Epic 4G Forum Members Initial Thoughts & Reviews

[crinsd]

I had a Palm Pre, then EVO now switched to Epic 4G. Love it, though I had a problem connecting the USB drive to my Windows 7 laptop. Samsung talked me through some settings. Great support. Here is the number if anyone needs it 888-987-4357. (Sprint didn't have a clue on how to fix the problem.)

 

[alexnaoumi]

my brother got his today and im impressed, but i swear if he says "my phone is better than ur gay hero" one more time, that Epic will become Epically DESTROYED!

(funny little story) the guy at the sprint store opened the door for me and my bro and asked "how is ur day?" and my bro was like "good" and i was like "my day is EPIC!" lol

 

[MrNoDay5Off]

everything is fine here only issue im having is with getting my facebook contacts to sync up, anyone else having this problem?

 

[tpony]

My wife just got this phone today and I am very impressed. the whole UI of the phone is awesome. The only one issue I have is the back button on the screen is very hard to use. I have to press it multiple times and sometimes pretty hard. Has anyone else had this problem? I was thinking it might specific to her phone and that we might need to exchange it.

 

[drfrank]

GPS took 60 seconds to lock to six satelites in Google Maps.

The screen is very bright, but the pixel structure is very obvious: Everything looks dithered. All text on the device is noticeably aliased, as a result.

Coming from a G1, the responsiveness is thrilling. Switching between apps is instantaneous.

Email doesn't work with Exchange if your company has timeout and pin lock policies on the Exchange server; you'll still need Touchdown.

Touchwiz is utterly unremarkable, either way.

If I turn on the screen with my right thumb, to reach the menu button I need to either strain uncomfortably with my right thumb, shuffle my right hand down, or use my other hand. My hands are average in size.

Have had no problems finding the sensitive zones for the capacitave buttons.

 

[icemanjs4]

If I turn on the screen with my right thumb, to reach the menu button I need to either strain uncomfortably with my right thumb, shuffle my right hand down, or use my other hand. My hands are average in size.

Have had no problems finding the sensitive zones for the capacitave buttons.

1. I totally agree - capacitave buttons work perfectly.
2. I find that when I try to hit the power button with my thumb, the slider opens a little. Kind of disconcerting, but I'm sure I'll get used to it...

 

[chsinn]

My wife just got this phone today and I am very impressed. the whole UI of the phone is awesome. The only one issue I have is the back button on the screen is very hard to use. I have to press it multiple times and sometimes pretty hard. Has anyone else had this problem? I was thinking it might specific to her phone and that we might need to exchange it.

I have the same problem with the back button. Frequently I have to press it multiple times before it works, although I seem to be getting better at it. I am considering returning but I was at the store for 1.5 hours today getting mine and I doubt they'll have another one for me anytime soon. The first one they gave they turned me had only half of the screen working...

I am new to the droid world, but so far pretty good. I really like the swype. I actually really could care less about the physical keyboard.

Another issue I am having is that I have two gmail accounts and have different calendars on both. For some reason, I can't get one of my gmail calendars to sync up. One says that email, contacts and calendar are syncing, while the other says that email, contacts and picasa are syncing. I see no option that would seem I to suggest that I can "select" a calendar to sync. Anyone have ideas?

 

[dsdxp]

Question about the back cover: what does it feel like? does it have that soft coating on it (like the pre or evo), or is it standard plastic? hoping it doesnt have the soft coating on it because that always soaks up hand grease over time and becomes a mess.

 

[verks]

Question about the back cover: what does it feel like? does it have that soft coating on it (like the pre or evo), or is it standard plastic? hoping it doesnt have the soft coating on it because that always soaks up hand grease over time and becomes a mess.

It's not really plastic and not really soft coating. Somewhere in between.

 

[dsdxp]

It's not really plastic and not really soft coating. Somewhere in between.

Does it appear to show smudges from your hand or able to "soak" up grease or anything from what you can tell?

 

[PhxBlue]

I find that when I try to hit the power button with my thumb, the slider opens a little. Kind of disconcerting, but I'm sure I'll get used to it...

Thats exactly whats bothering me. Fortunately tho thats the only thing.

 

[raulnsocal]

I Like it a lot. I walked in at 11:45 and walked out by 12:30 they ported my verizon number which had been a t mobile number and I was set.
bought the soft shell, screen protector and the spare battery and charger.

My co workers who have droids drooled over my keyboard, and the Evo owners said my epic was nice. the speed that it does the net is impressive.

Also I had not realized that the contract buy out went down every month after a certian period. thats seems like the way it should be.

 

[robhigginsiii]

I got an Epic 4G today from Radioshack. Great job from them! However i have crashed the OS in 12 hours. I have been tinkering with the phone all day. Using it in Tampa, FL I get 4G access and the phone did well. Then a few apps started force killing because they were not responding. I didn't give it much though, until I was lying in bed moving some icons around on the home screens. I accidentally opened my browser, which i set to open the home page to google.com, and i pressed the back button with no response. i pressed the home button with no response, then the screen went black and all four buttons on the bottom lit up, stayed lit, and the phone would beep every 10-15 seconds. I tried a hard reset, i tried powering off and on, I even called sprint and explained the story and he said "take it back. We can't even do a remote reset if your screen is not showing an image." i explained upon the hard reset the screen showed the samsungmobile.com logo and the sprint 4g deal and the galaxy s logo then went black. Anyone else see this or am I the lucky guy with the lemon?

 

[drfrank]

Media dock

When the phone is inserted into the media dock the phone rests on the volume down button. The slightest pressure will turn the volume to 0.

 

[Traviz]

Needs a little more cowbell

Love the phone so far, I'm kinda bummed because one of the features I was really excited about is disabled by sprint, the video out through the top headphone jack.

Apparently Sprint disabled it so as to not interfere with Sprint TV's janky rules.

I was really hoping to use this phone with a pico projector for an on the spot presentation tool.

Besides this initial let down, the Epic 4g rocks pretty hard. Ditto to all the comments I've read from happy owners, 4g speed, awesome keyboard, fast GPU, incredibly vibrant screen.

One minor thing, I've tried a few of the current led torch apps, there's nothing out there that works on the Epic yet.

 

[aaron1981]

Visited a Sprint store today and here are my impressions on the Epic:

Pros:
- Love the physical keyboard, I really don't think I've ever seen a better one
- Swype keyboard takes some getting used to but I think it would be really cool
- Very responsive and snappy
- Video (YouTube HQ) and camera quality seemed quite good

Cons:
- The capacitive buttons went dark a couple times while I was using the phone, I heard this can be customized by setting the physical keyboard backlight timer
- I was loading in landscape mode and phone went to standby, when I tried hitting power it opened the keyboard a little. Wish the slider was a little firmer
- Browser was a little sluggish, I'm not sure if this was a data reception issue in my Sprint store

I'm neutral about Touchwiz and I always wish I could try writing emails and sending texts when I check these things out in stores. Overall I really like it and plan to keep an eye on this phone as I've been anxiously awaiting it for months!

 

[SntaCruz83]

My wife just got this phone today and I am very impressed. the whole UI of the phone is awesome. The only one issue I have is the back button on the screen is very hard to use. I have to press it multiple times and sometimes pretty hard. Has anyone else had this problem? I was thinking it might specific to her phone and that we might need to exchange it.

Glad you mentioned the back button thing... I thought maybe mine was a defective unit, but it seems like the four main keys (Home, Menu, Back, Search) are not as responsive on the Epic as they are on the Evo. I own both devices and just started using the Epic this morning and this single thing is driving me a little nuts.

I was hoping for a better wi-fi experience because of how poorly the Evo's reception was, but they seem to be on the exact same level.

Speakerphone on the Epic is disappointing. The audio received is fine and plenty loud, but the mic sensitivity is not nearly as good as on the Evo. I used the Evo speakerphone on a daily basis while driving and at home, and I can tell you for a fact that I'm having to talk much louder and/or bring the phone up to my face for the other people to hear me well.

Finally, the camera software is nicer on the Evo since it has auto-rotate (granted, that was a recent fix) and it autofocuses without having to touch the screen. This isn't the case for the Epic. Also, to get the full 5MP pics out of the Epic you have to shoot in what appears to be 4:3 ratio...and only get full wide screen shots that take up your phone's whole screen at 4 MP. Not that I care...it's a cameraphone.

The screen does look lovely, but I'm struggling to find a good screen protector that doesn't cause a rainbow effect. I didn't have this issue with the EVO, but this isn't the mfr's fault.

Epic's keyboard is great.

I didn't think there would be a big difference in web surfing or movie watching going from 4.3 inches to 4.0 inches...but i was surprised...it may actually take me some time to get used to the smaller screen. And for whatever reason, some of my mp4 video files don't have thumbnails while other ones do. Odd...

I am having issues with qik software...my face looks stretched in video chat and no audio. Might reinstall and give it another go.

 

[GNemes]

I'm SOOO disappointed! It's been a long day of not getting things to work. My hubby has an EVO that he loves, but I really wanted a keyboard so waited for the Epic. I was expecting some great things.

First -- this is a working phone for me. I don't use it to play games, but I need a solid smart phone.

So here's the thing. My desktop PC runs Windows 7 64-bit. I use PC Outlook 2007 and rely rely rely on true sync between my phone's calendar and contacts and my outlook calendar and contacts. I expected some sort of something that would work to do this for me.

I tried to play with the Google cloud-type sync. but Google's sync won't work with a 64-bit 2007. Crap.

So then I tried to work with CompanionLink. It crashes repeatedly. So much so that I wasn't able to get a complete sync. I'm dead in the water without something working. Samsung's Kias won't work with the Epic, but it sure looks pretty on my PC desktop!

So then I figured, what the heck, I'd wait for CompanionLink tech support to give me some help.

And tried to pair my Jawbone JB2 with the phone. It flatly won't pair. The Epic can't find it. Another 2 hours wasted messing around with why nots?

All in all, I'm very very disappointed. It looks pretty. The keyboard is great. The screen is great. The sound is, well, okay but screech'y and a bit fuzzy through the phone itself.

I've not been able to drag any of the preinstalled apps to the trash -- I have absolutely no need for Nascar or most of the preinstalled stuff. I want them off the main apps screen so that the stuff I do use is handy. ... So I tried dragging Nascar to the trash bin. Guess what? It won't go away. Neither with Sprint football. Hold it down and drag it to the trash. ... but it's still there.

The little buttons on the bottom go totally dark and when you fumble around trying to get them to light up so you can see what to do next, you press the wrong button by mistake.

And the stupid thing keeps turning itself off even though I adjusted the settings so that it would stay on for at one minute. Within 3 seconds of lifting one's finger, the phone goes black.

Unless I can come up with some real solutions tomorrow -- I've wasted most of a day on this thing already -- back it goes to Sprint and I'll need to wait for an Evo I guess.

BTW, I'm coming from a Blackberry Tour, which wasn't too great either ... and before that a Palm Treo. I really really missed a touchscreen and was really jazzed about the Epic.

rats.

 

[bjb_nyj101]

My immediate first impression: It looks better in person that it does in pictures online. I thought it looked pretty bland when I first saw it online, but in person, it's not bad. It definitely looks better than the Samsung Captivate on AT&T, but I still think that the Vibrant looks the best. Once I picked it up, I was surprised by how light it was. Initially, I was disappointed; I thought for a split-second that it was a dummy model that I was holding. It was noticeably lighter than the Evo. I couldn't, however, decide if this was good or bad. The lack of heft puts the Epic 4G dangerously close to being perceived as "cheap and plastic-y". The phone (as well as the other Galaxy S phones) just didn't feel that solid to me. Especially compared to phones that have some noticeable heft to them, like the Evo and Nexus One. I feel that if it were dropped from waist-high, it would shatter into a million pieces or something.

The lack of heft aside, the phone feels really good in the hand. It's rounded corners fell better than the Evo. But because of the keyboard, the phone is pretty thick. I noticed that trying to use the phone with one hand can be difficult sometimes (and I have fairly large hands), especially when trying to reach things at the top of the screen (like the notification bar).

The screen: I have mixed feelings about Samsung's Super AMOLED screen. When I turned on the screen for the first time, one word popped in my head: OVERRATED (the same word that came to me when seeing the iPhone 4's "retina display" for the first time). I honestly don't see the hype. Yes, if you're looking at a picture / movie, the colors look amazing. But looking at text, on the other hand, is a different story. The main problem that I had with the SAMOLED screen is the "screen door effect". You can see the individual pixels! What's worse, you can see them without even looking hard. They are just there, in your face. I have perfect vision, and I have to put my Evo pretty close to my face in order to make out individual pixels. On the Epic, you can see them everywhere. It's really bad when looking at text on a white background (like on almost every website). You can see the white lines in-between the black of the letters. It's like looking at a mini chess board. Here's a picture so you can get an idea for yourself
http://www.mobilecrunch.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/grid.jpg

I would rather take a regular AMOLED, TFT LCD, or Retina display any day of SAMOLED

Ahhh, the keyboard. This is the ONLY reason I even considered swapping the Evo for an Epic. In short: it's really good. It's one of the best landscape keyboards I've ever used. The keys are really clicky, and are a nice size. My only complaint is that I wish they were domed more. Because they are flat, my fingers tended to slide over to adjacent keys. I'm sure with time I would be really fast & accurate on it. The only landscape keyboard that's better than this one is the one on the Touch Pro 2. That this is amazing.

I'm not gonna talk too much about the software, since we all know what Android is about. What I will say is that TouchWiz isn't that bad. It's actually better than the skin Motorola has put on the Droid2 and DroidX. It's not as good as Sense UI, but it's definitely better than stock Android. Overall, everything I did on the phone was super fast. Scrolling was smooth, and it didn't lag at all. No complaints.

Minor annoyances: -There is a dedicated smiley button on the keyboard? wtf. It would be much more useful it they put the @ symbol there, instead of it. -For some reason, Samsung likes putting the lock/power button on the right side of the phone. Not a big deal on the other Galaxy S phones, but every time I would lock/unlock the phone, the keyboard would move/open a little.

Final thoughts: It's a really good phone. If I had the choice today to either get a free Epic or a free Evo, I'm about 65% sure I'd take the Evo. If I was a new Sprint customer, there is almost no way to justify taking this phone over the Evo, especially seeing as how it's $50 more? Unless, of course, you abso-freakin-lutely need a physical keyboard.

 

[Windfrenzy]

Loving it so far except the capacitive buttons at the bottom of the screen are driving me nuts. I press press press then it goes. I haven't found the right touch yet. Plus, they disappear. I'm sure I'll get used to where they are, but not the best for a newbie.