I believe I posted this in the wrong section by mistake. I did not realize there was a dedicated Epic 4g section, so I'm reposting here.
I just purchased the Epic 4g 8am, August 31st, 2010...first day it was available..first in line. I'll start off with the idea that I really, REALLY wanted to love this device and the experience it would hopefully provide....but I have found several points of frustration and dealbreakers. Some of these are differences compared to the several in store Captivates and Vibrants I've played with, and others are just maybe Android/Samsung Galaxy S issues. Anyway, I thought I'd write this all up because first off, I'm very frustrated and I'm hoping others may have experienced some of these and have solutions. Second, after scouring forums and youtube and google the last couple days, I haven't seen anyone else point out specific comparative issues like this, so I thought it might be helpful for others. Here we go:
1. When I load webpages, it loads FAST (thanks Sprint network, even on simple 3g), but I'm having an issue where after 15-20 seconds, the browser closes and returns me to the home screen. This happened about 15 times in a row this afternoon. Not a good experience. Dealbreaker
2. I've tried map searches and openning webpages many times over the last two days and very frequently, I'll get a message saying i need a network connection to do such activity, so it shuts down the app. How can I not have at least 3g coverage in a city like Austin?? Dealbreaker
3. Brightness - when I compared this phone to the captivate and the vibrant, the same webpages were much more bright on those vs. the epic 4g. I used a yahoo news story to compare. I went into each phone's master brightness setting and turned it all the way up, turned off auto brightness, and turned off power saving mode, and made sure each device had an adequate btry charge remaining. Captivate and Vibrant had much more bright white backgrounds with dark text, very easy to read. Whereas my Epic 4g had a light greyish/blue background with medium blue/grey text. It seemed very dim compared to the other galaxy s phones. I also noticed that within the webbrowser, if you select menu, you can adjust brightness in the browswer app. I would adjust this version of brightness all the way up on the Epic 4g and then navigate away from the web and then back. When I'd reopen this web brightness setting again, it would be back to its previous lower level, not the max where I had just left it.
4. Voice search functionality didn't work at all today in several apps like memo, maps, google search, etc. Dealbreaker
5. Epic 4g does NOT come with Samsung's "Daily Briefing" widget. I thought this was so cool when I saw this on the Captivate and Vibrant. And pairing this phone to one of those desk docks and the Desk Home app (or something like that) is really cool. The phone charges, sits in a nice cradle in landscape mode where you can use it as an alarm clock or one touch though weather, stocks, news, calendar all on one page. So bummed that this "Samsung Galaxy S" widget does not come on Sprint's version of the Galaxy S. Almost a dealbreaker
6. The physical keyboard is not very functional. All the reviewers love it, but I practiced for 2 hours today on Swype vs. Physical Keyboard and on just a simple 1-2 line phrase, I was able to get down to 20 seconds on Swype vs. 35 seconds on the physical keyboard. That's a big time savings when you're writing up entire paragraphs, or taking notes in a meeting. I wanted to like the keyboard, but I'm kinda glad I don't because I don't like the thickness it adds. Makes my decision of whether or not to turn it in for something else or another carrier a little easier.
7. You can't move your home windows around or edit the 4 home icons on the Epic 4g, whereas I understand you can on the captivate and vibrant.
8. And finally, I have not found a good way to sync calendar and contacts from outlook. I'm a corporate professional, but not an executive with approval to be on an approved IT exchangeserver device. So for the last 6+ years, I've relied on a local USB sync of calendar and contacts. It's worked great....from all my windows mobile devices several years ago, to the last 3 iphones over the last few years, even to the Evo that I had for 29 days. But no seemless solution so far for the Samsung Galaxy S that I can find. So I'm relying on exporting my contacts from outlook, then importing them into gmail and letting my phone sync with gmail, but this loses some of details in my contacts and loses all my contact photos. And I'm trying to use Google's Calendar Sync, but for some reason, it's only pickup up about 70% of my calendar items. Very frustrating.
Well, that's about it. Again, I'm hoping this is helpful to some of you, and I'd love any feedback or comments. Again, I really wanted to like this device, becaue I just came over from AT&T and the iPhone crowd for the last several years where everything just works!....but I am sick of 2-4 dropped calls a day. So going to the Captivate doesn't seem like a very good option, adding to that the Captivate was very slow pulling up web pages, and switching from one home screen to the next....like 2 full second delays after you'd swipe to go from one page to the next. And T-mobile is a complete unkown to me. I don't know if the network is reliable...but I think the vibrant is the way I'm leaning.
Regards,
Chris
I just purchased the Epic 4g 8am, August 31st, 2010...first day it was available..first in line. I'll start off with the idea that I really, REALLY wanted to love this device and the experience it would hopefully provide....but I have found several points of frustration and dealbreakers. Some of these are differences compared to the several in store Captivates and Vibrants I've played with, and others are just maybe Android/Samsung Galaxy S issues. Anyway, I thought I'd write this all up because first off, I'm very frustrated and I'm hoping others may have experienced some of these and have solutions. Second, after scouring forums and youtube and google the last couple days, I haven't seen anyone else point out specific comparative issues like this, so I thought it might be helpful for others. Here we go:
1. When I load webpages, it loads FAST (thanks Sprint network, even on simple 3g), but I'm having an issue where after 15-20 seconds, the browser closes and returns me to the home screen. This happened about 15 times in a row this afternoon. Not a good experience. Dealbreaker
2. I've tried map searches and openning webpages many times over the last two days and very frequently, I'll get a message saying i need a network connection to do such activity, so it shuts down the app. How can I not have at least 3g coverage in a city like Austin?? Dealbreaker
3. Brightness - when I compared this phone to the captivate and the vibrant, the same webpages were much more bright on those vs. the epic 4g. I used a yahoo news story to compare. I went into each phone's master brightness setting and turned it all the way up, turned off auto brightness, and turned off power saving mode, and made sure each device had an adequate btry charge remaining. Captivate and Vibrant had much more bright white backgrounds with dark text, very easy to read. Whereas my Epic 4g had a light greyish/blue background with medium blue/grey text. It seemed very dim compared to the other galaxy s phones. I also noticed that within the webbrowser, if you select menu, you can adjust brightness in the browswer app. I would adjust this version of brightness all the way up on the Epic 4g and then navigate away from the web and then back. When I'd reopen this web brightness setting again, it would be back to its previous lower level, not the max where I had just left it.
4. Voice search functionality didn't work at all today in several apps like memo, maps, google search, etc. Dealbreaker
5. Epic 4g does NOT come with Samsung's "Daily Briefing" widget. I thought this was so cool when I saw this on the Captivate and Vibrant. And pairing this phone to one of those desk docks and the Desk Home app (or something like that) is really cool. The phone charges, sits in a nice cradle in landscape mode where you can use it as an alarm clock or one touch though weather, stocks, news, calendar all on one page. So bummed that this "Samsung Galaxy S" widget does not come on Sprint's version of the Galaxy S. Almost a dealbreaker
6. The physical keyboard is not very functional. All the reviewers love it, but I practiced for 2 hours today on Swype vs. Physical Keyboard and on just a simple 1-2 line phrase, I was able to get down to 20 seconds on Swype vs. 35 seconds on the physical keyboard. That's a big time savings when you're writing up entire paragraphs, or taking notes in a meeting. I wanted to like the keyboard, but I'm kinda glad I don't because I don't like the thickness it adds. Makes my decision of whether or not to turn it in for something else or another carrier a little easier.
7. You can't move your home windows around or edit the 4 home icons on the Epic 4g, whereas I understand you can on the captivate and vibrant.
8. And finally, I have not found a good way to sync calendar and contacts from outlook. I'm a corporate professional, but not an executive with approval to be on an approved IT exchangeserver device. So for the last 6+ years, I've relied on a local USB sync of calendar and contacts. It's worked great....from all my windows mobile devices several years ago, to the last 3 iphones over the last few years, even to the Evo that I had for 29 days. But no seemless solution so far for the Samsung Galaxy S that I can find. So I'm relying on exporting my contacts from outlook, then importing them into gmail and letting my phone sync with gmail, but this loses some of details in my contacts and loses all my contact photos. And I'm trying to use Google's Calendar Sync, but for some reason, it's only pickup up about 70% of my calendar items. Very frustrating.
Well, that's about it. Again, I'm hoping this is helpful to some of you, and I'd love any feedback or comments. Again, I really wanted to like this device, becaue I just came over from AT&T and the iPhone crowd for the last several years where everything just works!....but I am sick of 2-4 dropped calls a day. So going to the Captivate doesn't seem like a very good option, adding to that the Captivate was very slow pulling up web pages, and switching from one home screen to the next....like 2 full second delays after you'd swipe to go from one page to the next. And T-mobile is a complete unkown to me. I don't know if the network is reliable...but I think the vibrant is the way I'm leaning.
Regards,
Chris
