Samsung Epic 4G and HTC Evo 4G are both good Android multimedia phones and are the first two 4G phones introduced in US in 3Q 2010. Both are served by the US carrier Sprint’s Wimax network and both run Android 2.1 (Eclair) / Android 2.2 (Froyo). The process speed and RAM size also same in both, both have 1 GHz processor and 512 MB RAM. Both perform well and the call quality also good. Multitasking and browsing experiences are impressive in both. You have the front camera for video calling and mobile hotspot feature in both. Apart from these similarities they are two different designs from two different manufactures, Samsung and HTC. The main visible differences are the physical QWERTY keyboard and the screen size. Samsung Epic 4G has a slideout full QWERTY keyboard with touchscreen with swype for text input while HTC Evo 4G is a candy bar, it has on-screen virtual keyboard only. HTC Evo has 4.3 inches display while it’s 4 inches in Samsung Epic 4G, but the Samsung display is more brighter and produce vivid images with its super AMOLED technology. The other difference is the camera, while Samsung Epic 4G has 5.0 MP camera with LED flash HTC Evo 4G sports 8.0 MP camera with dual LED flash. The video capturing capability is same in both, HD 720p. Samsung and HTC give unique user experience with their own UI, it’s TouchWiz in Samsung and HTC Sense in HTC devices. Both are continuously improving their UI to give better experience to users and to give them the best benefit from Android upgrades.
Samsung Epic 4G
The Samsung Epic 4G (Model SPH-D700) from Galaxy S family has one of the rare combination of a 4″ super AMOLED touchscreen with swype text input and a slideout full QWERTY keyboard. The super AMOLED LCD display with 16M color depth is anti reflective, anti smudge and anti scratch and it gives a sharp and crisp text view and the images are vivid and vibrant. It also has wider viewing angle and the display is clear even under sunlight. The Samsung Epic 4G is powered by 1 GHz Hummingbird Cortex A8 processor with 512 MB RAM and Android 2.1 (Eclair) /Android 2.2 (Froyo) and runs on 4G Wimax network (the US carrier is Sprint). It’s also compatible with 3G CDMA EV-DO network. With these power, the phone performs well. The multitasking and browsing experience are impressive enough. The other features include a 5 mega pixel camera with LED flash and capability to capture HD videos at 720p, can be turned in to a mobile hotspot and connect 5 other devices, preloaded 16 GB mcroSD card that can be expanded up to 32 GB, DLNA certified – you can wirelessly stream your phone’s media content via AllShare to DLNA certified devices.
The Samsung Epic 4G powered by Android has access to the fast growing Android Market and has integrated many Google Mobile Apps like, Gmail, Google Search including voice search, YouTube and many other. The TouchWiz 3.0 UI, which is specific to Samsung handsets, brings easy access to your favored application with hubs – social hub, media hubs and offeres 7 homescreens which are customizable and user friendly. You can also add new widgets to the homescreens
At 4.18 x 2.5 x 0.39 inches Epic 4G weighs 5.47 oz, bulky compared to recent Samsung Galaxy S series. The battery used in Samsung Epic 4G is 1,500 mAh lithium-ion with a rated battery life of 6 hours talk time and 300 hours standby time.
HTC Evo 4G
Evo 4G is the first 4G phone that was introduced in 2010 Summer in US. It has a big screen, 4.3 inch LCD screen that support WVGA (800 x 480 pixels resolution) and 8 megapixel camera with dual LED and powered by 1 GHZ Qualcomm Snapdragon processor with 512 MB RAM. Browsing is a good experience in a large display with pinch to zoom facility and at 4G speed. The touch screen is sensitive and fast. It also has 1.3 megapixel front-facing camera for video calling. The other features include mobile hotspot – connect up to 8 devices at 4G speed, 1 GB internal memory with 8GB microSD card, the memory can be expanded up to 32 GB, HDMI out, YouTube HQ video player. Battery life is not very impressive in Evo 4G, it is rated as 6 hrs talk time and 146 hours standby time.
HTC Evo 4G is little bulky and large, it weighs 6 oz, and the dimensions are 4.8 x 2.6 x 0.5 inches.
HTC boasts about its new HTC Sense as designed with many little but simple ideas that will make HTC phones to give you little surprises, delighting you every time. They call HTC Sense a Social Intelligence. With the htcsense. com online service, you can trace your lost phone by sending a command to make the phone sound an alert, it will sound even while on silent mode, you can locate it in the map too. Also if you want you can remotely wipe all data in the handset with a single command. HTC sense also support multiple windows for browsing. The other HTC Sense features include, flip your phone to silence, preview your drive with local map and compass and rings louder when its inside a bag or hidden.
Sprint’s 4G WiMax network currently offers up to 10+Mbps on down link, which Sprint claims as 10 times faster than 3G speed and the upload speed is up to 4 Mbps. 3G-CDMA offers up to 3.1 Mbps on download and up to 1.8 Mbps on upload.