Samsung Epic 4G Android
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Samsung Epic 4G Android Phone (Sprint)
Swype set the world record for text messaging speed. Swype only makes the phone that much sweeter. It comes as the default on-screen keyboard. I chose this as my next android phone because the idea of only being able to clumsily input text on an on-screen keyboard like on all the other new Android device scared me. I am a QWERTY kind of guy.
However, Swype has an extremely accurate algorithm. I find myself responding to text messages in 2 seconds as opposed to 15! It even adds emails and names from your contacts to its dictionary so that you can swype your complicated email! Whenever I know the words I am going to type are in the dictionary, I just Swype it. Its amazingly fast and almost never fails! If I need to type a password which is full of symbols, I pull out the QWERTY. Its godlike.
It really is the phone for the power-user. I spend all day using this phone. (I can't help it; its fast, responsive, intuitive, and beautiful.) I am astounded each time I check the battery, sure that it must be approaching the end of its life, and each time I am relieved to know that I can continue multitasking away.
The screen is simply breathtaking. The phone comes with several vivid backgrounds to show off the beautiful display. The technology is baffling. You can even use the back of your fingernail on the touchscreen just as easily as you can with your finger. That is how close the capacitor is to the screen. It is also why this phone is also incredibly light. I still can't help but appreciate how vivid the colors appear on the screen. I put the screen on the lowest brightness setting, and the vividness of the colors give the illusion that the screen really isn't dim at all -- which means you can increase your battery life without decreasing your experience.
It truly is epic: The Android ROM that comes on the phone is modified. Generally I like vanilla Android. And yet everything they changed is an improvement! When you hold down the home button, you not only get your recently opened applications, but a button right there for a Task Manager! You can end all applications as fast and as easily as you can reopen them, and multi-task. Its amazingly intuitive. That's not all, my dear power users, for they even included a file manager right out of the box. I was about to go get the essentials from the Android Market and was shocked to see it included. It really shows how much thought was put into making this phone the perfect match for any tech-savvy Android user.
They also changed the skin, and the application drawer. I personally didn't like the application drawer at all, coming from vanilla Android. It was cartoonish and didn't seem to fit. However, it is easy to change it back to the vanilla Android app drawer, and I recommend that every EPIC 4G owner at least try out the original app drawer -- Not only does it look better, but its slides in and out 3x times faster than the TouchWiz app drawer.
Here is how to change to the default app drawer:
1. Press Menu (from home screen) -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications.
2. Press Menu -> Filter -> All
3. Scroll down and find "TwLauncher", and click on it. (Trust me its there)
4. Click "Clear Defaults" on the TwLauncher detail page.
5. Press the HOME touchkey on the phone. (It'll ask you if you want to use TouchWiz, or the default one. We want default)
6. Check "Set as default" if you don't want to be asked each time you press home AND
7. Select "Home" (the first choice)
Now you will have the default Android app drawer, which is much faster. IMHO it looks much better too. The rest of the skin looks great. They changed the dull flat grey with a vibrant blue. They changed the indeterminate progress bars to look like rays of the sun instead of a spinning wheel. Everything about the phone is beautiful.
All in all I feel like this phone is a masterpiece of intuitive design. The excellent Swype algorithm as well as the qwerty keyboard, and the layout of all the buttons on the phone seem to have been carefully tinkered with to perfection. Everything about both the hardware design, and the software additions seem to have been designed by engineers who were making a phone that they themselves wanted to use. It feels like a labor of love, and I can sense it each and every time I use the device.
Post Review:
I originally received an EPIC 4G from Best Buy on release day, and my friend got his from Sprint. I told him my battery life was terrible. He said his lasted the whole day. I was wondering what kind of phone he must have had before to say that he was getting good battery life, because my phone was dying in around 4 hours! When we met up at work, I noticed his phone was a lot cooler than mine! Mine was blazing hot. We checked the battery statistics on both of our phones and they seemed to be identical. We switched out our batteries. When I put his battery in my phone, for about 2 minutes, and he put it back in his phone, his phone reported that the battery had depleted 15% !!! That means my phone was sucking the life out of his battery as well as my own, so we deduced the problem must be with my phone, because we kept all other variables the same. That same day I went and traded it in for another one, and lo and behold, my battery in the new device lasted me the whole day.
It seems that a small number of these are defective. If you are pretty sure your device is to blame, change it for another one!
Samsung Epic 4G Android Phone (Sprint)
Swype set the world record for text messaging speed. Swype only makes the phone that much sweeter. It comes as the default on-screen keyboard. I chose this as my next android phone because the idea of only being able to clumsily input text on an on-screen keyboard like on all the other new Android device scared me. I am a QWERTY kind of guy.
However, Swype has an extremely accurate algorithm. I find myself responding to text messages in 2 seconds as opposed to 15! It even adds emails and names from your contacts to its dictionary so that you can swype your complicated email! Whenever I know the words I am going to type are in the dictionary, I just Swype it. Its amazingly fast and almost never fails! If I need to type a password which is full of symbols, I pull out the QWERTY. Its godlike.
It really is the phone for the power-user. I spend all day using this phone. (I can't help it; its fast, responsive, intuitive, and beautiful.) I am astounded each time I check the battery, sure that it must be approaching the end of its life, and each time I am relieved to know that I can continue multitasking away.
The screen is simply breathtaking. The phone comes with several vivid backgrounds to show off the beautiful display. The technology is baffling. You can even use the back of your fingernail on the touchscreen just as easily as you can with your finger. That is how close the capacitor is to the screen. It is also why this phone is also incredibly light. I still can't help but appreciate how vivid the colors appear on the screen. I put the screen on the lowest brightness setting, and the vividness of the colors give the illusion that the screen really isn't dim at all -- which means you can increase your battery life without decreasing your experience.
It truly is epic: The Android ROM that comes on the phone is modified. Generally I like vanilla Android. And yet everything they changed is an improvement! When you hold down the home button, you not only get your recently opened applications, but a button right there for a Task Manager! You can end all applications as fast and as easily as you can reopen them, and multi-task. Its amazingly intuitive. That's not all, my dear power users, for they even included a file manager right out of the box. I was about to go get the essentials from the Android Market and was shocked to see it included. It really shows how much thought was put into making this phone the perfect match for any tech-savvy Android user.
They also changed the skin, and the application drawer. I personally didn't like the application drawer at all, coming from vanilla Android. It was cartoonish and didn't seem to fit. However, it is easy to change it back to the vanilla Android app drawer, and I recommend that every EPIC 4G owner at least try out the original app drawer -- Not only does it look better, but its slides in and out 3x times faster than the TouchWiz app drawer.
Here is how to change to the default app drawer:
1. Press Menu (from home screen) -> Settings -> Applications -> Manage Applications.
2. Press Menu -> Filter -> All
3. Scroll down and find "TwLauncher", and click on it. (Trust me its there)
4. Click "Clear Defaults" on the TwLauncher detail page.
5. Press the HOME touchkey on the phone. (It'll ask you if you want to use TouchWiz, or the default one. We want default)
6. Check "Set as default" if you don't want to be asked each time you press home AND
7. Select "Home" (the first choice)
Now you will have the default Android app drawer, which is much faster. IMHO it looks much better too. The rest of the skin looks great. They changed the dull flat grey with a vibrant blue. They changed the indeterminate progress bars to look like rays of the sun instead of a spinning wheel. Everything about the phone is beautiful.
All in all I feel like this phone is a masterpiece of intuitive design. The excellent Swype algorithm as well as the qwerty keyboard, and the layout of all the buttons on the phone seem to have been carefully tinkered with to perfection. Everything about both the hardware design, and the software additions seem to have been designed by engineers who were making a phone that they themselves wanted to use. It feels like a labor of love, and I can sense it each and every time I use the device.
Post Review:
I originally received an EPIC 4G from Best Buy on release day, and my friend got his from Sprint. I told him my battery life was terrible. He said his lasted the whole day. I was wondering what kind of phone he must have had before to say that he was getting good battery life, because my phone was dying in around 4 hours! When we met up at work, I noticed his phone was a lot cooler than mine! Mine was blazing hot. We checked the battery statistics on both of our phones and they seemed to be identical. We switched out our batteries. When I put his battery in my phone, for about 2 minutes, and he put it back in his phone, his phone reported that the battery had depleted 15% !!! That means my phone was sucking the life out of his battery as well as my own, so we deduced the problem must be with my phone, because we kept all other variables the same. That same day I went and traded it in for another one, and lo and behold, my battery in the new device lasted me the whole day.
It seems that a small number of these are defective. If you are pretty sure your device is to blame, change it for another one!
Samsung Epic 4G Android Phone (Sprint)