidently say that the Hummingbird processor is in fact superior to any mobile processor on the market (in a competing smartphone). It beats out the Texas Instruments OMAP processors featured in the Motorola Droid X and Droid 2. It whoops the Qualcomm Snapdragon inside of the Google Nexus One and HTC EVO 4G. And, most importantly for Android fans– it edges out the Apple A4 featured in the iPhone 4 and iPad, because of it’s superior dedicated GPU.

Now, there are other significant factors that can affect device performance. A critical factor is the internal memory read and write speeds. Samsung’s other Galaxy S devices have major troubles with inbound/outbound data reading… see Developers Work on Galaxy S I/O Problems. All of the previously released Galaxy S models have slight occurrences of lagging and stalling during operation due to the RFS filesystem inside of the memory on these devices. But, we’re happy to say that Samsung has worked out this problem on the Epic 4G. Some speculate that a different piece of internal memory was used, but we tend to think Samsung just moved critical application data on the devices to a different spot. This theory has been backed up by XDA-Developers members who’ve been fishing around the files of a leaked Epic 4G dump.

Now, we took a look at the impressive benchmark scores that the Epic 4G achieved. And, while they are lower than the Motorola Droid X/2 in some cases, we have ultimately found the Epic 4G to be the faster device. They are near equal in everyday speed usage, but occasionally we felt the Epic 4G was performing better.

We feel the Epic 4G is the fastest phone on the market. Applications open up quickly, load quickly, and work well. Graphics-intensive games and video content playback smoothly on the device. The Epic is the ultimate Android gaming and media-consuming device.

Keyboard

So, how’s the full QWERTY keyboard? We say– about average. The keys were too flat for our taste. They didn’t feel separated and distinctive like on the Motorola Droid 2. Having said that, a full QWERTY keyboard is much better than an on-screen keyboard. We found we were able to type an average of 1.6 times faster on our hardware keyboard with the Epic 4G versus the stock on-screen keyboard.

If you want a phone with a keyboard, the Epic 4G should be a serious contender on your list. Look for our Motorola Droid 2 vs. Epic 4G showdown article soon if you’re still undecided.

TouchWiz Software

All of the Samsung Galaxy S devices are overlayed with the TouchWiz interface from Samsung built around Android 2.1 Eclair. Now, we wanted to warn you that our review of TouchWiz contains a lot of personal preference and opinion. Having said that, we think TouchWiz is a fairly good skin for Android. The blue, black, and grey theme is a nice addition to the interface, and some of the stock Android makeovers are welcome. We were disappointed to see that TV Out functionality had been stripped from the device, since we believe its hardware is capable like the Captivate and Vibrant.

Why we like TouchWiz on the Epic 4G:

  • Ability to play just about any kind of media we throw at it’s Video or Music players
  • Stylish glass bar on the bottom screen
  • A more useful pull-down notifications bar – shows WiFi, Bluetooth, 4G, and GPS on-off switches
  • Some good widgets: Feeds and Updates, Program Monitor
  • 7 homescreens with a top link to each one
  • Some good apps: AllShare, Asphalt 5 from Gameloft, Media Hub (coming soon), Memo, My Files
  • Brightness adjuster at top
  • Sexy dialer skin, in-call skin

Why we dislike TouchWiz on the Epic 4G:

  • Missing lots of new things from TouchWiz 3.0 on the AT&T Captivate, T-Mobile Vibrant
  • Bad lock screen (ugly, not functional)
  • Some bad widgets: AccuWeather, Buddies now, Calendar clock, Y! Finance clock
  • Can’t add or subtract homescreens
  • No multi-touch homescreen action
  • Ugly screen when you answer a call (drag contact icon to a destination)
  • Bottom row icons are not customizable
  • App drawer is horrible… not vertical, surrounds icons with ugly backgrounds
  • Not as fast as launchers like LauncherPro & ADW Launcher
  • Text messaging interface is boring (TouchWiz 3.0 is much nicer)
Camera

Samsung’s Galaxy S phones all feature five megapixel cameras with 720p high definition recording. But, the Epic 4G has an added LED flash for low-light photography. Overall, pictures on the Epic 4G were nice, but not as good as the ones we took with the Motorola Droid X or iPhone 4.

Videos were on par with the high definition phone cameras we’ve seen; again a little worse than the iPhone 4 and Motorola Droid X cameras. But, it was better than the HTC EVO 4G camera which didn’t shoot at 30 frames per second.

Hardware Design

The Samsung Epic 4G is a surprisingly sexy phone. Although its keyboard makes it a bit bulky, the black screen is flush with the shiny front exterior and the device looks sexy. The metallic silver trim around the sides makes it look more expensive and classy, but the plasticky-rubbery back ruins that image.

With a silver ring around its camera lens, the Epic 4G’s back end looks average. The hard buttons (volume rocker, power, and dedicated camera) are nice, sturdy, and clicky. On the bottom of the phone, there are hidden light-up capacitive touch buttons which turn bright white when the phone is in use. They are fairly responsive and offer haptic feedback when touched. Unlike the Captivate, these capacitive icons shine strong and white… they look good. Sprint throws in a 16 gigabyte MicroSD chip to throw in the back of your device. It is created by SanDisk and performs well in write/read tests.

The Epic 4G features the standard 1500 mAh battery in the Galaxy S phones. And, you can easily access the back of the device, although we like the Captivate’s open-back mechanism better (push down the back and pull off the cap). This one requires you to push a nail in a little slit on the bottom of the phone and pull back. But, we can’t complain, because it’s better than not having a replaceable battery and SD card… cough cough iPhone cough. The phone features a high-end standard 512 MB of RAM and a 1 GB ROM.

GPS

Lots of people have asked us to test the Epic 4G’s GPS abilities, because other Galaxy S phones have experienced terrible GPS issues that have rendered devices’ navigation unusable.

The GPS system on the Sprint Epic 4G works well. In multiple tests, we were able to navigate to and from destinations without ever losing GPS signal or getting placed by Google Navigation on the wrong road.

Unfortunately, the accuracy of the Epic 4G’s location-pinpointing GPS is questionable. Wherever we traveled, an accuracy circle surrounded our navigator pinpoint. So, it is possible that users would experience GPS errors (like the Navigation thinking you were on a parallel road). Also, the GPS occasionally took more than 10 seconds to “lock on” with a cold start.

Check out our short GPS pinpointing test below or click to check out our full Samsung Epic 4G GPS Test:

Battery Life

We found the battery life on our Epic 4G to be pretty fantastic. The battery lasts all day with moderate usage, and the fact that the Super AMOLED screen saves power by turning off black pixels is excellent. We did find that 4G drained our battery considerably, but not enough to make us dislike the 4G connectivity feature.

In comparison to our AT&T Captivate, we found the Epic 4G wasted a lot more battery with daily usage. We had to recharge our Epic 4G more often and for longer periods of time. This lends us to believe that software updates in the future could improve battery life even further.

4G Connectivity

We drove down the valley of California to test out the 4G connectivity of the Samsung Epic 4G from Sprint. Overall, we really enjoyed the fast download speeds. Reception was great, and this phone spit all over my 3G AT&T Captivate. The phone seems to offer better speeds than its 4G predecessor — the EVO 4G — since we tested that device.

If you’ve got 4G in your area, we highly suggest this phone based on this feature alone. It’s worth the $10 a month, although we dislike Sprint’s added-fees-for-4G rollout plan. We think the $250 price of the phone is enough financial punishment.

Conclusions

Samsung has hit the ball out of the park with the Epic 4G. I would venture to say that this device is the best Android phone on the market, and when it receives Android 2.2 Froyo later this year, we think this phone will stomp Motorola’s latest offerings and seriously compete with Apple’s iPhone 4.

Should I buy this phone?

Absolutely. We think the Samsung Epic 4G is the best phone on the market come release day: 8/31/2010. While devices like the Motorola Droid X may be tempting, we think you’ll be happier with a Galaxy S device… especially one that’s been pimped out with a front-facing camera, LED flash, full keyboard, and dedicated camera button. The phone runs fast now, and it’ll get even faster with Android 2.2′s JIT compiler. Adobe Flash videos will look awesome on the browser (when updated to 2.2), and the 4G connectivity will help out a lot. And… the screen will make you want the phone regardless of any other features. Seriously.

We like the device’s focus on media and entertainment. With the Power VR GPU, Super AMOLED screen, and six-axis motion sensor, this phone is a better gaming device than any on the market. And, we loved that we were able to throw our Xvid, DivX, and MKV collections on the device and play them back smoothly. The device handled 720p and 1080p playback nicely. Movies and television shows looked fantastic. We can’t wait for Samsung’s new Media Hub store to open so we can get pre-formatted movies and TV shows sent right to the Epic 4G.

Samsung’s Epic 4G truly is an epic device. We’re glad that Sprint’s keeping the ball rolling by launching another 4G-capable beast of a device. When Sprint launched the EVO 4G, it was best in class. Now, we think Sprint is shooting for that title again… and winning.

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