Honestly don't hink it's Sammy's doing on this one....think it's Sprints addons and stuff. The base 4.0 is rock solid on this phone from what I hear. It's Sprint's version thats messed.
No its sammies fault. The modem is crap which is all samsung. The kernel drops wifi which is also samsung. Bluetooth wont pair which also samsung. Sprint only added bloatware and did basic testing. If you want to blame anyone point the blame at samsung for there piss poor testing and then point the finger at sprint for not doing carrier testing. It was a epic fail on both sides.
In the meantime, for those that are willing to flash software to your phone, roll back to Gingerbread or flash an AOSP ICS ROM like Cyanogenmod 9 or AOKP. AOSP ROMs will change your world, and show you how ICS software is supposed to be written.
I am VERY tempted to try it, but am afraid of bricking my phone. Never done anything like that before and not certain if I could. :'( (plus I cannot afford a replacement if it bricks) :-$
I understand. It's not for everyone. Hopefully they get a fix out sooner rather than later. The Epic 4G Touch is actually on its way to Boost Mobile, and new ICS software builds are leaking for the phone on that network (I actually have the Boost version of the E4GT modem on my phone as I type this). It's possible that they are working on a fix for some of the known issues as part of that process that can be applied as another software update for Sprint customers.
I just rolled back to el29 gingerbread. No more issues! Installed all my stuff and I am a happy camper. Phone is super smooth. Screw that ICS..for now!
Well, I personally find it easy, but I have many years experience working with computers, which helped a lot when it came to learning how to root, flash and modify Android phones. I'm no software programmer, and I've barely ever used Linux on a PC (which Android is based on), but many principals are universal, and it helps to have a good foundation of working with files and a computer.
A good first venture into AOSP would be with Cyanogenmod 9. It's still in the alpha stages, and it's not yet "officially" supported by Cyanogenmod, but I've been running the latest available version for awhile now and it's very stable with very few bugs. Less bugs than the official Samsung ICS release from my point of view.
To get familiar with the process, I highly suggest checking out qbking77's YouTube channel and watch his Epic 4G Touch videos on rooting and flashing.
Here's an example of his video on installing CM9: How to Install the CyanogenMod 9 Alpha ICS Rom on the Samsung Epic 4G Touch - YouTube
This video is a bit old now, and some of it doesn't apply anymore, but the main principals are there. You can also watch some of his other videos, such as how to root ICS FF18 that displays how to use sfhub's Odin One-Click package to root the stock ICS system.
Here is the link to the CM9 Alpha release at XDA that you can read up on if you care to: [ROM] CyanogenMod 9 alpha6: Android 4.0.4 for Samsung Epic 4G Touch - xda-developers