Samsung Epic 4G: The First 4G-Capable Phone With Slide-Out QWERTY Keyboard And AMOLED Touchscreen

Sprint and Samsung Telecommunications America (Samsung Mobile) today introduced the second 4G-capable handset from Sprint, Samsung Epic™ 4G, a Galaxy S™ smartphone and Samsung Mobile’s first 4G Android™-powered device.

Samsung Epic 4G

Samsung Epic 4G is part of a new breed of Samsung smartphones offering their very best in screen, speed and content quality for a premium user experience, and offers a fully integrated multimedia, messaging and social networking experience. It also features an exceptionally thin smartphone design with a slide out, full QWERTY keyboard and 4-inch Super AMOLED touchscreen display.

The brilliant Super AMOLED touchscreen display offers:

• The best representation of color on a mobile phone that matches original content, more than - 100 times the contrast quality of other leading displays
• Faster response time that reduces “ghosting” images
• Wide viewing angles to prevent blurring or distortion
• Thinner design to offer more accurate and responsiveness to touch

Entertainment At Its Best

In the coming months, Samsung Epic 4G will have access to the Samsung Media Hub, making it the first and only 4G handset to feature a video store with movies and TV available for purchase or rental, and video content set up for an HD-like entertainment experience on a handset screen. With 4G from Sprint, users will be able to get turbo-charged downloads of a full library of video and literary content powered by some of the biggest names in entertainment.

Samsung Epic 4G also features Samsung’s exclusive AllShare service to wirelessly share stored music, pictures and HD video to other DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) certified™ home electronics, including HDTVs, monitors, digital cameras, printers and more. Through AllShare, users will be able to capture moments with the phone’s camera and camcorder, and wirelessly show them to friends or family on their DLNA certified HDTV or download music from a PC to Samsung Epic 4G and take on the road.

Amazing Features

Powered by the Android 2.1 platform, Samsung Epic 4G also supports a series of advanced touch screen gestures including multi-touch pinch, long tap and zoom and vertical and horizontal swiping.

Samsung Epic 4G is the only 4G smartphone to offer three fast and easy ways to enter text onto the device – a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard, virtual keyboard and Swype technology, which allows users to input text faster and more intuitively with one continuous finger motion across the virtual keyboard.

The smartphone is designed for an optimal gaming experience with a six-axis sensor that fine tunes its accelerometer’s ability to interpret simple movements of the device, so when the phone tilts up and down or left and right, the game can immediately respond in the same directions. A demo of Asphalt 5, a popular racing game, is preloaded exclusively on Samsung Epic 4G allowing users to take full advantage of these advanced gaming capabilities.

It also features:

• Samsung 1GHz Cortex A8 Hummingbird Application Processor supports amazing 3-D graphics, faster upload and download times and the full richness of HD-like multimedia content.
• Dual camera: 5 MP camera/camcorder with autofocus, Power LED flash and 3x digital zoom for HD video³ (720p) video recording and front facing VGA camera for video chat and more
• Visual Voicemail
• Mobile Hotspot capability supporting up to five Wi-Fi enabled devices to share the 4G experience simultaneously
• Android Market™ for access to more than 50,000 useful applications, widgets and games available for download to customize the experience
• Wi-Fi^® b/g/n
• 1500 mAh battery

Game-Changer For Business Customers

Samsung Epic 4G is designed to deliver one of the best multi-media experience for business users in several vertical industries such as healthcare, education, public safety, construction and professional services through superior speed and display innovation. It offers support for push email and integrated calendar services, including Google™ and Yahoo, as well as Exchange ActiveSync for corporate email including enhanced device management and security features, as well as full support for Google Mobile Services.

With Android’s open-software platform, businesses can benefit from several productivity-enhancing applications available in the Android Market™ including bar code scanning, signature capture, document viewing and the ability to stream and upload video for customer approval and archival purposes.

Staying Connected With Social Networking

To make staying connected faster and easier, Samsung Epic 4G includes Samsung Social Hub designed to integrate all your social networking services, messages, personal and business email, calendars and contacts. Additionally, calendar information from portal calendars, such as Google Calendar and social networking services are displayed together in one calendar with two-way synchronization.

As work on finalizing the software is underway, Sprint expects to launch Android 2.2 for Samsung Epic 4G in the near future. With the Android 2.2 upgrade, customers can expect improvements to include the following benefits among others: updates to User Interface, improved EAS Support, improved Browser Performance including Flash 10x Support, voice Dialing Over Bluetooth and application Storage on External Memory.

Sprint will announce pricing and availability of Samsung Epic 4G in the coming months.