Gadgetory

hey guys its brand a minimun from pocketnow.com and in this video we're going to compare the pro with the samsung epix and come out with a winner at the end to determine which device is better I know a lot of people are looking at both devices as their next bone so let's start with the similarities both devices have full QWERTY keyboards right on the front they have a flush touch screen that is 2.5 inches diagonal and 320 x 320 in terms of resolution both devices are running windows mobile 6.1 professional and beyond that there are a ton of differences let's start with design let's look at the samsung epix the epics has a more traditional design with kind of hard hard square corners here I'm compared to the treo pro which has rounded corners it has a unconventional dark grey metallic finish to it which some people will like because it's a very unique there's not many phones out there that have a great finish on it and some won't like it because they prefer that the usual black I'm going around the edges we have this chrome strip although we don't have a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack we don't have a quick way to turn on vibrate and Samsung gives us their proprietary jack for syncing charging and audio which no one really likes but fortunately the microSD slot is on the outside of the device so you don't have to take out the battery so let's take a look at the palm treo pro the palm treo pro is a much more progressive design with very rounded edges a lot of curbs a really interesting looking device painted in black gloss it's also as you can see a complete fingerprint magnet it has a very minimal button layout so we don't have soft keys here for the hardware Hardware soft keys and the call start and call end buttons are separated by a lot of distance and they they glow their respective colors so green and red over here so it looks really nice I'm going around the device we have a you know volume rocker here like we do on the epics we have Micro Micro USB and a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack with a lot of people are happy about and going around the other side we have a dedicated Wi-Fi button which is tremendously convenient and on the top we have a switch to quickly go in and out of vibrate and have the ringer turned on unfortunately the palm treo pro puts the micro SD slot underneath of the battery cover which is really inconvenient but even with those issues I think that a lot a lot of people will agree that the palm treo pro is a much better looking device it's very sexy it looks fantastic sitting on a table top and it has a great design so for design the trail Pro gets it okay so now let's take a look at the keyboards because if you're getting or looking at either of these devices you probably care a lot about the keyboard so let's look at the keyboard on the epic's first which is taken right from the I 780 and also the blackjack to the keyboard on the epics has a lot of very ample spaces between each of the keys they're large they feel good on the finger although they're a little bit difficult to press you have to press in a little harder than you do on the treo pro the trail Pro is a very small keyboard which is actually advantageous for people with medium or small sized hands because your fingers hardly travel when you're typing along but for people with large sized hands the palm treo pro is going to be very difficult to type on so for that reason I'm going to give this one to the epics in terms of the keyboard so the epics has the better keyboard okay so let's talk about software both devices really don't come with much additional software to enhance the experience they don't have any kind of interface replacement like you know touchflo 3d or spb mobile shell they don't include anything for flick scrolling they don't have Opera Mobile 9.5 built-in it relies on pocket internet explorer and and if we look at the program's menu we see no unusual entries nothing really interesting that differentiates this from each other or from other windows mobile devices now the one advantage i see is that the palm treo pro doesn't come with a lot of java based trial where there's probably about 15 pieces of java based trial where on the samsung epix which just clogs the program memory unnecessarily so I think for software they both kind of lose but if I were to pick a winner it would definitely be the treo pro okay so let's talk about usability let's start with the treo pro if i'm using the treo pro i'm going to take out the stylus from the bottom right corner very good placement for that if i'm using the device i'm going to try to use the the d-pad here which is a really good tip at it nice allege on it so you can feel for it when you're not looking at the device also the selector button in the center is really predominant and easy to use unfortunately the treo pro does not have Hardware soft keys so if i open up a program that requires me to use a soft key i have to go up and actually press on it which is not that big of a deal but when we're talking about usability and and moving your fingers as little as possible that's a little bit of a problem the screen is actually more sensitive on the treo pro than it is on the epics which which makes it easier to use with a stylus and easier to use with a finger but like I said earlier there are no really touch enhancements built into the treo pro it's mainly a device that is supposed to be used with a stylus okay and so if I'm going to use the epics I have another input option I can use the optical mouse and hopefully you can see that moving around the optical mouse is fantastic sensitivity and really allows me to use it to control all of the aspects i can even scroll with it pretty well in addition to having the optical mouse this device has hardware soft keys here so really if i'm using programs and i'm moving around doing various tasks I'm not moving my thumb around much past this area in the center so if I want to operate the right menu I don't have to reach up I can go right there and I can close the program like that or use the ok button it's just a lot less finger travel which makes it super easy to use this device with one hand so for usability the samsung epix wins and in terms of performance i have to say that both devices have really snappy performance there have been a ton of windows mobile devices in the past that were just slow you'd click on an icon it would take forever not the case with these two devices they are optimized very well from the OEMs and they work really well that said they have different specs the epics has a 624 megahertz processor whereas the treo pro has a 400 megahertz processor you really can't tell the difference where you may notice the difference is in the amount of program memory and let me pull that up in the settings so you can see ok here we are in memory and we can see that the treo pro is 101 megabytes of total program memory whereas the epics has 108 megabytes of total program memory this difference is very small and what it what it may mean is that you may be able to multitask a little bit harder on the samsung epix before you run out of program memory but it may be the difference of one program and it's really not that big of a deal but because it has more program memory and because it has a faster processor i'm going to give performance to the samsung epix and finally i want to talk about the all-important price and availability the palm treo pro is being sold right now I saw it on buy.com for five hundred dollars the MSRP is about five hundred and fifty dollars and it is sold unlocked so it will work on any gsm carrier if we look at the samsung epix if you buy it outright without a two-year contract it'll cost four hundred and fifty dollars but if you buy it with a new contract it will cost two hundred dollars on AT&T now of course you could buy this device and unlock it and use it on any carrier but that may be an additional you know thirty to fifty dollars or so so in terms of price and availability i'd say that the treo pro wins on availability because it's unlocked already and the samsung epix wins on price because it's being subsidized on AT&T okay so let's conclude our findings here I found that the treo pro is the better looking better design device it has a 3.5 millimeter headphone jack it has curved lines it's sexy it's black and gloss it looks fantastic in terms of keyboard the epics won that one because it's more spaced out it's better for the most amount of people because the buttons are larger and they're easier to use and feel and then we talked about software and I said that the treo pro 1 software because it has less java-based trial where then does the epics then we talked about performance and it was kind of a tie but I gave it to the epics because it's got a faster processor and a little bit more program memory which is great for multitasking then we talked about usability and the epics took that because it has this optical joystick here and also software hardware keys so you don't have to move your thumb too much from the center area and then we went to price and said that the epix is cheaper if you buy it on AT&T but for availability the treo pro wins because it's already unlocked when you buy it so if we add up all the totals we get the epics at four points and treo pro at three points and so the winner is the samsung epix and the epics even has better battery life so that's another point for the epics definitely the winner here and so if you like what you see be sure to follow us on twitter at twitter.com slash pocket now tweets and also subscribe to our youtube channel pocketnow video where we're constantly posting new videos about windows mobile devices and other mobile technology that is it for now