I went to Sprint today and the network outages apparently going on here was the only thing anyone was talking about. Ironically though, I got the best speeds at the Sprint store than anywhere else so far, so I dunno what outages they are talking about.
But after waiting 45 minutes to talk to a salesperson, the guy convinced me that the network is really flaky right now because they are prepping to flip the WiMAX switch soon. It seemed a logical enough excuse and he assured me the 30 day return policy is totally no catch, you don't even have to cover your usage during that period, so I decided to hold off a few more days and see what happens.
He said he got an 8Mbps on 4G somewhere around here yesterday, confirmed by the Speedtest results on his Evo. While that was probably on full signal, it's still really something. I'll honestly be happy if I can get a consistent 1Mbps at my place with the low amount of bars.
But carriers aside, the Epic 4G isn't entirely unproblematic. Battery life is absolutely horrible, with Bluetooth on and a little 3G browsing I drained the whole damned thing in less than 5 hours. I thought AMOLED screens were supposed to give a nice battery life boost... guess I'll have to try and see if SetCPU is any help.
Also, TouchWiz is the work of the devil. I hate it. Why must it put boxes around all the app icons in the app drawer?
Edit: Oh, I forgot to mention I got to play with a few Galaxy Tabs, one at Verizon last week and one at Sprint today. The iPad is definitely much nicer hardware, I'd rather have a 10" tablet that is thin than a 7" that is rather bulky and thick. Swype is really weird on a big screen, but typing in portrait mode is definitely much, much better than the iPad since you have less distance to cover.
https://pic.armedcats.net/s/sh/shawn/2010/11/15/IMG_20101113_184136_001.jpg
Not sure what the deal was with the childish font...