I’m a smartphone type of guy, in the beginning it was mainly for the keyboards really, but as they’ve progressed I’ve come to admire all of the functionality in them as well. My regular phone, when I’m not reviewing any, is the AT&T Tilt, which is still probably one of the best smartphones on the market today even though it’s kind of aging in technological terms. So I’m no stranger when it comes to smartphones overall, I’ve owned others as well, and I’ve found they’re not just for business people these days, smartphones can be appreciated by anyone really for their features and overall usability. Now I like my Tilt quite a bit, but I might have to give it up for the phone I’ve got for review today…
We’ve taken a look at a few phones here on technogog, but no smartphones, until today that is. I’ve got the Samsung Epix for review, it’s a Windows Mobile 6.1 based phone that has quite a few great features including a built in optical mouse, touchscreen, full QWERTY keyboard, 320×320 screen and even a 2.0 megapixel camera. The optical mouse has got to be one of the best features of this phone, it makes using WinMo much easier and actually kinda fun, no more tapping the screen with your finger or getting out stylus for navigation, just use you thumb to move the cursor around the screen and click. It’s for At&t of course, and only them, so it does offer their aGPS navigation service, mediaNET and all of the other things you come to use with their services. It also has the now standard features of smartphones today like WiFi and Bluetooth as well.
Yes it’s fully feature packed, and really made for business, but it’s not without its faults, video recording is choppy and there’s no built-in GPS, something that I would have expected to come standard on a phone of this caliber, or really any smartphone these days. Another thing that bothered me about the Epix was using it in sunlight, the screen, or the cover of it,is like a mirror, it needs some anti-glare on it. Those are the only three glaring real faults I could find with this phone overall.
So first up check out the unboxing, then continue on for the rest of the review: