Droid 2 vs. Epic 4G

[Eazail70x7]

Had to do it...

 

[ckeegan]

My vote goes to Droid 2 because TouchWiz is the WORST UI EVER CREATED.

 

[Eazail70x7]

I actually like the Touchwiz 3.0 UI. But I use Launcher Pro so it will not matter what custom UI I have on any phone I use. But I have to say that Launcher Pro installed over touchwiz is pretty sweet. I have vanilla android right now and its pretty bland for me. Launcer Pro is what Vanilla should be like imo.

Why I like these touchwiz is because of these features:

- Notification bar is black (easier on the eyes than the vanilla white)
- Notification bar shortcuts for the radios
- Notification bar brightness control
- The Blue (my fav color) accents on many bars and buttons (similar to the Droid X red accent and Evo Green accent colors)
- Contacts (swipe to call or swipe to text)
- Music Player is better than vanilla android and really good actually
- Video player is cool
- Samsung media hub/Video store (not sure if they are the same or different)

With Launcher Pro installed over touchwiz, you keep all these nice features but don't have to have the Iphone app screen lol.

^^^
The above is just my thoughts on what it would be like to have touchwiz. Not saying its better than anything. Btw, even with Sense UI, Moto Blur, etc., I would still use Launcher Pro anyhow because of its flexibility. Not to mention its bringing Sense UI widgets with the Plus version.

For the record, both of these phones are great.

 

[redpanda]

It's not that the Epic doesn't look impressive. I just have a hard time trusting Samsung since the Galaxy S is their first round of high-end Android devices and Samsung did about everything they could to make it look like an iPhone.

 

[So-Low Da Don]

The Droid 2 only has one thing over the Epic 4G, Preloaded FroYo, other than that Epic destroys it with FFC and Hummingbird. Also, I think the TouchWiz 3.0 is the best of all the UI's including Sense, but the other ones sucked bad. Vanilla to me is too plain and is very played out.

 

[dguy]

The Droid 2 only has one thing over the Epic 4G, Preloaded FroYo, other than that Epic destroys it with FFC and Hummingbird. Also, I think the TouchWiz 3.0 is the best of all the UI's including Sense, but the other ones sucked bad. Vanilla to me is too plain and is very played out.

Hummingbird does not destroy OMAP, they perform within 1% of each other. You seem to forgetting(or are unaware) that both the Droid X and the Droid 2 outperform all Samsung Galaxy S phones in the Quadrant system benchmark. The PowerVR SGX 540 is faster than the enhanced SGX 530 in the 2, but it's a 10-20% difference in performance, nothing massive.

Liking or disliking Touchwiz is nothing but personal taste so having Touchwiz can be a pro or con depending on what the user likes.

You're also omitting the single largest difference between the two, which is the network. Verizon has an order of magnitude more high speed internet coverage than Sprint. It is difficult to find a place in the country where you get under 1mbps download speeds on Verizon, while some 90% of the country has 100kbps or less speeds on Sprint.

See the red? That's where you can get a bare minimum of 1mbps downloads on Verizon.

http://www.rentcell.com/images/verizon-coverage-map.jpg

See the orange? Those are the only places in the country where you can get 3G speeds on Sprint. Go outside the orange and you're down to 100kbps or less.

http://coverage.sprint.com/images/mapdatasprintUS.gif

Sprint's Wimax 4G is going to become obsolete in the short term as well. Sprint is using Wimax as a temporary gimmick while they set up LTE. It's nothing more than an attempt to slow down their severe subscriber bleeding while they push out the real 4G. Wimax phones like the Evo and Epic will be out of luck in the near future since neither of them support LTE, which Sprint is moving to.

As long as both devices are locked to these networks, the network the phones run on is a huge factor in the user experience created by these devices.

I think it's pretty clear that the Epic does not destroy the Droid 2.

 

[So-Low Da Don]

Hummingbird does not destroy OMAP, they perform within 1% of each other. You seem to forgetting(or are unaware) that both the Droid X and the Droid 2 outperform all Samsung Galaxy S phones in the Quadrant system benchmark. The PowerVR SGX 540 is faster than the enhanced SGX 530 in the 2, but it's a 10-20% difference in performance, nothing massive.

Liking or disliking Touchwiz is nothing but personal taste so having Touchwiz can be a pro or con depending on what the user likes.

You're also omitting the single largest difference between the two, which is the network. Verizon has an order of magnitude more high speed internet coverage than Sprint. It is difficult to find a place in the country where you get under 1mbps download speeds on Verizon, while some 90% of the country has 100kbps or less speeds on Sprint.

See the red? That's where you can get a bare minimum of 1mbps downloads on Verizon.

http://www.rentcell.com/images/verizon-coverage-map.jpg

See the orange? Those are the only places in the country where you can get 3G speeds on Sprint. Go outside the orange and you're down to 100kbps or less.

http://coverage.sprint.com/images/mapdatasprintUS.gif

Sprint's Wimax 4G is going to become obsolete in the short term as well. Sprint is using Wimax as a temporary gimmick while they set up LTE. It's nothing more than an attempt to slow down their severe subscriber bleeding while they push out the real 4G. Wimax phones like the Evo and Epic will be out of luck in the near future since neither of them support LTE, which Sprint is moving to.

As long as both devices are locked to these networks, the network the phones run on is a huge factor in the user experience created by these devices.

I think it's pretty clear that the Epic does not destroy the Droid 2.

Well out here in Houston Sprint's 3G and WiMax 4G blows out Verizon, and I know that from experience, if you want to talk carriers, with everything on the 69.99 Sprint plan how much do you have to pay on Verizon? Way more, a lot more, I'd rather have decent (in my case better) coverage for less than better coverage for more.

Also when I was talking about TouchWiz notice I said "I think..." and "to me..." because that's my personal preference that's why I didn't say that the Epic was better because of it.

And did you also read about how the results were wrong for the galaxy phones but they fixed and the results came out different you should check that out.

The fact is the Epic has better features including the Super AMOLED screen which destroys the Droid 2's screen.

 

[rushmore]

Hummingbird does not destroy OMAP, they perform within 1% of each other. You seem to forgetting(or are unaware) that both the Droid X and the Droid 2 outperform all Samsung Galaxy S phones in the Quadrant system benchmark. The PowerVR SGX 540 is faster than the enhanced SGX 530 in the 2, but it's a 10-20% difference in performance, nothing massive.

Liking or disliking Touchwiz is nothing but personal taste so having Touchwiz can be a pro or con depending on what the user likes.

You're also omitting the single largest difference between the two, which is the network. Verizon has an order of magnitude more high speed internet coverage than Sprint. It is difficult to find a place in the country where you get under 1mbps download speeds on Verizon, while some 90% of the country has 100kbps or less speeds on Sprint.

See the red? That's where you can get a bare minimum of 1mbps downloads on Verizon.

http://www.rentcell.com/images/verizon-coverage-map.jpg

See the orange? Those are the only places in the country where you can get 3G speeds on Sprint. Go outside the orange and you're down to 100kbps or less.

http://coverage.sprint.com/images/mapdatasprintUS.gif

Sprint's Wimax 4G is going to become obsolete in the short term as well. Sprint is using Wimax as a temporary gimmick while they set up LTE. It's nothing more than an attempt to slow down their severe subscriber bleeding while they push out the real 4G. Wimax phones like the Evo and Epic will be out of luck in the near future since neither of them support LTE, which Sprint is moving to.

As long as both devices are locked to these networks, the network the phones run on is a huge factor in the user experience created by these devices.

I think it's pretty clear that the Epic does not destroy the Droid 2.

Correct on the general cpu & gpu output, since to reach the Hummingbird's max specs at a sustained level, you would need to carry a battery pack

Still, the one place the Hummingbird DESTROYS the OMAP is media. The audio circuits and built-in codec support for video makes the Hummingbird a far better option for media quality. No comparison, especially for audio, since the OMAP family is known for weak audio output from 3.5mm jack. N900 got around this with a built-in amp, but that is not in the Motorola design.

Video for the OMAP is better, since Motorola kindly worked with TI for codecs, but still not as good as Hummingbird.

If Samsung sold the Epic through VZW (and it had the 16gb like att & Tmo's), I would dump my Inc for it Sure, we may never go past 2.2 (only update Sammy will confirm so far), but Hummingbird is sweet for media

Droid 2 should still be a great update to an already fine Droid 1. Just wish the sound output was not so weak from the 3.5mm.