[EVO Shift 4G General] herbthehammer:
I have all 3 phones. I have tried running divx, mp4 and mkv through all of them. The resolutions vary between dvd up to 720p hdtv quality. I am sad to say that, this is just my unscientific opinion, the evo shift stock is not more powerful than the other two in real world testing. I've tested operating all three in stock rom form and the shift isn't the badass.

If you want to recreate these tests for yourself to see or prove me wrong then go ahead. Go find a 720p mkv tv show off torrents or something and try running them on these phones.

Each phone has it's strong points and weaknesses. It just depends on what are you wanting the phone to do and what is more important than another thing. In general games, the epic seems to have the higher and smoother frame rates. It does have the largest keyboard area of between the two. I found that with my big fingers, I was bumping keys next to the one I was trying to hit many more times than I do on the Shift. The Epic's drawer mechanism is pretty darn loose. The Epic in video recording had closer to the actual colors and less artifacting caused by too high compression when compared to the Evo. I have yet to test video on the Shift much. I cannot record at the highest video resolution with the Epic without an error message coming up. The video is always corrupted when it crashes. If I do short recording sessions of just a few seconds, the epic looks better to me than the Evo. The Evo compresses too much and it shows in playback. The Evo will continue to record and not crash though when it is in highest resolution. Epic's high quality audio recording really sucks. It skips and studders. Both Evos sound great without any complaints. The screen on the Epic looks nicer and has richer looking colors than both Evos. Black is really black on the Epic. The colors might be richer but they exaggerate the saturation when comparing to whatever it is you are filming in real life.

The Epic seems to have more sensitive radios than the Evo but not the Shift, it hears just a little bit better than the Epic. I don't know who wins for battery life but I do know the Evo is in last place for runtime on a single charge.

Running the operating system on all three, the Evo seems quickest, Epic second, and the Shift in third. I'm talking about noticing hiccups, studders, temporary lockups and delayed reactions to screen touches. The Evo is very sensitive to the touch, the Shift second and Epic last. I found too many times I was talking back to the Epic, telling it to hurry up or come on!

The Epic takes a long time to charge and I haven't seen it be able to charge and use the device at the same time and actually increase battery capacity. I have seen both the Evos be able to charge and run at the same time.

Another thing I tried was pinch zooming in and out with the stock browser and see how smooth and fast it was. The Evo was definitely quick, followed closely by the Epic and Shift in last place with quick yet jerky zooming.

In closing, to be fair, the Evo has had the most official updates since first release. The epic has had a few updates too. The Shift is less than a week old. Evos are running 2.2 and Epic 2.1 so take some of that under consideration for speed too. I might be wrong but I would speculate that the Epic would be even faster when/if it finally goes to froyo. How would that stack up with the Evo? I don't know. It all comes down to what do you want in order of importance? For physical keyboards, I'm making less mistakes by hitting nearby keys with the Shift than the Epic.

Do any of you have two or all three of these phones? What are your observations? I'm not saying that these things I've said are facts per se, just my personal observations and impressions after using them. You mileage will most likely vary.