Samsung Epix - Review

Tech reviews, in this review video you will learn about the Samsung Epix.

Hey guys Jon Rettinger with jon4lakers.com here with a review for you of the Samsung EPIX. It’s a new windows mobile 6.1 handset that was released just a few weeks ago on AT&T’s network. I’m going to try and make this more a review of the phone itself and unless a reviewer dissertation on Windows Mobile. So let’s get started to a quick hardware overview of the phone. First thing that you’ll notice is it look similar to the Samsung Blackjack and Black jack 2. And the old trios’ meaning it’s got a full QWERTY keyboard on the front and a touch screen right there. In this case the 320 by 320 resistive touch screen meaning it’s got a little bit of squish to the screen. The taps are registered by two thin layers being pressed together so that’s part of it. There’s your full QWERTY keyboard and this in the middle looks like a D-pad is actually an optical track pad you can move your finger along and actually looks like a mouse on the screen the arrows follows around when you are doing it. It’s really very handy and a very quick feature you get used to. If you don’t like it you can very easily turn it off and just turn it to a standard keypad which swipes up though up and down to go down. Hardware wise we got two soft keys the left soft key and the right soft key, send key and a lock and end key on the front full QWERTY keyboard with shortcuts, down below you have shortcuts for poppy internet explorer, calendar, camera and mail right there some few handy shortcuts and those can be programmed for anything else all the icons down there to make it easy to remember what’s what. On the left side of the device you got the power on button right there a very easy to reach volume toggle. On the right side of the device got your Samsung proprietary charging and headset port there is a not a 3.5 millimeter headset jack but there is an adapter you can plug right in there without any trouble. And one nice thing I like to see is a micro SD slot on the side which is available without taking out the battery. And it’s hot swappable of course so just take that out, push in your micro SD card and you’re good to go. On the back of the device you got a 2 megapixel camera with a self portrait mirror and a whole plastic back. The whole phone is made of plastic and it does have a nice solid feel to it. An addition to the back of the device there is a three way collapsible stylus for use with the touch screen. This Samsung Epix unlike the some of the HTC phones is not skinny meaning windows mobile is, as Microsoft built it on here the standard windows mobile home screen so everything that you need to do really need to be done by the stylus. It’s not very finger friendly. So we’ll go ahead and close this up here put that back in and let’s talk about the best features of the phone. This thing has a monster battery. I’ll show you guys in a little bit. It’s an 1800 milliamp hour battery. I didn’t charge this phone for four days and that’s with heavy internet usage. The battery of this thing is unbelievable for a 3D phone. I never use any 3Gphone that could last for that long. My iPhone for example which is the 3G version luck to get through a day without a charge. So congratulations to Samsung the battery make up about a half of the phone and are the reason the phone is as thick as it is. During my unboxing, I did a size comparison with the iPhone so you can go and check that out if you want to see some more sizes on it. The keyboard of the phone is again very similar to Black jack and the Blackjack 2.it is easy to use the keys are small but with a little bit of care you can get the right key to press without much difficulty. So I do like the keyboard it’s hard to get a full front facing QWERTY keyboard to be very wide spaced but it’s same time did you and I to do a nice shot of that. They really didn’t fix what wasn’t broken so that’s a nice feature. The track pad here like I mention is very easy to use and I really did get used to it very quickly almost the first time I was using the phone. The Epix does come with hefty feedback meaning every button you touch the phone vibrate a bit let me tell you that gets annoying so quickly. The whole phone vibrates almost like its ringing just for a quick second. It’s unnecessary, it’s a little bit laggy if you push it and feels like in a second later vibrates. I’m not a fun of the hefty feedback. So the phone itself if you look at the keyboard here you’ve got your white number rows going all the way down but the nice thing is since this is a touch screen you don’t have to5 you don’t have to use those numbers if you want to dial. It does have a full keypad. All the keypad itself is a little difficult to use. It’s small the screen is small it’s kind of hard to dial with the resistive touch screen. So I’m not such a fan of the keypad that you have to use to dial. Let me go ahead and turn this thing off and show you guys the battery because it’s very hard to appreciate how big it is until you actually see it. I’ll go ahead and pull the back of this (0:05:09). So you can still see the thickness of the device there. Un plucks its monster battery I need the stylus to do it. I’m going to grab that out. We will pull this out here. The battery is out just get a sense of how big I mean that really is. There’s the phone and there’s the battery. The thickness of the phone really is this monster behemoth of a battery.1800 milliamp hours I would gladly have a thicker phone to have a battery in this capacity. So again I really have to give Samsung a credit and that made the phone much more enjoyable in my opinion. I got to put the battery back in here. Reception wise the phone was just as good as any other phone I’ve used. Any Windows Mobile phone and iPhone even the G1 I was using last week. Really reception wise is fine calls on the other end had no problem hearing me and problem hearing them. They did say that they sound like a little bit of light noise but it would have just been my location. So call quality was good. Speaker volume on the handset is actually outstanding. Speakers are quite loud it’s a very large speaker grill at the top of the device right there. So the speaker phone was fantastic. Camera is two megapixels and that can be Ensor Addams taking any professional photography shots with this but it’s not bad. It’s decent for a camera phone it’s fine for a quick snap at a party or take a picture of your friends to show them later. So that’s not a problem there. Hardware wise the phone is fantastic while it is made of plastic it does feel solid and nice in the hand. It’s got a little bit f heft. Probably from that monster battery. But it does fell nice and does feel solid and it’s certainly a pocket of all devices despite its size. So I really did enjoy that What I don’t like and still this phone can’t overcome as its fatal flaw is Windows Mobile 6.1. At least it’s skinned. It’s not finger friendly anything you want to do. You see you have to take the stylus and you have to start tapping away. So it really takes anything to one handed operation now becomes two handed operation. I think you lose some of the joy of the touch screen when you can’t operate it with one hand. I’ve use Windows mobile standard before so the none touch screen version and I almost preferential to that that’s much easier for a one handed operation you can scroll down with buttons. This may seem much more difficult to use and then play to the strength of the phone It didn’t use the hard ware’s as well as it could have. But the phone has this capacity. I think Samsung should have put some sort of skin on it. Certainly nothing like TouchPro 3D and like what HTC is done. By the way Samsung does have some proprietary skins for instance the widgets that’s found in the Omnia. That would have been a very welcome feature. Over all I’ve been very happy with the phone but I just can’t get over the Windows Mobile side of it. I was really trying to get Windows Mobile a shot but 6.1 just didn’t quite cut it. So on a one to five scale if I was just great the phone itself i would give the phone a solid four just for hard ware and feel but overall operating system and phone using experience I’ll got to give the phone a three out of five. So guys I’m Jon Rettinger with www.jon4lakers.com. Hope you enjoyed the review of the Samsung Omnia. Make that the Samsung Epix rather and this phone is currently available through AT&T service. So hop on down to your AT&T store or on line it’s available for $4.49 with a no commitment pricing with a two year contract, it’s $2.99 with a $100.00 mail in repay bringing the price to $199.99 and at rebay and you can get that rebay gift card in the mail. So guys I hope you enjoyed this review of the Samsung Epix if it’s a phone you are looking for if you are a fan of windows mobile then go ahead and get it I think you will be very happy with it. If you are looking for something to replace an iPhone or something that is a little more one handed and user friendly I recommend looking elsewhere. Alright guys Jon Rettinger of jon4lakers.com. If you want some more exclusive contents and sneak peeks to what’s coming up, be sure to follow me on twitter, www.twitter.com/jon4lakers. I’ll post links to those in the side bar. Alright guys I will talk to you soon. Bye Guy’s one last point I wanted to mention is this is just a test device it’s not replacing any of my current phone. My primary device being the iPhone. Just something I wanted to use to give you guys a sense of what it felt like and what was it all about, bye.