[Epic 4G General] herbthehammer:
I have both phones.

What I like about the shift:

Feels more responsive while using it

Battery lasts a little longer than the epic's

Feels like a solid built phone

I like the keyboard better than the epic's*

When plugged in, the battery will charge while it is being used

The battery takes less time to get to a full charge

I think the camera takes better quality pictures

What I don't like about the shift:

It's too small (I thought I could get used to it but I never did)

The keyboard is smaller*

Volume keys placement gets bumped often when closing keyboard

It doesn't get a 4g signal lock on as easily as the epic does

The screen is too small to see small fonts clearly because my eyesight isn't 20/20

Screen is difficult to see outside during the day

I don't like the way they designed the sd card slot mechanism

What I like about the epic:

Screen is larger and not a strain to read things

Screen is brighter so its easier to read during the daytime

The gpu seems to be able to keep up with games without studdering

Is better for watching videos because it has more codec support built in

Speaker can be quite loud

4g, 3g, and wifi radios seem to have better receive capability when compared to the htc's

I like the way the sd card socket is designed

Color saturation is pretty high for the screen even though it isn't calibrated the way it should be for true colors (can be both pro and con)

What I don't like about the epic:

Its too lightweight

Its build quality feels cheap when compared to shift

The keyboard drawer feels too loose and sloppy

The keyboard drops key presses and you have to go back and edit mistakes that weren't your fault

Samsung took entirely too long in releasing updates

The bugs in the software weren't fixed and sometimes were made worse with updates

Battery takes a long time to charge and must be not used at the same time if you want it to actually charge

Battery dies too quickly but not as quick as the stock evo does

The user interface lags and locks up sometimes

The touch screen doesn't feel as responsive as the shift

The stock camera app doesn't have zoom (that I can find anywhere)

The zoom from third party camera apps is really bad

Before 2.2, the high quality audio recording studdered and skipped constantly

Before 2.2, the video recording on the highest setting would crap out and couldn't be used very much if at all

The screen eats up too much battery when compared to the shift

Sometimes I bump the power off button by mistake while holding the phone and have to turn the screen back on and unlock it.

Samsung has a reputation for offering interesting products but lacks severely when fixing problems with updates in a timely manner if at all.

That's all I can think of for now on my opinion of the epic and shift

P.s.

Even though the nexus s is a highly desired piece of hardware, samsung's reputation, the reported issues it has, its cheap feeling build quality, and the fact that it's really not setting standards to beat like the original nexus, makes me think its not worth buying.

The evo shift is the first phone I've bought, that out of the box, seemed like everything worked and didn't have any glaring bugs or issues. Most of my cons about the shift are personal preference and not because of the fault of the phone's operation or construction.