First impressions from a Blackberry user.

[troydf]

I am a long time Blackberry user (a Palm Treo user before that), so this is my first Android phone. My son has the Samsung Moment, so I was able to play with that, along with reading the forum, to get ready for the Epic. By the way, thanks to everyone who posts here, it was extremely helpful to me in choosing the Epic.

Anyway, here are my first impressions:

Display: Great. Seems to be brighter than the EVO that I played with in the store. Touch seems to be as responsive or more so than my iPod Touch (3rd gen).

Slide out keyboard: This is taking me some time to get used to. The BB keyboard is so much more narrow than the Epic. The keyboard itself (along with the entire phone) is well made though, and the slide mechanics are very tight.

GPS, Navigation: You have 2 option for turn by turn navigation on the Epic, Sprint Navigation (based on TeleNav), or Google Maps Navigation (requires an upgrade to latest Google Maps)

After upgrading my Google Maps, I got 2 other apps, Navigation and Places. Navigation is the Google turn by turn navigation app, and Places is a quick search app of common services (restaurants, gas stations, etc) close to you. I tested the Google Navigation app on the way home from work, and was very impressed by it, and by the GPS accuracy. I have not done any in-depth GPS testing yet, but for the purposes of Google Nav, the GPS seemed very accurate.

Another feature I like is that I can create a Google Navigation shortcut on my home screen that points to a particular destination. On a trip, this would be handy to create a shortcut to my destination, and whenever I wanted to startup the GPS, I could just tap on the shortcut, and Google Navigation will launch and automatically route to the destination. Saves a few clicks.

I had used Telenav (the Spring Navigation app) a while back on my Blackberry, and it always seemed slow to login and slow to get started. I have not tested it yet on the Epic.


Media: Easy to hook up via USB, and copy media files to SD card. The Gallery app is OK. Not bad, not horrible. Will be looking for a 3rd party app for handling media. One bad thing on the gallery is that I can't seem to figure out how to turn on file names. It only shows thumbnails, which does not work for movies, which just show up as a bunch of black thumbnails. I actually use the My Files apps to browse and launch movies. Using the Gallary for browsing pictures works much better though. If you have pictures in Picasa Web, they show up in automatically in the Gallery app. Not much to say on the music app, just gives you the basics.

Camera: Check out any of the many reviews online. I found the camera to work as it does in the reviews. On a side note, I actually found the camera to be a little better than some of the reviews, but this is probably because I am coming from a Blackberry Bold, and it's crappy camera. I am looking forward to having a camera that I will feel comfortable using for pics and short videos. With my blackberry, I always felt I need to take my real camera with me if I really wanted to take decent pictures. I won't have to do that as much now that I have the Epic.

PIM: Email, contacts, calendar, etc. This is an area that Blackberry has always excelled in, and this is where I was the most worried. I have only been using it a day, but so far, I am impressed with the PIM apps on the Epic. I will need to use it for a few weeks though before I can really get a feel for how it compares to the Blackberry. My work email is on IBM Lotus Notes, and IBM is coming out with a native app for the Android by the end of the year. Until then, I am using Touchdown, which works with the Lotus Notes server (with the Lotus Notes Traveler feature turned on). The Touchdown app works very well, and I might end up keeping it depending on how well IBM develops their own app. While you android users already know, I like how Android contacts syncs with my work email contacts, gmail contacts, facebook contacts, twitter contacts, etc, and will let you merge/link duplicate contacts. Blackberry did this, but it seems easier to manage on Android.

As I get used to my new Epic phone over the next month, I will try and post more of my experiences. At this point though, I am very happy with my Epic, and the Android OS.

 

[nachipai]

Thanks troy...As a long time BB user switching to Android (getting my Epic tomorrow)...these are outstanding insights...Thanks

 

[kristv]

Great commentary on the Epic! I love to hear from real users who have used similar devices before. The comparison to Blackberry is a good one for me, because I used to have a Blackberry Curve for work for a few years. Thanks!

 

[DILands]

Nice Review. My last 3 devices were the Storm, Tour, and Curve. Sp far - loving the EPIC. Would have preferred the keys be raised, or smaller with some space between. Also - still putzing around with apps - trying to get the blue LED for missed calls.

 

[troydf]

You guys are welcome. I was wondering if there were any Blackberry users out there making the switch.

There are so many little things the Blackberry does that I am still missing, but not to the point where I would want to go back.

I used the holster for the Blackberry because I did not like having to lock the phone. The Blackberry holster had a magnet in it, and the Blackberry would know when it was in the holster and turn off the screen and lock the phone. When you pulled the BB out of the holster, it would automatically unlock, turn the screen on, and if you had some sort of alert or new message, it would bring that to the front. Right now I am getting used to having to unlock the phone, and use the pull down notification bar to jump to alerts and new messages. So far no big deal. I do like if you have a missed call, you get an extra option on the unlock screen to jump to the missed call.

One thing that I have been able to sort of duplicate is keyboard shortcuts. On my Bold, I loved using keyboard shortcuts to jump from Browser to Messaging, to the Calendar, etc. I have found on Android that you can set up similar shortcuts using the Search key +. So I have set up just like the BB shortcut keys, and when I have the keyboard out, I can jump around to my favorite apps. The setting for this is found under Settings -> Applications -> Quick launch. This does not work as well with a virtual keyboard, so I am very happy I picked the Epic.

 

[Epicurean]

Nice Review. My last 3 devices were the Storm, Tour, and Curve. Sp far - loving the EPIC. Would have preferred the keys be raised, or smaller with some space between. Also - still putzing around with apps - trying to get the blue LED for missed calls.

I had the curve too. Kept mis-keying on the slider-keyboard on the Epic because I was typing like I was on a BlackBerry using my thumbs. When I put the phone down and type with index fingers it works great.

 

[JoshUng]

I made the switch from a Curve (I have an Evo, not an Epic though), and the only things I miss are BBM (and I only had a few contacts, I couldn't imagine if I used it a lot), and the battery life. I managed to tweak things to get the battery life on my Evo better, but it was never a worry at all on the Curve. Granted, the Curve didn't do nearly as much, so Its more than a fair trade to me.