Well I wasted a whole day playing with my wife's new Epic. I picked it up while she was at work. I gotta tell you, the screen is amazing(for games). Played the Asphalt demo and to be honest, there is no comparison, it smokes the Evo for game play. Now with that out of the way, here is my opinion of the two phones. Game play and screen are the ONLY on ups the Epic has on the Evo; at least right now. Now mind you I have a rooted phone with a custom ROM so I'm running 56 fps, no overclock. The capacitive buttons on the bottom are not responsive at all on the Epic. You have to push them like three or four times to get a response. Then the light goes out and you have to poke around to see where they are. The should be painted on or something. If you are into widgets, you better get ready to pay for them because they are few and sparse on this phone (already shelled out for Beautiful Widgets) because there is no replacement except one stock round clock which had the wrong time. As far as speed, well again there is no comparison IMHO. With my custom Kernel the Evo wins hands down and that is no exaggeration. But lets wait and see what the guys over at XDA come up with. Maybe someone can find a use for the slider keyboard, I don't like it and it's always moving about in your hand. The phone (Epic) has Swype and a pretty decent Froyo like keyboard. I would probably never use the physical keyboard but thats just me.
But we are Android friends here and I am not here to slam one Android for another. However being a launch day Evo owner with absolutely no problems from my device, I wouldn't trade for the Epic for anything. The programs on the Epic do a lot intuitive things like having a built in task manager/killer. But for the most part, the Evo does them faster and smoother. The Epic giving the option of pre-defined replies for phone calls is nice (that's pretty cool gotta find a way to do that). Audio/Video out to three way RCA video is a killer feature that lets you see whats on your screen. Frankly would have rather had that than HDMI out on my Evo. All in all the Epic is a pretty solid offering. However, coming from the Evo, I am quite happy where I am and what I use it for. The Evo is just a killer phone. Form is a little difficult for the Epic cause it's going to be hard to find a case thats not like an Oderbox sp? or something. But closed not much difference.
Bottom line, it's 4 o'clock in the morning now I couldn't get close to that phone if I wanted to. She really likes it and I'm sure the new Epic owners will fall in love with their Android handset as well. But as the tread asked, as an Evo owner, in my heart and mind, I'd choose the Evo any day. But some good 'ole sibling rivalry is good right?
BTW, the Epic camera is pretty fast and takes pretty good shots as well. Just have to figure out how to use the front facing one as soon as she goes to sleep. ;-)