Gadgetory

hey guys it's joe from pocketnow.com let's go take a look at Sprint's latest phone it's the Samsung Epic 4G alright so Brandon already showed you a lot of this stuff but I want to go over it a little bit more in detail this is the packaging that the Sprint Epic 4G comes in this is a 4G phone using Sprint's WiMAX network but it's also a Samsung Galaxy S series phone now unlike most galaxy s as this one has a physical keyboard as you can clearly see on the box the box is a little bit busy on the front has a logo over on this side with some social networking icons and then same thing over here with the AMOLED and whatnot bottom of the box completely empty and top of the box is a bunch of barcodes that I'm not going to go into detail with the back of the box has all of this information so just very basic but let's get on to the good stuff first thing I want to show you is your little power adapter now this is a wall wart it is not grounded so it'll fit neatly in any any power plug without taking up too much space with regular wall warts you've got a problem where you plug the thing in and it blocks 2 or 3 outlets and it's a hassle to plug in you know a couple of those and your your search strip is full so this is nice it's compact it's it's relatively heavy kind of deceptively heavy for a size but there you've got your little USB power port in it now of course it's got a USB cord that goes along with it there is the normal side and then micro USB on the other end now of course you can plug this into your computer or you can plug this in right here just like so but let's move on next is the unusual thing that we found in the package and that is this little guy it is a samsung branded micro SD SD adapter so you can take the micro SD card that comes with the camera it's a 16 gigabyte class 2 so not that fast but pretty good size take this pop it out and plug it into anything that has a 9 SD card slot in it for you so you don't have to go through anything proprietary you don't have to load any drivers or software if you're plugging it into a USB so very convenient especially if you want to get those pictures off while on your vacation pop the micro SD I'll pop it in there take it to the kiosk and you're good to go next we've got these really cool headset and I was fighting with the tangled mess off-camera here I was really impressed with these first of all they look really slim really small really nice polished they've got these nice little squishies to adapt to the size of your ear for your noise isolation but coming down you've got this little guy so this is down the right side the right headphone you've got your speaker and your mute button so you can be listening to music and get a phone call you've got your speaker right there you can mute it if you need to ask somebody something in the middle of a phone call very nice the cord length is reasonable not too long and then of course you've got one of these newer slim line jacks on the other end of course with the multiple bars in here for the right and left and the microphone audio as well you also get this little bag that comes with a little bit smaller and a little bit larger pair of squishies so you can adapt those to your ears as needed so that's kind of cool but I know you're not interested in all that you want to get to the phone so we're going to divide this review up into a hardware review and a software review starting out here with the hardware that's the phone and it's just gorgeous put it right next to the nexus one and I'm doing this kind of offset for you for a reason I'll show you in just a minute the size is pretty much the same as far as height goes you're looking at just a teeny bit longer as far as width goes it's about the same width maybe a little bit more where you get into a difference here is in the thickness now the thickness is because of the sliding keyboard now this is a spring assisted keyboard which is very nice that means you start pushing it up and it'll finish popping up you start pushing it it'll finish popping down on the droid - it's not you slide it that far and you get that much so you've got to push it all the way this is kind of nice it's a little bit faster to actuate the keyboard and it's very very smooth I've got to give Samsung kudos for that once you're inside you've got a very responsive keyboard I don't know if you can hear the click eNOS of that but it gives you just enough tactile feedback and enough sound feedback to know that you're actually pushing the buttons and it feels really good under finger think I don't like about this is it's in a grid it's not staggered like you'd find on a normal keyboard which is kind of frustrating both my wife and I both when we were typing it found ourselves hitting the wrong key because we were touched typing on it and it was in the wrong spot that's something that I'm sure you overcome just by using it a little bit more so not not too big of a thing but something to keep in mind one thing where Samsung really wins and this I can't give them enough credit for this you've got your Android buttons right over here including this directional tee pad so you've got your menu button back home and search right there on your keyboard and then you've got your cursor navigation over here you don't really have a cursor per se but you can navigate between fields and between hyperlinks using this as well so it's really convenient you've also got a little smiley face eye key on the keyboard there so that's kind of nice let's get on to the rest of the phone first of all you'll notice that this screen is big and gorgeous when we do the software review I'll show you more how gorgeous it is you can't see it right now all that much but I've got a few fingerprints and smudges on this screen they don't show up at all when the screen is on it's amazing that's one of the biggest problems that I have with my Nexus One is this thing is a fingerprint magnet I have you know clean it wipe it get rid of those those fingerprints two or three times a day but with the Samsung it it blurs up just like you'd expect that when that light is on you don't have to worry about it at all now another thing to note you've got this entire surface this is all one glass piece with a little cutout up here for your speaker your microphone is buried way down here so it's not on the front at all and there aren't any buttons here any physical buttons now I'll show you in the software review here you actually have a menu button home a back and a search button just like you do over on the Nexus One so if you can't see them here they're not physical buttons that you can push there touch sensitive areas of the screen that when the screen is on you can touch them on the nexus one you know where they are all on where they are all the time but on the epic you can't see them that from a design perspective is beautiful because you have this whole flat black surface that's only ruined by the two logos and I say ruined because I'm not a really big logo guy take a look at the Nexus One you don't have any logos on the front at all you've got your logos for HTC and Google on the back so flip this over you've got your Galaxy S and your sprint 4G logos on the back as well some other information we'll get to but they don't need to be here that's just overkill and it really takes away from just how clean and beautiful this screen is especially when it's on but these buttons you have to touch somewhere to activate them and then touch again to take that text input or that that button input kind of frustrating you've got some LEDs some ambient light sensors and then of course the front-facing camera that I'll show you more about in the software review so stay tuned for that but let's get on to looking at the sides in the back underneath we've already showed you right there is your microphone over on the side you have your physical camera button something that I really really like I don't have one of those on the Nexus so you can activate the camera app and take the picture right there using a physical button very nice up at the top is the power button now this power button is not the same as it's not in the same location as it is on the Nexus One which is kind of hard to you see I've gotten used to turning on my phone turning it off using my index finger now I have to get used to doing it with my thumb but that didn't take long at all for me to to get used to what did take a little bit of time is over here I can push my trackball because I'm running CyanogenMod and it turns on the screen over here I don't have that in fact it took me a while before I realized there is no trackpad on this phone there is no big glowing ball to let you know when you have a notification like there is on the Nexus One and I thought I would miss that a lot and really I didn't it's surprising how much I didn't miss that you might so I bring that up just in case over here you've got your volume rocker and it functions really really well on the top you've got your 3.5 millimeter headphone jack your multi-purpose Jack I'll come back to this in a minute you've got your 5 megapixel autofocus camera with LED flash now this is the only galaxy s so far that has an LED flash on it and it really really is nice it's something I've gotten accustomed to with the Nexus One and for the Galaxy S to finally have this on the sprint 4G it's very very worthwhile down on the bottom you've got your external speaker which I don't like positioning of external speakers on the back of the device why when you're watching something on your device do you have your sound going away from you you have to cup your hand behind it to direct that sound back to the front or of course have your headphones so let's go back to this this is a regular microUSB port that Samson has amped up with some bells and whistles and we'll talk about those in a while too but it's got a door on it and this door is nearly impossible to use even there I've got it closed but it's not closed all the way and I can't get it closed all the way to open it close it it's it's a pain so I'm just been leaving it open why they have that on there I don't know you have to charge this phone frequently but the Nexus One has theirs right there and it's not a problem I I don't know you'll also notice you've got these three gold dots on the bottom of the Nexus 1 there are no dots on the bottom of the epoch which is kind of a shame because you you have to have that door open to charge it and inevitably it's going to be left open once it is open you can just pop that microUSB cable in there if it fits securely and snugly here's one more place where Samsung did a great job this is the top of the phone that is where that I can have this sitting in a cup holder in your car with the cord coming out the top and not have to worry about having the phone upside down to be able to charge it like you do with the Nexus so fabulous good job I wish everyone would do that either in the top or on the top part of the sides but I think that interfere with buttons so so far so good let's break into this and this is not an easy process when we got this originally it came with the battery pre-installed so there wasn't any mucking around that had to be done and when this thing is put together it's put together tight there's a little thumb tab there we go that you can get your thumb in but if you've got the back installed correctly it's it's snug and tight now before I show you the innards notice back here you've got your hole basically for your camera and your LED there is no plastic or glass or polycarbonate or anything in there it's just straight through which is fabulous over here you've got the lens to the camera on the Nexus One you take off this back panel and the lens is part of the back so you've got to clean that and then once you're on the inside go ahead and pop that off so this is closed you've got to clean this you've got to clean this and there's just a lot more area where you could have potential dust or debris or stuff build-up Samsung's idea to raise this out from the back of the camera and then just have a back that pivots in place rather than slides I think is a piece of genius that that's amazing and I think everybody should do that it's it's wonderful now come back over here and you've got first thing that I noticed is you've got some external camera connector excuse me some external antenna connections that you don't have access to through the back that's a little bit self-defeating I would imagine but at least you have access there's also a fourth one down here you'll also notice you've got your micro SD slot right there with a nice little guide to help you get it in and out again 16 gigabyte class - that's what came with it we'll just go ahead and slide that back in now this is a CDMA phone so there is no SIM slot anywhere not even hiding underneath the battery to activate this phone you've got to call up Sprint you've got to give them the information you're probably buying it from them already activated or buying it from their store so you can just transfer over your current account to this so if that's what you're doing great a couple more things and we'll move on this is one of the more confusing things and I'm probably reading this wrong this is a three point seven volt lithium ion battery and to me it looks like it's five point five five watt hours which that's a huge battery but either I'm reading it wrong or they're trying to fool you because you flip it over and it's a 1,500 milliamp hour battery which honestly is nowhere near enough for this phone this is an amazingly fast phone so last thing about the hardware and we'll put this back on before I go to that snap it all in place you'll notice this has what I'd like to call an inverted chin if you're familiar with the the original Google phones came out for t-mobile and whatnot they had a little chin leaning out the g1 for example at that little part of the phone you remember what I'm talking about on the bottom of the phone just kind of stuck forward a little bit kind of made it look Legos couple more to your face well this has got it except in the opposite it's got this little chin leaning away from you a little bit thicker there it actually is really nice because it gives you a place to kind of hang on to the phone just to three-fingered and makes it easier to use it in a one-handed operation so really really cool I'll touch more on this when we do the software review but speaking of hardware this phone has a - 11 B G and n built into it and I could really see the end performance on my home network now the Nexus One has 802 11 and capable but you're not going to unlock it until you have the drivers for it and those drivers I've only found coming from CyanogenMod and his team not from official Google releases though I could be wrong there they might have slipped it in in the Froyo release and I just don't know these guys it comes just right there right out of the chute you've got 802 11 in what you don't have is 4G which is kind of unusual I did a factory reset on this phone to make sure it was exactly like they intended and 4G is turned off so you have to go in and turn 4G on when you turn 4G on it turns Wi-Fi off so you have to choose do you want Wi-Fi or do you want 4G or do you want to manually toggle between the two that's a problem and I don't think it's necessarily Sprint's fault it's because as I understand WiMAX uses the 2.5 gigahertz spectrum just like 802 11x does B G and n can all sit and behave nicely on that same frequency I don't know why 4G can't it's probably going through the same antenna which is why so instead of having duplicate antennas in there you have to toggle it but still it's a pain in the neck why should I have to choose between high speed at home or high speed on the road so I hope they can address that and I hope it's not something that's going to require hardware to do it but overall this is a very very impressive phone I have some complaints about the Sprint network in testing this 4G is spotty in my area at best I had to drive about 20 30 minutes to get to it but when I did I went from 3G of about it's somewhere around 3 400 kilobit per second up speeds there excuse me down speeds to about 5 we were sometimes a little bit higher sometimes a little bit lower than 5 megabit per second so it's really really impressive when you've got the coverage and when it's turned on which it wouldn't have been turned on because I use Wi-Fi at home so we're back to the chicken and the egg problem other than that call quality was spectacular just as I expected it's a really really good phone I don't know if it's got the two microphones for active cancellation like the Nexus One does I couldn't see another microphone hole like on the Nexus One you've got this one down here for your voice and you've gotten this one back here for the ambient sounds and then using a software algorithm it will do noise cancellation to to make your voice sound better well over here I didn't see that but they sounded great both making calls over the Sprint network and using Google Voice which of course is VoIP once you get to the middle but it's still sprint network on on the end to my phone into their tower all in all very impressive phone I've got to give it four out of five stars rather than a full five out of five because of the whole 4G Wi-Fi issue and because of the keyboard not having the staggered keys but for a samsung phone which normally I am you could even call me a Samsung hater every Samsung phone that I've had in the past I have absolutely despised they've done their job but that's about it this phone takes all of that away if you've looked at the Samsung phones for t-mobile the behold the whole - this doesn't hold a light to them I mean it's amazing you look at this you'll think that it's gorgeous the screen is actually about yay big but you can't tell especially when you're watching a show it just kind of blends into the background gorgeous overall 4 out of 5 if you're on Sprint and you want a physical keyboard you're not going with the Evo this is the phone for you if you don't care one way or another the Evo is a great phone but the Samsung Epic 4G is every bit as powerful and every bit as great so four pocket now and taking an early look at the Sprint Samsung Epic 4G I'm Joe Levi don't you hate it when you're so excited about a product that you forget to include some of the important strengths no technical specifications well I did just that phone the Sprint Samsung Epic 4G has a one gigahertz hummingbird processor which is ridiculously fast it's every bit as fast as the Qualcomm's and whatnot in the other phones it's got half a mag and half a gig rather of RAM and half a gig of ROM onboard and is just a spectacularly fast phone like I mentioned it is CDMA it runs on the sprint nextel network you can see a whole bunch more detailed specifications including the height width depth the weight all that fun stuff in the article related to this video you can check the the video notes to see a hyperlink over to those specifications and of course if you like this video go ahead and give it a thumbs up if you have not yet subscribed to our video channel now is the time to do it we're getting more and more of these early looks at the production devices and that's what this is this is a production phone it is not a pre-release or a demo model phone this is a production model this is what you're going to see on the shelves when it is officially released if you want to be up to date with that kind of information the only way you can do it is to subscribe to our YouTube channel and subscribe to our RSS feed over at pocketnow.com so again for PocketNow showing off the Samsung Epic 4G I'm Jolie bye