[Motorola Photon 4G] cutter2668:
Photon for the win here"s why

I looked at the epic 4g touch, like the screen size, liked the screen, dont mind touchwiz at all. The phone is not too large though it is too thin for a number of reasons. Its thin profile makes it harder to hold on to although its larger size does help. Hats off to samsung for not going qhd, qhd makes things smaller and the 4.3 qhd screens are NOT AS WIDE as previous phones like the evo4g, so you get cheated a bit in width which is also make more apparent by the qhd resolution which makes things even smaller so I dont fault samsung at all for its 800x480 resolution. I wish people would get off the higher is better boat regarding resolution, 1280x720 is far to large for a phone screen of only 4 to five inches, net books that are ten inches is one thing a 4.5 inch screen is quite another, get some glasses to read the text on that resolution lol. Anyhow people love that super amoled screen, those screens do not last long, they suffer from burn in on the screens and do not respond well in cold or heat extremes. Super amoled screens like other samsung lcds are overly color saturated and are no sharper really than apples retina , pentile or super lcd, they simply have very punchy colors that appeal to the herd.

Other thoughts..... while the samsung epic rg touch does have a nice screen, good video processor and slightly more zippy.... it's thin design did not take cooling into consideration, these phones get really hot which shortens the hardware life and battery life, thinner is not necessarily better and samsungs design did not take processor heat dissipation into consideration instead they went the apple route.......all about form and forget about function. Many epic touch owners have complained about their phones over heating and shutting down. Second, while the speaker on the samsung and audible quality are better than other samsungs in the past, it still cannot hold a candle to the excellent speaker and audible call quality on the photon 4g. Third is the hardware....samsung used a great video solution, but the qualcomm dual core tends to focus more on throttling down the second core. While the epic touch 4g usually scores better in benchmarks than the photon you have to remember these are synthetic tests and not real world tests, add to that the fact that the samsung is running at 800x480 resolution while the photon is running at 540x960 resolution so the photon as a whole lot more pixels to render than the epic touch 4g which accounts for some of the lower benchmark scores you see and people usually dont take that into consideration or just seem to forget it. These benchmarks would have more meaning if the resolutions were identical......they are not so take them with a grain of salt.

Finally the photon 4g is evdo rev. b capable and very likely has a wimax/lte chip from beceem, the bcs 500 chip. Samsung cheaped out on the cdma radio in the epic touch 4g and used a chip that was manufactured back in 2007 and this chip is not evdo rev b capable, samsung also used the same wimax chip as found in the evo4g as I recall which is older and never has been a very good wimax chip. The photon has much better signal strength and reception than the epic touch 4g hands down and for that matter so does the evo3d.

Even though the evo 3d and photon 4g have screens that are not as wide as the screen on the evo4g, images are sharper due to higher res and Ive not had many problems other than these phones should have a screen equally as wide as the evo4g which would have given them more space between keys on the virtual keyboards and more viewing area. The photons pentile screen is very nice and often compared to the retina screen on the iphones. The pentile screen when set to auto brightness does not exhibit any pixelation or screen door effect that others whine about yet dont bother to check the phones display brightness and change it to auto. The pentile screen is also alot more battery friendly and can be viewed outdoors with no problems which is more than I can say for samsungs superamoled screens when using them outdoors or in your car. The photons auto brightness setting is very battery friendly and frankly the first phone where I have used the auto bright setting. It is super crisp and more color accurate than the super amoled screens which again are overly color saturated. Dont get me wrong the super amoled does look nice but like I said, the photons screen is very very good and the pixelation complaints are a moot point, when you properly set the display to auto brightness that problem is solved. I noticed this on a photon at a sprint store immediately, I then checked the display brightness which was set to maximum, when you set it to auto bright VOILA problem is gone!! I can use my photon and see the display with no problems indoors, outdoors, in my car, everywher. Cant say that about the epic4gtouch screen or any other super amoled screen. People who hate anything but super amoled are not aware that they are not seeing color accuracy on other screens as compared to their samsungs and think there is something wrong with the other screens that are not overly color saturated to make them look soo punchy. Its like people who think a car stereo or sound system is all about bass.... the equate a good system with lots and lots of bass as opposed to a sound system that encompasses good higher sound frequencies as well.

Bottom line is the Photon was my choice, better sound better speaker better screen with ACCURATE colors and viewable in any lighting conditions plus evdo rev b compatible and most likely wimax/lte compatible which is the one thing no other sprint phone will be.