No 2.2. So what? Being positive here.

[estebancam]

So, yes, obviously Samsung was wrong and we did not have 2.2 Froyo on our devices by the end of 2010.

HOwever, let me still take some time to note why that really doesn't matter. I am a person that purchased the HTC Evo on launch day and was a pretty happy camper coming from a Palm Pre. After the Samsung Epic was released, I felt like I had a toy in my hand that could not amount to anything other than simple processing. I was surprised that my year-old Palm Pre could run 3D games much better than my brand new "state of the art" Evo. After three months of having an Evo, and using it with 2.2, I purchased an Epic.

My Epic with 2.1 still outperforms any Evo I have ever seen or used. It makes every other Android device on this market look like last year's technology. It is the only Android lineup of phones in the market today that can handle Unreal graphics (try running Dungeon Defenders on an Evo... it doesn't work. Even TI's OMAP has trouble on my friend's Droid X). It's processing, even with 2.1 is fast and smooth with no bumps or hiccups, even without the JIT included in Froyo. The camera quality is better than any other Android phone I have tested (I have tested quite a bit). The device can still run basically every app in the market with the exception of a few google apps designed for 2.2. I could go on...

So what are we really missing? Flash player. Which in my opinion, really sucks on a mobile device. I used it for a few days on my Evo, and it was so slow and power hungry (not to mention it is designed for a mouse) that I rarely used it. I don't miss 2.2 one bit with this device. It is simply the best device on the market for the Android OS. I can wait for 2.2. I honestly don't think it will make a big enough difference for me to change the opinion of my device.

So I don't complain, and I frankly don't care that I am stuck with 2.1. It works. And in my opinion it works better and is more powerful than any other Android device on the market.

 

[coolqf]

ACS 1.02 with Android OS 2.1 rocks.
I always just ask myself, today, with knowing what I know, would I purchase the EVO or the EPIC. The answer is still the EPIC until February. The hardware is just fantastic and I love the keyboard. Now, when the HTC Knight comes out, it might be another story.... Until then, the EPIC is still the winner.
Froyo... I just want it for Skype so that I can talk with my g/f while she's out of the country.

 

[Neptune5k]

I'm looking forward to an official Froyo update just so we can start seeing some truly custom new ROMs. In the mean time, however, some of the DK28 ROMs are getting better and better by the week. Now that I'm running EXT4 with Midnight, the wait isn't too bad. My point is if people really want Froyo, there are some really solid options out there right now and it will only get better after the official release.

 

[Paul627g]

I'm looking forward to an official Froyo update just so we can start seeing some truly custom new ROMs. In the mean time, however, some of the DK28 ROMs are getting better and better by the week. Now that I'm running EXT4 with Midnight, the wait isn't too bad. My point is if people really want Froyo, there are some really solid options out there right now and it will only get better after the official release.

+1 on that

 

[WrlsFanatic]

Sorry, I got here from Twitter and I have to bite:

1) Your EVO didn't play games faster than your Pre? I assume, then, that your Pre was overclocked, which means it ran hot and sucked the battery dry while trying to play games. I'll take even speed with 20 times the battery life on my EVO any day over that. Not to mention that the overall sluggishness of even an overclocked Pre meant that responsiveness in the game was poor, and then add the fact that you had to play it on a tiny screen.

2) The fact that the Epic doesn't even have 2.2 yet isn't a big a deal for the end users because of speed or battery life or even features, I'll give you that. It's a big deal because of the REASON Samsung hasn't upgraded the Epic yet. Samsung's APIs are so horribly developed on that phone in the first place that it's crushing them to try and upgrade to 2.2 (this comes directly from a Sprint source, which is why they can't get Froyo past Sprint in the first place). They basically wrote them to just barely function properly, while they should have written them PROPERLY. That's especially pathetic for a device that was delayed in launching in the first place several times because of lack of hardware availability. They had time to fix the software, but why would then when it's working... sort of...

3) Another reason the delay sucks is what is mentioned above: ROMs. Sure, you can put 2.2 on yourself, but having an EVO - the phone with the most custom ROMs available right now - I can tell you that even the best AOSP ROM developers can't get their ROMs to match the stability of a Sense ROM because they simply don't have the time and resources and access that HTC's own developers do. Samsung's in-house development team might be sloppy and pathetic, but they have those same resources and you ultimately will always get more stable ROMs based off of their stock kernels than you will from any custom developer out there.

When I first handled an Epic, I was truly stunned at the hardware. I even spent three hours in a training course presented by Samsung reps to learn the great features of the phone, and I thought it was about as perfect as a phone could get. Then the phone launched and people really got to use them, and all the errors started popping up. Device won't sleep because of the terrible design of their DRM manager software. GPS issues with all of their Galaxy S devices (another area their cheap GPS chips and poor software combined to create utter failure). Haptic feedback lag, especially on low-end Samsung devices. Sure, yours might work fine, but that doesn't counter the fact that they're poorly programmed devices.

The first and last Samsung device I would ever purchase is a Nexus S. You get the great Samsung hardware and keep Samsung's god-awful developers away from the software.

 

[reverepats]

i just came from BB, and these are the kinda threads that make me nervous about just buying my EVO. its sort of hard to resist reading them. but they give good insite, but still....its makes me second guess the EVo. Not a big fan of full qweerty slide outs, but the display looks great. not a big fan of Samsung, but dont know too much about HTC either. I guess il;l see what happens before my 30 days are up. but up till now the EVO its ownderful

 

[igobytony]

i just came from BB, and these are the kinda threads that make me nervous about just buying my EVO. its sort of hard to resist reading them. but they give good insite, but still....its makes me second guess the EVo. Not a big fan of full qweerty slide outs, but the display looks great. not a big fan of Samsung, but dont know too much about HTC either. I guess il;l see what happens before my 30 days are up. but up till now the EVO its ownderful

The only way the EVO would be any sort of a letdown, is if you were coming from some amazing unreleased device from the future, and you just said you weren't.

Just my two cents.

Sent from my PC36100 using Tapatalk

 

[chad4359]

Sorry, I got here from Twitter and I have to bite:

1) Your EVO didn't play games faster than your Pre? I assume, then, that your Pre was overclocked, which means it ran hot and sucked the battery dry while trying to play games. I'll take even speed with 20 times the battery life on my EVO any day over that. Not to mention that the overall sluggishness of even an overclocked Pre meant that responsiveness in the game was poor, and then add the fact that you had to play it on a tiny screen.

20 times the battery life, you are a funny dude. I think .75 times the battery life is a bit closer to reality.

 

[estebancam]

Sorry, I got here from Twitter and I have to bite:

1) Your EVO didn't play games faster than your Pre? I assume, then, that your Pre was overclocked, which means it ran hot and sucked the battery dry while trying to play games. I'll take even speed with 20 times the battery life on my EVO any day over that. Not to mention that the overall sluggishness of even an overclocked Pre meant that responsiveness in the game was poor, and then add the fact that you had to play it on a tiny screen.

2) The fact that the Epic doesn't even have 2.2 yet isn't a big a deal for the end users because of speed or battery life or even features, I'll give you that. It's a big deal because of the REASON Samsung hasn't upgraded the Epic yet. Samsung's APIs are so horribly developed on that phone in the first place that it's crushing them to try and upgrade to 2.2 (this comes directly from a Sprint source, which is why they can't get Froyo past Sprint in the first place). They basically wrote them to just barely function properly, while they should have written them PROPERLY. That's especially pathetic for a device that was delayed in launching in the first place several times because of lack of hardware availability. They had time to fix the software, but why would then when it's working... sort of...

3) Another reason the delay sucks is what is mentioned above: ROMs. Sure, you can put 2.2 on yourself, but having an EVO - the phone with the most custom ROMs available right now - I can tell you that even the best AOSP ROM developers can't get their ROMs to match the stability of a Sense ROM because they simply don't have the time and resources and access that HTC's own developers do. Samsung's in-house development team might be sloppy and pathetic, but they have those same resources and you ultimately will always get more stable ROMs based off of their stock kernels than you will from any custom developer out there.

When I first handled an Epic, I was truly stunned at the hardware. I even spent three hours in a training course presented by Samsung reps to learn the great features of the phone, and I thought it was about as perfect as a phone could get. Then the phone launched and people really got to use them, and all the errors started popping up. Device won't sleep because of the terrible design of their DRM manager software. GPS issues with all of their Galaxy S devices (another area their cheap GPS chips and poor software combined to create utter failure). Haptic feedback lag, especially on low-end Samsung devices. Sure, yours might work fine, but that doesn't counter the fact that they're poorly programmed devices.

The first and last Samsung device I would ever purchase is a Nexus S. You get the great Samsung hardware and keep Samsung's god-awful developers away from the software.

Look, you have an Evo and an Evo may be better for you than it is for me. I just pointed out the facts in my post.

1) My pre was not overclocked. The Pre includes a TI OMAP processor which includes a much better graphics processor than Qualcomm's Adreno 200. The Adreno 200, in fact, is what is found in the Palm Pixi along with a Qualcomm processor clocked at 600Mhz, which is 100Mhz faster than the Pre. However, the Pre far outperforms the Pixi is every way, shape and form. If that is not a pointer in how underpowered Qualcomm processors are, then I don't know what is. My Pre (which I still own, unactivated) is able to play 3D games much, much better than any HTC Evo due to the graphics card than can actually handle decent graphics. Try playing the last few levels of NOVA on your Evo and see how bad it lags. Almost unplayable.

2) I am not very educated in the manner in which Samsung writes their API's, however, I will tell you that my device works just fine. Better (slightly) than the Evo I had for three months.

3) I don't root. Most people don't root. I think Android has plenty of capabilities with customization of the software without rooting. I haven't been able to find a reason to root just yet, although my phone is fully themes using my own methods, desktop visualizer, and third party icons.

Most samsung Epics are problem free. Mine works just fine, and I am sure a majority of Epic owners will agree. HTC devices have their issues as well, but I won't really point them out here. 2 out of three of the reasons you mention above have to do with rooting and programming, which most users don't care about. The first thing you mentioned about graphics is something you cannot debate with because it is simply a fact. The TI OMAP can and will outperform any Qualcomm processor in terms of graphics, and arguably, everything else.

 

[estebancam]

i just came from BB, and these are the kinda threads that make me nervous about just buying my EVO. its sort of hard to resist reading them. but they give good insite, but still....its makes me second guess the EVo. Not a big fan of full qweerty slide outs, but the display looks great. not a big fan of Samsung, but dont know too much about HTC either. I guess il;l see what happens before my 30 days are up. but up till now the EVO its ownderful

Well, don't get me wrong. I liked the Evo and I think it has better software than my Epic. It is a very good device. The issue I have with it is that is uses a Qualcomm processor. Until I actually owned an Evo, I did not understand how important processors were and GPU's and stuff like that. Getting the EVo made me do some research on the subject because I could not understand why my Pre would be able to run 3D games smoothly and load pictures and video so rapidly, but my Brand new Evo did not. I learned a lot.

If you are not going to use your Evo for intense 3D gaming and a lot of video processing, I would just stick with it. I enjoyed the phone, overall. I especially miss that kick stand and HTC Sense, which rocks.

However, I will say that the Epic is much more powerful, has a better camera (much better. It doesn't compare I don't think), obviously a much better screen, and other things that just make it that much more enjoyable to use.

 

[gitit20]

Man you hit the nail right on the head and drove it in... I feel the same way came from a palm pre Stile love it and tried an evo and hated that thing it was chunky and slow i did not like it i happened to get an Epic from a friend who was deployed it was new in the box i used it and loved it its been a dang good phone...

 

[Windfrenzy]

Thanks. Appreciate your perspective as someone familiar with 2.2, Epic, and Evo. Yeah it's still a great phone, but still frustrating to people who buy a top of the line phone, with a $10/mo premium on the plan, and see it go two OS revisions behind. When I was shopping, Evos were not to be found. Some were warning that Samsung does not support their phones well. I guess they were right.
Why I want Froyo:
-flash
-voice commands to Vlingo through my bluetooth car kit
-skype
-apps to SD
-audio out of my desktop dock

 

[trucker65]

I upgraded my Galaxy S to 2.2 early in December. I noticed a number of things after the process finished. Firstly, all the Vodafone 360 crap was gone = good. I now had Flash = good. Voice to text input = good.
The other thing that I noticed straight away was that my Galaxy S was now freezing up and crashing very reqularly which it never did under 2.1 = very very bad.

If you can't get 2.2 for your Android then don't be sad. I wish I could roll back and have a phone that was reliable. If I wanted a handset that crashes all the time, I would have kept my old o2 XDA miniS

 

[Skunkape60]

I upgraded my Galaxy S to 2.2 early in December. I noticed a number of things after the process finished. Firstly, all the Vodafone 360 crap was gone = good. I now had Flash = good. Voice to text input = good.
The other thing that I noticed straight away was that my Galaxy S was now freezing up and crashing very reqularly which it never did under 2.1 = very very bad.

If you can't get 2.2 for your Android then don't be sad. I wish I could roll back and have a phone that was reliable. If I wanted a handset that crashes all the time, I would have kept my old o2 XDA miniS

That's kind of what I was hoping 2.2 would fix. My stock out of the box Epic crashes 3 or 4 times a day and I was hoping that 2.2 would fix it. The news you just gave me is discouraging....

 

[bipoler#AC]

I hate this phone and the whole "support" I wish I woulda bought an htc and just dealt with no physical keyboard. Idk I feel like the greatest thing they did was the keyboard

Sent from my SPH-D700 using Tapatalk

 

[Smitty_82]

There is always going to be something "better" on the market. If someone has a device they are satisfied with then good. I went from a BB Storm to a DX cause I the BB wasn't doing what I wanted it to do. My biggest gripe was the internal app storage, so I got a device that I wouldn't have to worry about that. Not that I wouldn't always like to have the "latest and greatest", but if it doesn't work well for what the user wants it for then there will always be frustrations.

 

[emagdnimohno]

That's kind of what I was hoping 2.2 would fix. My stock out of the box Epic crashes 3 or 4 times a day and I was hoping that 2.2 would fix it. The news you just gave me is discouraging....

I'm wondering what your doing wrong with Your epic.. I've never heard of that happening. I love this phone. Better than do many phones out there.

 

[Rockblast]

Some good arguments here. I too can wait patiently for Froyo, as there are a large number of customizations I can already do without having to root. Alternate launchers (I've used Launcher Pro, Zeam, ADW - all great) custom theming and various widgets have allowed me to make the EPIC truly epic to my personal tastes.

It IS discouraging though to see other devices getting upgraded all around you. Already talks of Honeycomb and we're still on the letter "E"? That definitely could make Epic owners feel like they got the short end of the stick here.

But, we have no control over when it gets released or how well/quickly they get their crap together. So, be happy with what's you got! It works, and at least appears to work well on the surface.

 

[Paul627g]

Honestly now that I'm on DK28 Froyo since it the "unofficial" leak was released back in beginning of December I couldn't be happier. Of course I am also rooted running various custom roms and now I'm running midNIGHT v2.4 EXT4 Dual which supports the new EXT4 filesystem that the Nexus S is sporting. The new EXT4 has really helped unlock the power and speed of the Epic.

As far as the stock 2.1 Eclair, I have had to Odin back to it a few times to reset my phone to reload different roms and every time I go back for those brief few minutes I say to myself I'm glad these days are over.

Not that Eclair 2.1 is bad but after tasting the new tweaks and features in Froyo and even more fun with custom roms I could never return.

FC's (forced closings) were a few here and there on Eclair. Hey, anything if you push it hard enough or try to do things faster than it can handle at times will freak out. FC's on Froyo I don't think are any worse than they were on Eclair, if anything a lot less.

I really hope for those who are waiting for the official release of Froyo that it comes soon for them. For those of us that have jumped ahead and installed the leaked version and have rooted/custom roms we are enjoying life.

I really hope Samsung either by way of update or by giving us Gingerbread hands out the new EXT4 file system to all the Galaxy S owners because it really is impressive what it has done to the phone. The lag when switching apps and multitasking is gone and everything is running noticeably faster.

My opinion the Epic is here to stay for a good while and has a lot of potential still to be unlocked. Sammy did a good job with the device, they just need to step up the upgrade support and they will have a winning product.

 

[Skunkape60]

I'm wondering what your doing wrong with Your epic.. I've never heard of that happening. I love this phone. Better than do many phones out there.

Doing wrong? I have no apps on my phone that messes with config code such as startup editors, memory managers, app killers. When the reboots and lockup happen, I am normally not running any programs. My job restricts the use of personal phones to breaks and lunch. Almost every break and lunch, I pick up my phone and find it locked up so bad a battery pull is required (just learned the 3 button soft reset).

Took it to sprint where they blamed it on cookies and internet history which they cleared. Since then I have done a factory reset and cleared all programs from the phone. I have not installed a single program and have not used it for anything but email, texting and phone calls. It still requires at least 3 or 4 resets a day.

This was the thing I was hoping Froyo fixed and the reason your news of froyo being unstable is disheartening.