went to T mobile and played with their S model

[fkabibil]

I Played with one for a half an hour today as well. It was the snappiest android phone ive ever used and i had an evo for 30 days for reference and a droid and G1 before that. The screen is light years better then the Evo's as well. Its definitely smaller but in no way inferior. I was most surprised by how much i liked touchwiz believe it or not. And avatar looked insane on the screen. Didnt play with the camera at all but have seen some great video on youtube taken with the cam.

It was definitely super light, but didnt have a cheap feel or look to it like a cliq xt for example. it seemed like the 4 in. screen is the perfect compromise. the evo just never felt comfortable in my hand. I cant wait for the Epic 4G, come on Sprint and announce this thing already...

 

[Droidcola]

Yeah me and my girlfriend checked it out today to get a feel of what's to come from the Epic 4G.

Epic 4G > *

 

[vor]

Since it's diagonal and not just vertical or horizontal, you're actually looking at about something closer to 18% larger. When you take into account that the dimensions of the phones are nearly identical, it makes the Evo that much more impressive to see them fit about 18% more screen into a phone.

What? They measure TV/Monitor/Phone screens diagonal? NO WAY?!!?

I was using 16:9 to make the comparison, even if they both are a little off from that the biggest difference in actual sq inches of screen is ~13%

 

[maduhbee#AC]

Played with one, and the screen response is so good! No 30fps cap here!

 

[wphend00]

I am going to play with my friends Vibrant, again, today... but as I mentioned before, if you compare the snapiness and speed of a ROOTED EVO that has the Wireless N activated, and the 30fps cap removal, via the dirty-hack... it moves faster than the Stock Vibrant. My friend and I both noticed that...
After playing with his vibrant and having my EVO for 4 weeks (I returned it on Friday, so that I could grab an EPIC), I can firmly say

EVO = More response, faster..., bigger screen (going from an EVO immediately to an EPIC or Vibrant, you will notice the difference...hopefully the Palm Pre that I am using now, will help with my withdrawel symptons), ROOTED, longer range on wi-fi, better front facing camera...FLASH

Samsung= WAYYYY better, 100x better camera, nicer screen, Faster read-write on the HUG 16 gigs of internal memory, nice camera menu. 100x better CPU and GPU

Battery power and usage on both seemed about the same... When I had my friends, I watched it go from half way to 10 percent, in an hour, using mainly the camera... And yes, the 3G antennae sucks in the Samsung... We sat in a busy restaurant in one of the better parts of Lex. Ky, and he was regulated to an EDGE signal, until he stepped out into the Parking lot... Speed test then yielded no better than a 500down/400 up result on multiple tests...

I cannot wait for the epic... though...

 

[Mattism78]

I just got in from the AT&T store and playing with the Captivate a bit. I'm not big on crowds so my tinker time was limited.

Display was amazing. Nice and sharp. The thing that I was probably most impressed with was how thin the device was. Felt very light as well. I did my type test and was unable to spell my name correctly with the standard key typing. Swype nailed it though. Just feels weird typing that way.

Like I said I didn't get a whole lot of touch time but it seems like a good phone. I wouldn't leave my 3Gs for it. I will leave for the Epic though. The thought of what I played with today teamed up with a qwerty and flash for the camera should make for one hell of a device. NOTHING on the market can compare (which furthermore annoys me why it's taking so long). I had a chance to get an Droid X as well but reluctantly passed due to the Epic.

 

[caliskimmer]

I am going to play with my friends Vibrant, again, today... but as I mentioned before, if you compare the snapiness and speed of a ROOTED EVO that has the Wireless N activated, and the 30fps cap removal, via the dirty-hack... it moves faster than the Stock Vibrant. My friend and I both noticed that...
After playing with his vibrant and having my EVO for 4 weeks (I returned it on Friday, so that I could grab an EPIC), I can firmly say

EVO = More response, faster..., bigger screen (going from an EVO immediately to an EPIC or Vibrant, you will notice the difference...hopefully the Palm Pre that I am using now, will help with my withdrawel symptons), ROOTED, longer range on wi-fi, better front facing camera...FLASH

Samsung= WAYYYY better, 100x better camera, nicer screen, Faster read-write on the HUG 16 gigs of internal memory, nice camera menu. 100x better CPU and GPU

Battery power and usage on both seemed about the same... When I had my friends, I watched it go from half way to 10 percent, in an hour, using mainly the camera... And yes, the 3G antennae sucks in the Samsung... We sat in a busy restaurant in one of the better parts of Lex. Ky, and he was regulated to an EDGE signal, until he stepped out into the Parking lot... Speed test then yielded no better than a 500down/400 up result on multiple tests...

I cannot wait for the epic... though...

How can you say better front facing camera when the Vibrant doesn't have one?

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

How can you say better front facing camera when the Vibrant doesn't have one?

He never said it had a better front facing camera, just a better camera (back). Re-read it.

 

[wphend00]

How can you say better front facing camera when the Vibrant doesn't have one?

It is a better front facing camera than the EPIC and the Iphone 4... because those have VGA camera's where as the EVO has a 1.3 megapixel camera...

I told my friend to record a 720p video to the SD card... so that we can see what the video would look like... to see if there would be any differerence in the bit rate... I am waiting for him to send it to me...

 

[caliskimmer]

@rufflez: reread the section "better front facing camera...FLASH..."
@phenderson: megapixels mean squat, especially on cellphones.

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

Ah, I see it now, under the evo part. Man, I need to get some sleep.
Also, yeah, Megapixels means diddly, as you said phenderson, the Evo's 8MP cam isn't as good as the Vibrant's 5MP camera.

 

[Nickles0n]

Lens are way more important than MP's. That's the major difference between Canon and Nikon. Is the vibrant too responsive? Something I heard.

 

[drizek]

Well I went to see the Captivate today...

Very light, seemed solid. Disappointed in the volume rocker feeling plasticy and mushy though. Hopefully the one on the Epic is better. Feels good in the hand, the capacitive buttons aren't really an issue, although I think I prefer the gesture area on the Pre.

The screen was really my biggest issue though. I could clearly see the pixels on it, and the text was not as readable as I would have liked. pictures look great on it, but black text on a white background just isn't as good as it should be. Moreover, the brightness in the browser is noticeably dimmed, to the point where I didn't feel there was enough contrast for me. I didn't see a way to adjust this.

Coming from a Pre, having the zoom in/out icons everywhere was pretty annoying and totally useless. And contrary to what some said, the text in the browser does reflow, and I found this to be annoying. Thankfully Samsung lets you get around it with pinch to zoom, but I wish there was a way to disable it entirely, and then only reflow the text if I manually tell it to.

On top of all that, the default touchwiz UI seemed bloated, ugly and poorly designed. This doesn't worry me too much though, the new ADW launcher and themes look great, and there is a ton of cuztomization options available. Still, I think the vibrancy of the display sort of exaggerated how ugly the UI was compared to when I was looking at screenshots of it on my computer. Too many clashing colors, too much stuff going on at once. I prefer minimalism and clean lines. I really liked the UI on the HTC Aria sitting next to it.

I also found it really annoying that websites like engadget and digg default to the mobile/iphone sites. There is no reason for that, and if I wanted that sort of experience I would just use RSS feeds.

The pictures form the camera looked great though, and the tap to focus on the camera app was a welcome upgrade from what is available on my Pre.

Swype was pretty cool, I don't see myself ever using the software keyboard though, it is way too small for me. At one point I thought that the hardware keyboard on the Epic would not be worth the space it takes up, but that is definitely not the case.

I didn't notice any lag though. Moving between home screens, launching apps and scrolling were all smooth as butter.

In conclusion: I wish it had WebOS and a retina display.

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

So get another Palm Beta Phone. I honestly don't recommend this for you. You're too into the WebOS and the crappy memory management to think outside of the box. The screen on the Pre isn't any better (you know that). I find it funny you think TouchWiz is bloated... it doesn't take 1 full minute to load the maps and then another 30 seconds - 1 minute to get GPS lock. You do realize there is a setting in the browser to disable the mobile view? You're talking about ATT where saving data is a plus on their 2Gig cap. Of course by default it loads the mobile view, hence the reason. Easily changed with 3 button taps (menu--settings--mobileview). Also, in Europe they charge by MB so saving MB's is a good thing there. They designed the phone for the world, not just the specific carrier.
I played with the vibrant, and I agree, no lag, it was nice to see that for a change (pre (awful)-->hero(not good, but better)).
My final say= So anxious for Sprint to step up their game and give a release date. GSM has too many deadspots in Florida (if you travel the whole state like I do) to be useful, VZW too expensive for what you get. US Cellular isn't available. But at the rate they are going, they may have a phone released before Sprint. They are featured on the Samsung generic commercials, too, and their model already passed the FCC and won't give us brain cancer.

 

[karnovaran]

I'd have to say this is the first time I've ever heard anyone be annoyed by text reflow. You actually prefer to scroll back and forth when reading an article?

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

I'd have to say this is the first time I've ever heard anyone be annoyed by text reflow. You actually prefer to scroll back and forth when reading an article?

Its not a pre, so he complains about features that his pre doesn't have and turns them into a negative. I'm not intentionally trying to hate, but as the poster said, you can pinch to zoom an not have text reflow. I don't think he's getting the idea of Android... YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT, HOW YOU WANT IT. Don't want flash, turn it off. Don't want mobile view, turn it off. Don't want swype, switch to stock android or one of the hundreds (ok, not really, but there are a lot) of OTHER keyboards out there. If your pre's keyboard is too small, like it was for me... guess what, tough ****, you're stuck with it. Only other option was hacking the phone to put an on-screen keyboard that was too laggy to be useful, and even smaller!
Don't like Touchwiz, turn it off.
Don't like how it reminds you to call your mother after x amount of days, don't load that widget!
Don't like how its much bigger, faster and does circles around the pre?... Get another Pre!

 

[wphend00]

Its not a pre, so he complains about features that his pre doesn't have and turns them into a negative. I'm not intentionally trying to hate, but as the poster said, you can pinch to zoom an not have text reflow. I don't think he's getting the idea of Android... YOU CAN DO WHAT YOU WANT, HOW YOU WANT IT. Don't want flash, turn it off. Don't want mobile view, turn it off. Don't want swype, switch to stock android or one of the hundreds (ok, not really, but there are a lot) of OTHER keyboards out there. If your pre's keyboard is too small, like it was for me... guess what, tough ****, you're stuck with it. Only other option was hacking the phone to put an on-screen keyboard that was too laggy to be useful, and even smaller!
Don't like Touchwiz, turn it off.
Don't like how it reminds you to call your mother after x amount of days, don't load that widget!
Don't like how its much bigger, faster and does circles around the pre?... Get another Pre!

LOL, on a side note... I have a pre... my cousin (I hope he is not reading this), may GOD rest his generous soul, let me use it temporarily after I took my EVO back, on last Friday. I have been a Windows Mobile guy since Windows Mobile was Windows CE or Windows Pocket PCand Pocket PC PHone Edition. I loved the EVO... it was very hard to take it back, but I place my hope in the EPIC... and the beautiful camera... (The EVO's camera sucked that bad for me..because I don't want a DECENT camera with DECENT pictures and video... I want an AWESOME camera like the Iphone 4's...)... regardless. I have used the Pre for 2 days and for NOW, and I stress for NOW (because I will have it until the EPIC is released which means it and I will get pretty chummy or pretty dummy over the course of the next few days), hate is not a strong enough word. I hate the fact that it takes to freaking gestures to do what an "X" in Windows Mobile (well, lol, not completely) , or the HOME button in Android can do. Shucks, I even prefer the Iphone 3gs... And the APP store for the pre... I spent 10 minutes scrolling through it... and could find no GOOD free games... like you can for the Iphone and Android... It takes a cult to follow the pre... and sure enough, there is one out there... but I am not impressed with the camera that takes so-so picturs and does not allow for you to freaking change the resolution... I need to use the wi-fi router that I hacked, to work with my I-pod touch, but guess what... it don't and is not as straight forward as the wi-fi tether app with rooted EVO's... because the audio... is sort of low budget type audio on the 3.5mm jack... but, hey... the Sprint NAV works AWESOME with it... I love it... And the screen looks nice... but typing on the cramped keyboard, and trying to enter web links in the browser... over and over again... totally sucked... If they make a bigger pre... I might try it... but HP sometimes buys stuff to make it DIE (See the Compaq Ipaq handhelds...) which means... Pre might go bye-bye for good...

As a side note... my cousin HATES samsung phones because of the INstinct... It has sort of crushed him BAD.. and has steered him away from the EPIC... So I have his PRe that I hate and will give to my son (will buy it from my cousin) and he has an EVO...

 

[HAAS599]

Does anyone else get annoyed when people have software complaints about an Android phone? Its so frustratingly n00bish. Like they don't understand what the biggest selling point of an Android device is, THE CUSTOMIZATION OPTIONS.

 

[scheets973]

This is all getting complicated. I do not believe that the EVO runs smoother than the epic. I also have seen numerous videos on how the galaxy s videos were supperior to the EVO.

EVO larger screen, "better" UI

Epic, better screen, better camera, better video.

Who knows--


I guess we'll just see when it comes out. I don't think we should compare other carriers phones to the EPIC. The 1.3 Evo camera may not even be as good as the vga on the samsung... and The flash on the evo is not good so the samsung flash for the EPIC only should not be much worse if any.

 

[Andrew Ruffolo]

LOL, on a side note... I have a pre... my cousin (I hope he is not reading this), may GOD rest his generous soul, let me use it temporarily after I took my EVO back, on last Friday. I have been a Windows Mobile guy since Windows Mobile was Windows CE or Windows Pocket PCand Pocket PC PHone Edition. I loved the EVO... it was very hard to take it back, but I place my hope in the EPIC... and the beautiful camera... (The EVO's camera sucked that bad for me..because I don't want a DECENT camera with DECENT pictures and video... I want an AWESOME camera like the Iphone 4's...)... regardless. I have used the Pre for 2 days and for NOW, and I stress for NOW (because I will have it until the EPIC is released which means it and I will get pretty chummy or pretty dummy over the course of the next few days), hate is not a strong enough word. I hate the fact that it takes to freaking gestures to do what an "X" in Windows Mobile (well, lol, not completely) , or the HOME button in Android can do. Shucks, I even prefer the Iphone 3gs... And the APP store for the pre... I spent 10 minutes scrolling through it... and could find no GOOD free games... like you can for the Iphone and Android... It takes a cult to follow the pre... and sure enough, there is one out there... but I am not impressed with the camera that takes so-so picturs and does not allow for you to freaking change the resolution... I need to use the wi-fi router that I hacked, to work with my I-pod touch, but guess what... it don't and is not as straight forward as the wi-fi tether app with rooted EVO's... because the audio... is sort of low budget type audio on the 3.5mm jack... but, hey... the Sprint NAV works AWESOME with it... I love it... And the screen looks nice... but typing on the cramped keyboard, and trying to enter web links in the browser... over and over again... totally sucked... If they make a bigger pre... I might try it... but HP sometimes buys stuff to make it DIE (See the Compaq Ipaq handhelds...) which means... Pre might go bye-bye for good...

As a side note... my cousin HATES samsung phones because of the INstinct... It has sort of crushed him BAD.. and has steered him away from the EPIC... So I have his PRe that I hate and will give to my son (will buy it from my cousin) and he has an EVO...

The Sprint Nav "works"... BUT and this is a big but, it cannot be used for a long distance trip on the Pre. When I had it, and plugged into the cigarette lighter, the phone still lost power, while it was supposedly charging. Thats how much of a battery whore the phone is. When not in use, its fine, when you need to do anything, you can just watch that battery drop. Its sad that the charger only barely covers charging with medium tasks, but throw in 1 task of navigation, and you're SOL.