Windows Phone Italy

Owning the Samsung Epix isn’t the sunshine and daisy field day I thought it was going to be. The device has some serious issues.

Let’s take a quick peek...

A while ago, I wrote a review on the Samsung Epix for Gear Diary. At the time, I was very pleased with the device, as it was, in my opinion, a huge step ahead of my iPhone 3G.

Now, I’m really noticing a number of different issues with the device, and they are quite annoying and rather problematic. In fact, they are really starting to tick me off...

In March 2009, I wrote a column on the Epix’s unresponsive power button.  A few days ago, one of Gear Diary’s new contributors, Carly Z., wrote an interesting article on a problem that is getting more and more press regarding the Samsung Epix.

Can someone please tell me what the heck a “SLOG dump” really is?!?

Between you and me, I have no idea what a “slog” is, or why it’s dumping (something...anything) in my device. While I personally haven’t seen the dialog below on my Epix, I have most if not all of the other symptoms of the device’s problems.

I regularly lose sound capabilities on my device, after setting the device to either silent or vibrate, and taking it OFF of either of those two audio settings.

The only way to return audio to the device is to either pull the battery or to turn the device on and off. Performing a soft reset (with some sort of software tool... remember the Epix does not have a soft reset switch), will not work.

The power button is frequently unresponsive, taking up to 10 seconds AFTER pressing it to turn the display on. The device often hangs when placing or receiving a call; and if the sound has gone out (there’s no way of knowing if the sound has bugged out or not. There’s no visual clue that the sound has stopped functioning), you can’t hear anything if the phone does answer or make a call.

Again, you have to pull the battery (best fix, and most often required) or turn the device off to clear the problem(s). I am also running through the battery and have nearly run out of power 4 times in the last 3 weeks.

Samsung has released a fix for this problem (as seen in Carly’s article, above); but its creating more problems than it appears to be worth. While it may resolve the SLOG dump problem, it creates other issues with the device that are equally as frustrating and problematic.

My advice to everyone right now is to stay away from Samsung WM Professional devices (the Omnia also appears to be having issues) for the time being.

I know that the Samsung Propel Pro, a WM 6.1 Standard device, has also been released on AT&T here in the US, but I’m also wary of it.

While I haven’t heard of it having any issues of this type, the Epix also did not display these kinds of problems while I was reviewing it late last year (and is another reason why I prefer to take at least 45 to 60 days to review a hardware device).

Problems like this don’t show themselves in a 30 day review period. You have to have time to get past the honeymoon period and really get into a day-to-day routine with a device before you know if you want to spend the “rest of your life” with it.