Saturday, October 23, 2010

Sprint Epic 4G Review / Comments (Samsung Galaxy S Pro)

Here I'll make some observations of different aspects of this Android device with somewhat detailed analysis of its performance.

Battery Life / Charging
Well, battery life isn't very good. The Galaxy S phones ship with a 1500mA battery, and that just isn't going to last very long if you use it heavily. In standby with most things shut off (4g, wifi, gps) it will last a few days though.

Charing with this phone is the interesting thing. Connected to the little USB charger that comes with it the phone charges at a rate of about .4% a minute. So it takes about 2 hours to charge fully. Connected to any other USB device that I have to test with (computer, AC to USB adapter, car to USB adapter) it charges at a rate of about .2% an hour, taking about 4 hours to fully charge. If you use the android application "Battery Status" you can see that the phone detects the Samsung USB adapter as "AC" but every other USB adapter as "USB." Because of what it detects the phone apparently charges at different rates. This does not have any correlation with the amount of power supplied by the actual adapter (well it probably has to have enough) as I've used 1A adapters and they charger slower than the .7A Samsung adapter. I will continue testing with generic and the official Sprint adapter when I acquire them (hopefully in the next week.

GPS Accuracy
I received my phone after at least one GPS accuracy patch has been released but there are still issues that have been apparent and that I'm noticing. The patch allows for quicker satellite acquisition and accuracy fixes. However, using the Android application "GPS Status" it shows that the error margin (accuracy reported) never gets below 98 feet. In testing though the accuracy is closer to 3-4 feet with 8 satellites connected. I'm not sure what is up with that abut it is almost dead on even though it says it isn't. Anyway, it works just fine for geocaching.
GPS is sitting on top of a geocache with accurate coordinates, showing it is within 4 feet, but the error range is way off.


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