Samsung Epic 4G Touch (Sprint)

Hi, everyone. I'm Bonnie Cha, Senior Editor at cnet, and I'm here to bring you a first look at the Samsung Epic 4G Touch for Sprint. This Sprint's version of the Samsung Galaxy S2 which we've been waiting for a long time here in the U.S. and Sprint will actually be the first one to bring it to market starting on September 16th for $199.99 with the two-year contract. So, why we've been waiting for this phone? Well, let's start with the design. As you can see it's quite a large device but it's very thin and light so that helps me get a little more manageable. On front, you get a 4.52-inch WVGA Super AMOLED Plus Screen. It's really gorgeous. The extra space makes it great for viewing web pages and images and video. On back here, you've got an 8-megapixel camera with an LED flash and Sprint has added a bit of a textured back so it helps make it feel less plasticky but I do wish Samsung would add some metal accents or something like that to make it formal-- feel more like a premium handset. On the front, you've got a 2-megapixel camera here on the left so you can make video calls and I know that some people have been asking a lot for this. It does have an LED indicator light so when you have new messages or missed calls, it does blink. It is running Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread along with Touchwiz user interface. Samsung has made some enhancements to their UI. You get more fluid emotions and you can resize the widgets which is also nice. There's also some new cosmetic changes. For example, if you hold down the buttons here, you can see all your home screens at once. They also made some more fluid and animated actions which again is cosmetic but it makes for a more polished UI. It also has an integrated task manager so you can see what apps you've downloaded, which ones are active, and see your RAM and as well as storage settings. So, that's very nice. You've also got a pull down menu where you can easily manage your wireless connections. The Epic 4G Touch is a 4G device and it can be used as a mobile hotspot for up to eight devices. So far, the 4G speeds have been pretty good, around 4-megabits per second down. So, not as fast as Verizon but it's still pretty good. Call quality is just okay. It sounds a bit muffled to-- it could be better as well as speaker phone quality. It does have a dual core processor and the phone is very fast. I've been very impressed with the speed of the device and even using the camera. You can take pictures quickly right one after the other. It also has DLNA support and you can use an adapter to do HDMI out. Overall, I think the Epic 4G Touch is a great device, probably one of Sprint's top Android phones. The size of the phone will be a turn off for some and I think if you want world-roaming capabilities, you should check out the Motorola Photon 4G. So, if you want something with the big screen as well as great multimedia features and entertainment features, the Epic 4G Touch is a good way to go. I'm Bonnie Cha and this have been your first look at the Samsung Epic 4G Touch for Sprint.