Gadgetory

what's up everyone john Retton different TechnoBuffalo here with another smartphone smackdown this time we've got two 4g super phones going head-to-head and a carrier matchup in one corner we have the HTC EVO 4G and in the other we have the Samsung built Epic 4G we're gonna compare these two suckers and nine round tests and see who comes out on top so there are obviously a myriad of categories we could have discussed in different rounds we could have done but with the interest of this not turning into the Lord of the Rings type length video I had to cut them down to nine and then nine rounds we're going to be comparing our cult quality signal strength display specs design text entry software and UI browser and finally speed so let's go ahead and jump right in both of these are phones first and foremost no matter what else they do in call quality has to be solid these are very representative I think of Sprint's lineup as a whole assuming you have service where you are and Colcord is absolutely fantastic on both in the 20 call tests I had no dropped calls very little white noise in fact it sounded like I was on the landline pretty much the entire time on my end in the colors other end so both of these very strong really excellent call qualities this round is going to be a draw now the next round we're going to talk about signal strength I don't usually get a chance to compare these that's not always apples to apples but because these are both sprint phones it's sort of a very easy text now I'm in Orange County California where we currently do not have 4G so I can't tell you how these handle WiMAX but I can't tell you how they handle 3G I want to drop them at different locations together and what you're seeing right now is pre representative here the Evo is alternating between one and two bars and the same thing for the epic depending on where I am they tend to alternate between two and three bars each right now it looks like the Evo is just showing one in the effort showing two when I go to other places often times that's just reversed so signal strength really seems to be very very close and on part of both these devices if you are in a strong sprint area or even a French like I am right here you're not gonna have much issue you'd be able to pull in at least one of the two bars so this rounds also a draw so I've got two drawers out of the way let's talk about the display this is where you're gonna look at and use mostly interacting with the phone and from a spec standpoint these sound very similar the Evo's got a 4.3 inch 800 by 480 resolution display which as you can tell is quite big I'm really nice The Epoch has a four inch frame with the same resolution of 800 by 480 however it's touchscreen technology is something called Super AMOLED actually puts the touch and mechanism integrates into the glass opposed to putting it on top which is going to give you crisper colors and sharper contrast level it's really darker blacks and better visibility in direct sunlight and I would happily trade that 0.3 inches of extra screen real estate for the beautiful beautiful picture and image quality and text quality that comes across on the Epic 4G even if looking at the screens right now and a little bit of direct sunlight and the same brightness you can clearly see a difference in the screen here the Epic 4G just looks a little bit better I know that Super AMOLED screens and without its downside it's gonna give you a little bit of sort of a grayish bluish tint but something I could easily live with so we're talking about the displays the epic has got to take this round alright so next let's talk about design are we talking about these physical designs of the phone not the software right now then we will talk about the software in just a minute so the Evo 4G is there a typical Android phones got your array of Android buttons across the bottom they are capacitive buttons but they do have sort of physical representation so that home button is always there the Menu button is always there at the back and a search button they don't go away or disappear you've got your front facing camera on the front your rear facing camera in the back which we'll talk about and you've got a little bit of a kickstand if you want to watch videos while traveling or sitting at your desk whatever it is you might like it serve a classic sleek design its elegant and very thin I'm now talking about the Epic 4G it almost looks like there aren't buttons at all you have to touch the screen and those buttons will show up they are the same sort of capacitive buttons array just arranged a little bit differently and they look a little bit different customized for the TouchWiz interface found on the epic so a same similar slate design camera on the back there is not a kickstand but you do have a slide-out QWERTY keyboard we'll talked about the keyboard in the text entry round a little bit thicker because of that keyboard now ordinarily I would have called this around to draw but the epic has one feature that I found extremely annoying and really hinders my usage and I feel I'll be guess what that is it comes to these capacitive buttons across the bottom I can't see where they are right now if I want to find the home button I kind of started tapping to figure out where it is and there's the home button I don't always know where that's happened it disappears again it's often time so it would just take one tap to hit the home button sometimes takes two to make it light up and show you exactly where it is and I found it to be very very very annoying while using the phone and that one little detail really can hinder the user experience now it's nothing you can't get past certainly but at least from my standpoint I found it to be a little bit less than a positive so from a design round this one's going to swing back to the Evo hard right next let's talk about text entry if you're picking up one of these phones odds are use internet a lot and maybe a lot of text messages emails you're gonna want a phone that's not very good text entry now both of these are Android devices the Evo 4G is now an Android 2.2 device yep it is an Android 2.1 device talk about what that means a little bit later but they both have on-screen keyboards and they both have speech to text mean you just talk to them and they'll interpret your text and both work very well when it comes to text entry the few things we want to notice so the keyboard here on the HTC EVO 4G uses HTC's proprietary keyboard skin and I'll show you what that looks like it's relatively good looks pretty nice so we'll go ahead and type a new message here and you can see exactly what the keyboard looks like so here we've got a portrait orientation flipped over to landscape it worked very well and it's got androids really great auto correction feature go ahead and push this back and of course you can install other keyboards that just swipe or if you like deep privatair an Android keyboard you can always go back to that there's no physical according keep we're here you're limited just to what's on screen and this is a very capable on-screen keyboard now take a look at the on-screen keyboard on something like let's say the Epic 4G it's gonna be a bit of a different scenario here so I'm gonna go ahead open up the keyboard again and you've got well here we've got the sort of a stock Android keyboard a little bit of Samsung flair to it this does come pre-loaded with swipe which is a new way to type and the keyboard here works very well similar to what we see on the Evo however one of the nice things about the epic consider the only galaxy as a variant that offers this it's got a full slide-out QWERTY keyboard so whether you want to use or don't use it you do have an option this is a pretty solid QWERTY keyboard it's got a full row for numbers and your fingers aren't hindered by the top of the device the sliding mechanism is quite nice as well it's spring-loaded and the keyboard is really easy to type on so you have the option of really using anything you like the on-screen keyboard physical QWERTY keyboard if you don't mind a little extra bulk that the keyboards gonna give you on your phone the epic is going to be a great device so it comes to text entry no surprise here at the physical QWERTY keyboard is going to give the epic the edge alright next let's talk about software and UI is I just mentioned the Evo 4G is now an Android 2.2 device may have heard that mentioned this Froyo whereas the epic is an injured 2.1 you may have heard that mentioned as Eclair now one of the nice things about Android being an open operating system is that manufacturers have the ability to put their own custom skins on top of them so these devices isn't really what Android looks like in its raw form HD sees is something called Sense UI which sort of goes right on top of Android so these little bars across the bottom the menu tray the phone and the plus or any unique descents I can jump right in and view others any of my seven screens here by just doing a pinching motion go ahead and jump right there and there bit of others are UI tweaks there's a lot of some widget support and there's a lot of social networking support sort of built right in HTC has done a fantastic job with their sensor why they've it had it for many years on the other hand we've got TouchWiz built into Android 2.1 on the epic which has some cool features that well as well it also has seven home screens there's no real way out of the box at least to view all seventy gifted to keep sliding left to right it does have some nice UI enhancements if you pull down this tray here you can jump from Wi-Fi Bluetooth 4G and GPS and it's got these four icon sort of pin to the bottom now certainly you can customize these with applications from the Android Marketplace we're going to talk about how they come right out of the box so if I have to pick one of these I'm gonna go with the one that has Android 2.2 with sense and that would of course be the Evo 4G I think it's a bit more intuitive a bit more elegant and it has a lot more widget support so the overall software and you why not to mention the fact that is running Android 2.2 which the epic will eventually get this round is going to go to the Evo alright so now let's talk about browser for picking up one of these devices probably gonna use the browser quite a bit since they both have fantastic multi-touch capable browsers let's go ahead and take a look at the browser on each of these so I'll go ahead and jump right into browser here I will go ahead and launch TechnoBuffalo I'm will do the same thing here on the epic and it's going to be pretty similar looking on both go ahead and launch the site and this has been loaded on both devices before in the past so well this is still pretty much loaded as I clicked at first let's talk about the browser on the Evo of course multi-touch very quick to react working really well in this since this is an Android 2.2 device it does have full support for flash 10.1 so if you visit websites that use a lot of flash content you're not gonna have any trouble viewing it on the evo and it has a power to handle it as well so I'm thinking to be a little bit choppy and not as smooth as it would be on your desktop PC but it's going to work scrolling as a relatively smooth affair there isn't any sort of that pixelation at the bottom you get from fast growing you can see the content changing here are utilizing flash whereas right now on the Evo that little content or advertising block is actually a blink so pretty smooth very nice experience and multi-touch really works as you'd expect go ahead and zoom in and zoom out jump on over to the epic you do not have flash reports since it is not we had an end or two points to device so presumably it will get a flash 10.1 support as Samsung has said it will browsing this pinch and zoom works even a little bit smoother than perhaps we see on the Evo and scrolling has a pretty smooth affair as well it works pretty well on both devices this is gonna come down to not surprisingly the ability to run flash this is sort of a Android 2.2 which is Android 2.1 type of debate now this round is gonna have to go to the ego however once the epoch does get updated to Android 2.2 this round would most definitely be a time but as of this filming which is September 24 2010 this round has got to go to the Evo 4G alright let's talk a little bit about speed how fast are both these devices there spec sheets are incredibly similar and actually before we jump into speed let's talk about the specs of each device especially to read very similarly so the Evo on the left has a 15 hundred million power battery they claimed to get about six hours of talktime 4.3 inch period that same resolution we talked about earlier 480 by 800 it's got eight megapixel camera with dual LED flash and if I was going to go into more depth and more rounds I'm gonna show you camera our cameras work pretty well on both of these it's got a front-facing camera for video chat Android 2.2 Snapdragon processor or 1 gigahertz 512 megabytes of RAM and of course 4G capable the epic spec sheet sounds almost exactly the same 1500 million power battery 6.5 hours of talktime 4 inch Super AMOLED display screen to resolution of 480 by 800 only a 5 megapixel camera and that those have LED flash that's a front-facing camera as well Android 2.1 the cortex a8 hummingbird clocking in at 1 gigahertz for a similar architecture to what we see in the iPhone 4 and Apple iPad 512 megabytes of RAM and 4G so while you are going to get on the Evo a little better camera on the epic I'm gonna get swear that full slide-out QWERTY keyboard and the Super AMOLED display it's looks really gonna be you know a dozen six of the other it's almost exactly the same depending on what you like so this round is clearly a draw spec wise these things that really stop to the gills those aspects that you'd expect from a super phone all right so now let's talk about speeders I have lured to a little bit earlier let's see how quick both these devices are and this is gonna be a test of I suppose the Snapdragon chip verse is the hummingbird chip and the the egg Galaxy S or the epic 4G so go ahead and go to home I'm gonna go ahead and quit all applications and we use the same task killer how to kill all these so we have sort of all our available memory free kill all selected apps and I know that both of these skins sort of use different things in the backgrounds through aren't killed this is about as fair as a test we can get without sir eliminating all the skins none of these are running white live wallpapers that's not using any sort of memory we're gonna go and open up similar applications so I'm gonna go ahead and open up to that just downloaded from the Android Marketplace these are two free games they got paper toss and Angry Birds let's go ahead and open up each and see if you have any sort of speed difference here go ahead open up both at the same time which can be much harder than you'd expect it to be alright so just a little bit quicker loaded up here on Evo go ahead and close out of this and close out of that as well and I'm gonna leave those open in the background we're gonna do the same things to show what the speed differences are gonna go ahead and jump back and let's try some angry angry birds you see if they knew speed difference here it looks like it was just a little bit quicker on this time on the epic so no real conclusion there let's go ahead and jump back to the browser and see how quick the browser speeds are and I will say that right now this is connected to Wi-Fi imma go and turn off Wi-Fi so relying only on the 3G network which now is showing two bars and two bars sort of reverences back to my signal strength round a bit earlier almost exactly the same so we'll go ahead and go back to TechnoBuffalo by the TechnoBuffalo here and we'll do with site refreshes of each of them and I keep checking these things every day hoping I'm gonna see a 4G network turn on they're sort of testing it in Southern California but I'm yet to really see it now I should mention that this is not going to be the fairest test because there is some Flash content being loaded here on TechnoBuffalo you want to show you what its gonna look like when you're loading a website then maybe might have a little bit flash and I'll tell you what my results have been while doing speed tests we're gonna go ahead and do simple refreshes of each go ahead and open this up open this up right here TechnoBuffalo queued up gonna go ahead hit go and hit go right here and they are both off and they're both connected to the same 3G network this is not a Wi-Fi test we're gonna see which one is quicker so it looks like the epic should content a little bit earlier you can see the green progress bar at the top but now the Evo sort of passed it and showing a bit more content and we are still loading here and it looks like surprising the Evo finished first and the epic finished second which is quite interesting and really actually representative of the other tests that I've done so despite having a low Flash content the Evo was still a little bit quicker in web browsing and that's really been a representative of what I've seen I did a test previous of ten web pages and the Evo actually loaded seven of them quicker not noticeably quicker like we saw here one or two seconds nothing that's really going to make or break the device but from a speed standpoint it definitely was a little bit different so speed and the final round is going to go to the Evo 4G so for those of you keeping track at home here's how our nine round epic uh-huh throw down when call quality was a draw signal strength was a draw display went to the epic specs were another draw design went to the Evo text entry went to the epic software I knew I went to the Evo browser went to the Evo and speed went to the Evo meaning the Evo is our winner will take in four rounds the epic took two and we had three draw rounds both of these are really fantastic devices if you prefer a corded keyboard you can't go wrong with the epic if you're sure of deciding which one to get and you're not sure whether or not you care about the cord keyboard or not I think the Evo is going to be more solid choice generally I enjoy using the sensi wide a bit more than I have on TouchWiz all that maybe just a personal preference I like the little spinner despite the fact that it's a little bit larger than it fits in the pocket about creating you know excess sort of bulge uh-huh if you will either way you can't go wrong especially if you get 4G service wherever you are you're going to be able to pull down some blazing hot speeds especially with the mobile hotspot capabilities that both devices have so you agree disagree with my results love to hear what you guys have to say be sure to check out TechnoBuffalo for all your attacked news and exclusive content and giveaways checking out at twitter twitter.com slash jon for liqueurs and for all of our youtube stuff it's youtube.com slash jon for lakers I am John Breton juror and I'm going to exhale and see in the next video you