The Samsung Epic 4G Touch – The Greatest Device of All Time!

Today we are going to take a walk down memory lane.  I’m going to tell you about one of the devices that have had the biggest impact on my life.  That device is the Samsung Epic 4G Touch (E4GT)!  The Epic 4G Touch was the Sprint version of the Galaxy S2.  It was the first S2 variant available in the US.  It was released on the 16^th of September in 2011.  I got mine on January 1^st of 2012.

At the time, it was the cream of the crop.  The international version of the S2 shipped with a 4.3” screen, but the Sprint version came with the larger 4.52” Super AMOLED Plus display with a Gorilla Glass cover.  The phone was the perfect size and fit comfortably in the hand.  The textured back made it grippier than it would be otherwise.  The body and screen were durable and could survive just about anything. 

It came with a 1.2 GHz dual-core processor and 1GB of memory.  For storage, it had 16GB of internal storage and SD card support.  The Epic 4G Touch featured a removable 1,800 mAh battery (as opposed to the international version’s 1,650 mAh).  Although other variants of the S2 came with NFC, the Epic 4G Touch did not. 

The primary camera was an 8-megapixel camera and the front-facing camera came in at 2-megapixels.  It was capable of recording in 1080P Full HD and offered surprisingly good photo and video quality.

On the software side of things, it shipped with Android 2.3 (aka Gingerbread) and TouchWiz 4.0.  It received seven official updates during its life.  But thanks to a whole slew of leaks, users were able to get well over 40 updates!

The S2 was awarded Mobile World Congress’s “Smartphone of the Year 2012”, and received a lot of praise from just about every media outlet.  55 days after its release, Samsung announced that the 3 million S2 units had sold worldwide.  At 85 days, they had sold 5 million, and then at five months, they had sold 10 million!  Granted the Epic 4G Touch was just a small part of that, but the numbers are still quite impressive.

I could talk all day about the features of the S2 and how awesome the device was, but the truth is, that the real reason I love the device is the memories I have of it, and of how it got me to where I am today.

With the Epic 4G Touch, I was able to take my love of tinkering with my computer and do it on my phone.  I quickly became engrossed in the world of rooting, custom ROM’s, kernels, and all that fun stuff.  Eventually, I stumbled upon XDA-Developers and I was able to really get into things!  I spent hundreds, if not thousands of hours flashing everything I could to my phone.  After a while, I began hoarding all the different files that people created for the device and hosted them on my site, rwilco12.com.  The site became the single largest repository for anything related to the Epic 4G Touch.  Over time, and with the help of my good friend, Garwynn, we added several more devices. 

Eventually, I started doing my own development work and added my own files to the mix.  Fast forward to today, I have had several successful apps on and off of the Play Store, I have created several custom ROM’s, I became a moderator at XDA-Developers, I got a job working for AndroidFileHost.com, and then I started work on EpicDroid.com and the YouTube channel.  These have all been good things, but the most important side-effect of my owning an E4GT is the friends that I have made.  I made friends with people like Garwynn, Xrepinsporx (before he became AndroidFileHost), Mcgratey, The Real Sitek, Fryingpan0613, Cbucz, JdSingle, Mijjah74, Big Toys Rock, JimmyDene, Tdunham, JayHarper08, KennyG123, Qbking77, and SOOO many more I can’t even begin to list all of them!!!

It’s been an awesome journey and it all began with the Epic 4G Touch!  Although there are many other devices out there that have better specs and features, the Epic 4G Touch will always have a place in my heart.  It’s the phone that got me into Android and put me on the path to where I am today.

If you want to check out the Epic 4G Touch for yourself, you can still find it on Amazon here: Samsung Galaxy S II Epic Touch 4G Android Phone