Samsung Epix

[flyemhighrockets]

I was really thinking about getting this phone I tried it for a while in the AT&T store. Does anyone has this phone already? What are your thoughts, reviews, or comments on this phone? The mouse pointer took some getting used too. Thanks any comments would be greatly appreciated.

 

[questionfear]

I've had mine since Friday.

I was replacing an iPhone (original), I needed a bit more power than the iPhone was offering, plus I missed buttons.

So far I really like it. The mouse pointer does not bother me, I think I've pulled the stylus once to play solitaire, otherwise I've been using the mouse pointer exclusively. I think it's very much a YMMV kind of thing, but I love it and find it very intuitive to use. Scrolling I thought would be difficult but it's very easy, mouse to the upper or lower arrows and just keep clicking...dragging obviously is a bit more difficult and requires some dexterity.

So far signal has been great. I do live in NJ though, which is wrapped in a warm cozy blanket of AT&T 3G. 3G has been notably speedier than EDGE.

Overall I definitely like the phone. I haven't added any software yet, I wanted to go at least a week stock with it to get to know WinMob 6.1 (my previous experience was with WM2003), and to make sure the device was a stable happy one...assuming it stays well behaved, I'll start seeing how 3rd party apps go on Friday.

Hope this helps a bit!

 

[flyemhighrockets]

Thanks

Yes it did thanks for the reply.

 

[questionfear]

No problem. As an addendum, I've been trialing SPB mobile shell and SPB diary all week, and they've been great. I've also installed google maps and a few other programs, along with uninstalling various things that I tried and hated, and everything has been going well.

 

[flyemhighrockets]

Great to hear I think I have waited long enough I will go get one friday.

 

[phrogpilot73]

I just got one last week (Friday as well), and I can tell you that my Blackjack II is on eBay as we speak. When I'm no longer working in my current job, the Treo 750 is going on eBay as well.

It feels very solid in my hand, although I wish it had soft touch paint like the Treo 750. I was not impressed with the build quality of the BJII (it squeaked when I typed), but I liked it's battery length and phone clarity/bluetooth signal strength. Luckily the Epix kept the battery length and bluetooth, and got rid of the "cheap" feel.

I'm surprised just how much I like the finger mouse. I thought I would hate it, and keep turning it off every now and then - but it's like having a one-handed stylus. It's awesome! I did turn the speed on it all the way up, so it responded a bit better. The screen doesn't respond as well to screen taps as the Treo 750 does, and I absolutely HATE the haptic feedback crap. I turned it off already. I only pull the stylus out when I feel like it (and with SkyBook for Facebook - it doesn't like the finger mouse AT ALL), which turns out to be not very often.

This thing is FAST compared to both the BJII and the Treo 750. This is what WM is supposed to be! The WiFi and GPS are both working well, and the good news is that the GPS works with Google Maps and Live Search (although I did have to switch the Live Search to look for it on COM 9). I do like WM 6.1, but there are some things about it that I don't know if it's Epix specific or WM 6.1 (like there's no notification for unknown callers). The minor gripes I have thusfar are just that, minor.

There's a CRAP TON of AT&T bloatware. More than on any other phone I've seen. I deleted it all quick, fast and in a hurry. Didn't need it. I've installed all the typical programs I use:

SPB Phone Suite (needed to get the Beta version 1.3.1 I believe for it to work)
Wisbar Lite (for some reason with cascading menus, it adds a bar of white nothingness at the bottom)
WeatherPanel
Google Maps
Live Search
Windows Live (for push email)
Live Mesh Client
MemMaid
PMClean
PHM RegEdit
ScreenCapture
SkyBook

The only piece of software that I'm not stoked I had to install harkened back to my Treo 650 days: PDANet. AT&T's got this thing locked down, just like the BJII (not like the Treo 750) so no Internet Sharing. PDANet sidesteps that for me.

Hope this helps, and if you've got any specific questions I'll try to answer.

 

[flyemhighrockets]

thanks for the indepth details.

I have nothing but great things about the epix especially its larger proccesser which make it faster. It is very odd how some phones get alot of hype for instance the blackjack 2 which has 9 million comericials which they are still playing and ads all over the place but then a better phone as the epix comes out and you dont hear that much at all about this phone. The only way that I heared of the phone is from the internet then I went to a att store and seen the phone itself. Seems to me they should want to hype up the nwere better faster phone also just as much if not more then they did the blackjack 1&2 you heard about these phones forever. Just seems real odd to me.

 

[Pearl_Diva]

How did you delete the bloatware, phrogpilot73? I can't figure out how to uninstall that, even after a hard reset(used the built in app though). Did I miss something?

 

[phrogpilot73]

How did you delete the bloatware, phrogpilot73? I can't figure out how to uninstall that, even after a hard reset(used the built in app though). Did I miss something?

I used the file explorer to navigate to My Device/Program Files and My Device/Windows/Start Menu and deleted it there. It's not gone from ROM, and doesn't do anything to clear up any memory that I've noticed - but it does make for a cleaner start menu.

So I'm guessing you just got one?

 

[Pearl_Diva]

Last week, and still looking for a cooked ROM without AT&T crap, LOL! I'm not sure they made a generic version of this phone though. People say it's the i780, but this number is i907, meaning some significant upgrade may have been made. I think the i780 did not have a quad band radio.

 

[phrogpilot73]

Last week, and still looking for a cooked ROM without AT&T crap, LOL! I'm not sure they made a generic version of this phone though. People say it's the i780, but this number is i907, meaning some significant upgrade may have been made. I think the i780 did not have a quad band radio.

It didn't have UMTS, but it had HSDPA and also was missing the 850 band. WM 6.0 vice 6.1, but other than that they're about the same. It'd be nice to see a cooked one, but I can make do with my simple fix for now.

I forgot how much I really hated this bloatware, as I have the unbranded ROM on my 750. For some reason I didn't notice the AT&T crap on the BJII.

So what do you think of this phone? I think the build quality is 180 times better than the BJII...

 

[Pearl_Diva]

The BJII is still pretty solid IMO. But Professional makes me remember why I like the full version better than Standard.

 

[TopDog]

Being a European, I'm using the i780.

I've been using it for a week now, and have to say I love it!

...but from all the Epix pictures I've seen the last weeks, I think our European model has a smaller battery, because the AT&T version looks thicker. It also looks like there is more space between the buttons and the screen (where the AT&T logo is placed), on mine it's just about 3mm gap.

I've written a little bit about my initial thoughts on my blog (being so new here I'm not allowed to link to it, but check my signature if you are interessted).

It's too bad Samsung doesn't seem to offer us i780 users a WM 6.1 upgrade though :-(