Still Epic in its own right
When they name a product "Epic," there is a certain expectation established and a bar set. The Samsung Epic is one of those phones that nearly lived up to the hype when new and still has a few tricks up its sleeve for us today.
Epic is the Sprint variant of the first Galaxy S, Samsung's flagship device. While the landscape is dull and monotone today, it was a different story when the Galaxy S was still hot news because each carrier got its own special version of the device. With Sprint's heritage being that of the critically acclaimed HTC Touch Pro 2, Samsung really wanted to put out something special in order to pay homage to that legacy, so they gave Sprint the the only (at the time) Galaxy S with a horizontal slider keyboard, which is truly its killer feature. The Epic's 'board represents the pinnacle of smartphone keyboards, surpassing even the legendary Touch Pro 2. To this day, it is still hailed as the best ever. Also unmatched is its Wolfson audio system, which outputs excellent sound that rivals even the more expensive music players and iPods. To this day, the audio quality on the Epic is a step above average.
The big weaknesses of the original Galaxy S phones, the Epic included, were the screen and lack of memory. The "S" in Galaxy S stands for "Super AMOLED," an alternative screen technology that stands to deliver superior contrast to conventional LCD panels. While it does deliver in that area, its substandard subpixel layout leads to a slight reduction in actual resolution due to some pixels having to share a green. Also, these panels are known for their sickly green tint which can only be corrected by making use of a third-party kernel. As far as the memory is concerned, 512MB is just not enough to be able to multitask smoothly. Even when the phone was new, Android software was starting to adopt the practice that it has embraced today of taking up inordinately-huge amounts of memory. For this reason, applications are likely to be erased from memory almost as soon as they are exited, creating a delay when the user attempts to enter back into them. This problem affects even newer devices with 1.5-2GB of memory, but hits especially hard for all smartphones of this era.
In all other areas, the Epic score neither better or worse than its contemporaries. Radio performance, battery life, and cameras are all average for the time. Also, the FM radio in these models, like many others of the day, is shorted out internally, making it impossible to pick up any stations.
In conclusion, the Epic is a unique device that history will remember as the "Good Galaxy S." Its outstanding keyboard gave it the edge over its platform-mates and brought customers to Sprint in droves (before they all left upon finding out how bad the data connection was in those dark days). The excellent sound system and other attention-to-detail aspects on display, such as the cover over the MicroUSB port and Wolfson audio, were seen as added bonuses. I wouldn't recommend the Epic for anything other than text messaging and email nowadays, and the screen certainly does leave a lot to be desired, but for the prices that these things are selling for now, you absolutely cannot beat it.Read full review
Verified purchase: Yes
