Samsung Epic 4G Touch

There is a serious war brewing out there and no, we are not talking about Libya. There is technological warfare taking place in the smartphone industry and the industry giants are racing to get their best model out. Samsung has led the way by releasing their latest model in the form of Samsung Epic 4G Touch. It’s touted to be better than the Samsung Galaxy S II, so you can already tell this is a beast of a phone. Let’s find out if it can live up to its name.

Design
When you look at the design of this phone, you might get a reminiscence of the Samsung Galaxy S II, but as we have mentioned earlier, Samsung have made it better too. For instance, the most notable difference comes in the shape of a larger screen. The Samsung Epic 4G Touch has a 4.52 inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus display screen rather than the 4.3 inch on its predecessor and it also sports four capacitive buttons now with one physical button in the mix too. So at 10mm thick, it is 1mm thicker than the Samsung Galaxy S II, but put it in your hands and you can’t really tell. Trouncing the HTC EVO 3D and Motorola PHOTON 4G in terms of screen size, surprisingly it still doesn’t feel too big in the hands but still feels comfortable to hold. You don’t even feel the antenna jutting out a little on the back. The battery door is textured to for better grip. As most Samsung phones go, you get a plasticky feeling when holding them and the Samsung Epic 4G Touch is no different but it definitely is more solid than the original Samsung Epic 4G. There’s more good news as the phone only weighs 4.6 oz making it much lighter than its counterparts from HTC and Motorola. On the right of the phone is the power button while on the left of the phone you will find the volume rocker making up the only two physical keys you will find on the phone. The volume rocker is one button with a sizeable gap in between to differentiate between up and down. However, it is a bit small and the fact that there is no dedicated button for camera is also a downer. On the top is the standard audio jack and on the bottom you find the microUSB port. Flip the phone and at the back sits an 8MP camera with LED flash.

Features

To power this beast, a top performer in the CPU section the 1.2GHz dual core Exynos CPU is brought into the mix. It has proven that it is a brilliant CPU before and it has done it again with the Samsung Epic 4G Touch as together with the 1GB RAM on board, the phone sails smoothly all the way. It produced some excellent benchmark numbers too with a Quadrant score of 3244 for instance.

Running the latest Android v.2.3.4 is definitely great news for the Samsung Epic 4G Touch. As all Samsung phones do, the TouchWiz user interface runs on top of the Android OS. This looks like the latest version of TouchWiz and sure enough it is one step better than before. The added fact that it doesn’t lag at any corner makes it an absolute delight to use. This version of TouchWiz offers a lot of customizations and there is a lot of motion controls integrated into the skin as well. However, there is no FM radio with the Samsung Epic 4G Touch. There is a feature in the TouchWiz that caught our eye and that is the ability to add folders within the app menu itself. So this is one way for those who hate bloatware to hide them all in one folder and store them somewhere you will never have to come across them again although we are not sure that’s what TouchWiz was aiming for. The phone has scaled down its Samsung Hubs to just one rather than four as we found in the Samsung Galaxy S II as the only survivor being the Social Hub. Kies Air was also a welcome inclusion and for those who don’t know what it is, it allows syncing of all your pictures, ringtones, text messages, videos and music to your computer. All you have to do when using the app is open a browser of your choice, and key in a specific URL to establish a link between your devices. Then you can either play or download all those files straight off the browser.

So the giant 4.52 inch WVGA Super AMOLED plus screen is definitely the best out there and the Samsung Epic 4G Touch is blessed with it. It has got bright and vivid colors and the color saturation stands at 11. This is one screen we can bravely say we had no problems whatsoever viewing under direct sunlight. It has also got really good viewing angles. Albeit the 480 x 800 resolution results in a meager 206ppi, this screen is still one of a kind.

The Samsung Epic 4G Touch comes with an 8MP camera and we are happy to tell you that it does great too. For instance it produces great detail and the color reproduction is almost perfect. It was impressive that even without ideal lighting, the camera still managed to reflect the colors well. However, it didn’t do so well in low light conditions probably because the flash that was made available isn’t the best. Video recording is at 1080p and it worked great as well. The mic is sensitive but sometimes a bit too much as it picks up noise that you probably can do without.

The Samsung Epic 4G Touch’s stock browser loaded webpages at speeds that were definitely faster than other Sprint devices. So for that we must thank the 1.2 GHz dual core processor on board. The phone runs on Sprint’s WiMax 4G network and is also backwards compatible with EVDO Rev. A 3G for use wherever you don’t have 4G coverage. The common connectivity options like GPRS and Wi-Fi are also made available together with Bluetooth 3.0.

With an 1800mAh battery, this phone will definitely get all the juice it requires to run all that state of the art components under its hood. With moderate use, you can actually get through the whole day without needing a recharge. So it is safe to leave your Samsung Epic 4G Touch’s charger at home and be in ease knowing that you have an awesome battery to take care of all your needs. Answering calls on this phone was also a nice experience as we can hear our friends on the other end clearly. The loudspeaker worked great too, so in all it was a great performance from the Samsung Epic 4G Touch.

Pros and Cons
This is a lightning fast phone with no lag issues. The Samsung Epic 4G Touch also sports a really good camera and the call quality was impressive too. A huge screen backed by great battery life makes it an amazing phone.

We could have had better resolution and with all the space around the Samsung Epic 4G Touch we don’t understand why there is no dedicated button to launch the camera.

Conclusion
If you thought the Samsung Galaxy S II was the peak of the smartphone era, think again because the Samsung Epic 4G Touch might have just gone one better. This is by far the best smarthphone your money can buy.