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From Hero to Epic? or to Evo?

jimdroid

Android Expert
Oct 31, 2009
805
106
SF Bay Area
My time with my Hero is up. Was wondering how people who have had Heroes and now have Epics like them? Any limitations? I don't care a whit about the trackball.

The screen looks gorgeous (even if the colors look a bit oversaturated and unnatural next to the Hero) and it is probably 1,157.5 times faster than the Hero :)

My main questions are:

How is battery life compared to the Hero?
Has the relatively small amount of memory (compared to Evo/Fascinate) been a hindrance to you?
Has the slider caused problems?
How is the phone quality? How is the speakerphone? (Hard to tell from just two phone calls in the Sprint store).
Any GPS problems/
Any other comments on the Epic?

And, if you compared the Epic to the Evo, why did you choose the Epic? (No, I'm not also posting this in the Evo forum).

Thanks for any insights you can provide. I know some of these questions have been answered elsewhere, I'm looking for fresh perspectives from ex-Hero owners.

jd
 
How is battery life compared to the Hero?

If you were stock, it's about the same (maybe a little better) than the Hero. If you use the browser much, you can literally WATCH your battery tick away though.

Has the relatively small amount of memory been an hindrance to you?

:thinking:

Has the slider caused problems?

No problems with the slider thus far.

How is the phone quality? How is the speakerphone? (Hard to tell from just two phone calls in the Sprint store).

Phone quality is fine IMO. It fits nicely into my hand (nicer than the Evo does). It feels light/plastic but seems very firm... if that makes sense.

I've only made one speaker phone call and I couldn't complain about it. I rarely use speaker phone.

Any GPS problems?

Pass... don't use GPS

Any other comments on the Epic?

Screen is AMAZING!!! Touchwiz is a completely different beast than Sense (preference...). Ummm.... I HATE the how the app drawer flips pages left to right instead of sliding up and down. Overall though, I've VERY pleased I went Epic instead of Evo.

FYI, there seems to be a 3G upload issue too that hinders the speed of uploads. I do not know for sure if this has been fixed or not as I usually use wifi.

And, if you compared the Epic to the Evo, why did you choose the Epic? (No, I'm not also posting this in the Evo forum).

Wife has the Evo and I had the Hero for almost a year. I wasn't that impressed with the Evo when playing with it in person. It, to me, still felt like it has some lag and it just didn't feel right in my hand. I'm 6'5" and have rather large hands and still had to "two hand" the Evo to push the power button on the top of the phone to wake it up.

An advantage for the Evo is that you CAN use your battery from the Hero as a spare.


Let me know if you have any other questions. Like I said, I've got access to both phones :)
 
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I thought the only screen difference is that you can actually see the epics screen because it's super ambled vs ambled (damn auto correct I meant to say amoled).......and to me touch wiz feels unfinished..sense is nice...100% better than twiz, this is why I still have my incredible, and have not jumped ship to the fascinate

And if you are a hero user, you know sense.....which is wayyyyyyy better on the evo


And evo has 2.2 epic has 2.1
 
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I had really made this a big issue for myself. Let me tell you a couple of things:

The Screen:
The Epic is like blu-ray dvds on an HDTV, and the EVO side by side is like VCR tapes on a standard TV. That is not an attack on the phone it is the absolute truth. (I have an evo on my second line)

UI:
Most of us mod our UI in some way, who cares if TW or Sense is better.

Speed:
The epic does have slightly less lag switching between screens, but this is virtually a draw.

The truth is these phones are almost the same, but the Epic is the latest and greatest. That isn't an opinion it is a fact. The Epic is newer technology and a newer phone. Go with it the Evo is old news, and will be a distant memory for HTC when the Hero 2 comes out.
 
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The EVO wil feel a lot like the Hero to you, just bigger with a kickstand and 4G. I honestly think that unless you absoluetly must have the Sense UI or absolutely can't wait to have Froyo on the EPIC, I would go with the EPIC. Also, if you use the Mobile Hotspot feature, the EVO works better for that.

I don't know anything about the 3G upload cap, since I live in a 4G area.
 
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My time with my Hero is up. Was wondering how people who have had Heroes and now have Epics like them? Any limitations? I don't care a whit about the trackball.

The screen looks gorgeous (even if the colors look a bit oversaturated and unnatural next to the Hero) and it is probably 1,157.5 times faster than the Hero :)

My main questions are:

How is battery life compared to the Hero?
The battery life is about the same, maybe just a little better than the hero. Still frustrating, but I hear it's better than the Evo's battery life.
Has the relatively small amount of memory (compared to Evo/Fascinate) been a hindrance to you?
I haven't had any problems with the memory.
Has the slider caused problems?
My first Epic slider scratched the keyboard, got that replaced. Some people complain of a loose slider. Just play with the slider in the store, it should be snug. If you have problems, Sprint will switch it out for you.
How is the phone quality? How is the speakerphone? (Hard to tell from just two phone calls in the Sprint store).
I've made a couple of calls on speaker phone on the Epic, it's rather good quality. Good enough to make a call in the car.
Any GPS problems/
This seems to be the main issue with the phone, although neither of the two Epics that I had (one was replaced) had a problem.
Any other comments on the Epic?

And, if you compared the Epic to the Evo, why did you choose the Epic? (No, I'm not also posting this in the Evo forum).

Thanks for any insights you can provide. I know some of these questions have been answered elsewhere, I'm looking for fresh perspectives from ex-Hero owners.

jd
You'll be really happy with either phone, but when I had a chance to take either phone, I went with the Epic. 2.2 will come in due time, and 2.1 on the phone makes it just as fast as an Evo with 2.2.
 
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you've had the hero for a long time and probably have gotten used to sense ui and touchscreen only actions. as the above poster said, the evo is the natural choice. but, if you are willing to have an open mind, different home screen and added slider (even if you don't use it, so far i've barely used it), then the epic is a good choice.

people keep knocking on touchwiz, which is fine, but remember, samsung have not restricted the epic to touchwiz. you don't have to root to use vanilla android or another home launcher.

either phone will be awesome. plus, you have an option with sprint to swap it out within 30 days (albeit, it will cost you $35 or something like that, but it might be worth it for first hand real life test for you).

good luck.
 
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I would personally love to get the Epic, but I'm reading far too many issues with the GPS (a huge thing for me because I use it almost daily while traveling around the city for my job) and the upload speed is capped at 150kbps (if using 3G). I don't have 4G everywhere, much less hardly anywhere around C-bus yet, so this information has pretty much scared me away from the Epic.

It's sad, because I wanted this phone to be great so badly. The screen is beautiful, but I can't live with issues like those when I know Sprint won't do a damn thing to get them fixed. I had the Instinct and got burned really bad by Sprint. I now have the Hero, but hopefully only for another 2 weeks (I was part of the early release buyers from Best Buy) so I am leaning about 70% toward Evo.

My brother in law has one and yes it is pretty much a big Hero, but hopefully the build quality issues won't be a problem with the Evo. My Hero has had dust under the screen for quite some time now. I want to bounce it off someone's head with HTC or Sprint (or both) every time I look at it!!
 
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Oh, and another HUGE thing I'm wondering about...

Why does Samsung ALWAYS put the charger port in the most ridiculous places on their phones?? My first to Sammys had it on the side, making it so crazy to try and talk on while charging and now the Epic has the charger port on the top? Who the Hell thought of that one??
 
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do realize sense is more than a launcher. you have htc widgets, better email and messaging and just a cleaner interface all around. TouchWiz email is closer to stock and lacks advanced folder support, can be buggy loading email and doesn't allow you to change peak and off peak fetching of email. TouchWiz does have a better dialer and nice radio toggles on the notification pull down. If you stick with the stock launcher your icons have funky backgrounds. LauncherPro is a much better alternative to either of the stock launchers (personal preference).
Thanks. I used to like HTC Sense, but I've been using Launcher Pro Plus on the Hero and I actually like it better; it certainly is snappier.

In regards to the microUSB placement...it is perplexing. If you look at my proclip thread in the accessory forum, I picked up an up angled microUSB cable that goes back instead of up when plugged in up top. Makes for a much lower profile when mounted in the car and it can serve as a kickstand when watching movies in landscape.
 
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cough cough bs cough cough. Evo screen looks like it has a white wash over it when comparing the screens side by side, and all but dr g have a hard time viewing it in direct sunlight. It's just the nature of a tft screen and why blacks always look dark gray on tft...generally speaking. If you're not comparing side by side, the evo screen looks pretty good.

For an evo user you sure do spend a lot of time in the epic forum touting the evo.
The Evo has a normal TFT screen, I'm not sure what you mean "you can actually see" ... the Evo screen is visible in all conditions.
 
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Evo screen looks like it has a white wash over it when comparing the screens side by side, and all but dr g have a hard time viewing it in direct sunlight.

Just ... no. Sunlight viewing has always been an Evo strength regardless of how it compares to the Epic, and if you try to come up with reports to the contrary by searching the Evo forum, what you will find is threads full of people saying they have no issues.

Because there is no issue. I live in the southernmost state and I guarantee one of the sunniest, so I know.
 
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And, if you compared the Epic to the Evo, why did you choose the Epic? (No, I'm not also posting this in the Evo forum).

Yes, I was planning on getting an Evo while waiting for my contract to re-new. Then there was news of the Epic and I was intrigued. It was a really tough decision but when the Evo's first OTA updates bricked a lot of phones I started leaning more towards the Epic.

I think the deal-breaker for me on the Evo was its 30FPS cap. There's a lot of info out there, but I think the main reason why HTC did it is because they didn't want to pay for the drivers (or something like that). And it's not something they are going to correct, so I was kinda turned off by that.

I hated giving up the extra screen size from the Evo (and that nifty kickstand!), but I really like the Epic's keyboard and brilliant display.
 
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I have the Evo but tried the Epic for a week. I loved the screen and the speed of it. The keyboard I thought I would use but I rarely did. It required more pressure press on them. My TP2 had softer feel to them and could type a lot easier. But I've gotten used to on screen kb so never used it on the Epic. The Epic kb just really got in the way. In particular when pressing the power button, the keyboard would move a little. Kinda made the phone feel flimsy. Also made it a little bit thicker which I didn't particularly like. However the Epic felt better in the hands since it had rounded edges. Screen res comparison the Evo isn't bad if you didn't have it next to the Epic. I played the same movie on both and although the Evo wasn't as sharp as the Epic, the larger screen and kickstand made it more pleasurable to watch.

Epic does have upload issue. I couldn't go past 200kb upload using speednet. I also get "network unavailable" error. My friends Fascinate got it too. Using it as speaker phone you would need to have no more than 1 foot from you, in particular when there's a lot of background noise. I use it for driving even though I'm not supposed to. The Evo I can have on my lap and people were able to hear me. But at the same time it also picked up more noise because of having more sensitive mic. With GPS it was fine. No issue however it look a little longer to lock.

Overall it was a good phone. But really the main reason I liked the Epic is it's speed. Everything just ran smoother and faster. Stock to stock the Epic wins in speed. I have to mod my Evo to get it as close to the Epic. So far I'm pretty happy with it. You can check out my video below of my Evo. So if aren't going to mod your Evo then you might not be happy with it. Evo is pretty much all up to date and has everything now. I wasn't sure how long Sammy would take to get 2.2 on the Epic. So in the end I kept my Evo.

YouTube - Baked Snack 1.7 on Sprint Evo non Overclocked
 
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Ive got both and live in florida. Ill try to get pictures of them both later today (in sunlight).
Tahks. My own view using both is that while I prefer the Epic screen generally it has no advantage in direct sunlight. It is slightly better on picture, video in direct sunlight an slightly worse on text. So please do show standard text on white backgound in your comparison.
 
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I would personally love to get the Epic, but I'm reading far too many issues with the GPS (a huge thing for me because I use it almost daily while traveling around the city for my job) and the upload speed is capped at 150kbps (if using 3G). I don't have 4G everywhere, much less hardly anywhere around C-bus yet, so this information has pretty much scared me away from the Epic.!
The main Epic GPS issue has a workaround authored by me in the troubleshooting section. it fixes the main GPS issue.

But you are right about the Epcis data performance. Evo is a clear winner on that key issue. Evo can say it is the fastest phoen on the marekt, and Epic is an also ran, in most of the US Epic is slower than any of the top 30 3G smarphtones from the pat couple of years!

there is also some issue with the Epic radio per se. Just looking at evo overnight and epic I can see the Epci spends a LOT more time switching towers and search for single. All users report the same thing -- highly inordinate times. That goes to loss of battery life, longer time before you get your first ring. At my parents home town Sprints coverage is marginal in places, if I set to no roam, our Evo holds signal there and our Epics lose it.

Epic though does have several advantages. Hard keyboard and gaming. If those are important to you than data speeds, battery or signal get an Epic
 
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