Okay Geek Farm
Samsung Epic 4G: First Impressions
Darryl Cobb
One of the pillars of honest judgment is to remove all preconcieved notions that you might have about the object under scrutiny. And I have to be honest, I have no worse prejudices than I do of Samsung phones. As I plopped down my hard earned cash for the Samsung Epic 4G, I swear for a brief second, I saw the Samsung Instinct. I was mortified but I was determined. I was dead set in giving this phone a fair shot. And with that, here are my first impressions of this device.
The first vibes I got were a good ones; At start up, I realized this was totally a different device and all my horrors of the Instinct went away. The screen is the most beautiful thing I’ve seen, HTC EVO 4G included. I’m going to say, side by side, I would say Samsung Super AMOLED display is equal to Apple’s Retina display. The colors vibrant and lively and I didn’t even have the brightness turned all the way up. Images jump right off the screen and you are going to want to watch videos on this screen. I watched a full episode of The Endgaget Show and I was thoroughly convinced of it’s billing. This is going to be your media phone. The Media Hub wasn’t activated yet but I assume that is coming very shortly, as it should.
As for the design choices, I honestly felt like they were choose by someone watching Miami Vice reruns. Prepare to be bombarded with hot pinks, electric blues and whites back dropped on the deepest blacks I’ve encountered on a mobile device. I will say, you will either love this or hate this; I do really enjoy it. I dare say this layout and design scheme is Metro-esque? Not as flat but just with the square shaps and loud colors. Even the application grid has each individual application sitting on a different color tile. Good thing those tiles aren’t as loud as the menues. I feel Samsung walked a fine line between gleeful 80s nostalgia and nostalgic tackiness brilliantly. Again, this is subject to personal taste. It’s funny because my set up for Twidroyd Pro has the same color scheme when I selected the inverted background.
Something that isn’t up to personal taste is just how snappy this phone is. There is very little sign of lag on this phone. The only time it lags is when you are adding the program shortcut to one of the 7 homes screens that are available to you. No sign of lag with adding widgets or playing videos or even playing video games. You need to check out the demo for Asphalt 5. It looks gorgeous and plays smooth as silk. If you grab this phone, I’d recommend not using a task manager for two reason; 1) You won’t need it. Seriously. 2) Hold the “Home” button and the native task manager shows up. Very easy. And after you download an app, it takes less than a second to install. For the EVO 4G, it was maybe 1 or 1.5 seconds. On the Epic 4G it’s almost instant.
The physical hardware is where I have a love/hate relationship with. I can’t say I’m really impressed outside of the screen. The haptic feedback feels cheap, the phone itself doesn’t feel solid or sturdy and at times I get a loose feel from it. I guess, the HTC EVO spoiled him here because that phone feels rock solid. However, I will say this, all the physical buttons fit natural. When I gripped the phone, my thumb landed on the volume, my fore-finger landed on the power button and my pinky found the camera button, effortlessly. The keyboard took some getting used to because it’s been years since I’ve used a physical keyboard. And well, some things I thought were silly were really nice additions. Things like the “smiley face” button, the “FN” key and the arrow keys all are welcome additions. And being able to input numbers without a shift key is great! My only complaint with the keyboard is the space bar is a little small for my liking.
The camera is more conducive to taking quick photos for me than the EVO. I like having a physical button to take the picture instead of using the touchscreen. There are a lot of functions there that I didn’t get a chance to play with just yet and there’s a lot to get into. I’ll probably do a separate review of just the camera functions. It almost makes having a separate camera app useless. My favorite thing to play with is the Panorama plug in. It guides you through taking 8 photos and it stitches them together and out puts a very nice picture.
Here’s some panoramas I made
Click to see full size
Click to see full size
I will say this, overall this is a great phone so far. It’ll take me a good week to really dig into this phone and give it an honest comparison to Sprint’s EVO 4G. So far, I like HTC’s build quality but I like the processor and display of Samsung’s Epic 4G. Look for a detailed break down next week and I’ll give my final verdict.
