The Samsung Galaxy S II Samsung Epic 4G Touch is tough and powerful from the inside out according to the latest teardown from iFixit. If you buy one, you should be very careful and either get insurance or protect the screen. The glass panel and Super AMOLED touchscreen are fused which will make screen replacement expensive.
Here's a summary of the iFixit discovered:
- The Samsung Epic 4G Touch does not have sliding door for to keep the USB port clean.
- It's wider and heavier than the European version.
- It has four capacitive touch buttons.
- There's no NFC Google Wallet support.
- The 1800mAH Li-on battery is easy to replace and worth 12 hours of battery-life.
- Absence of microSD card slot, limited to 16GB internal storage.
- It has a Toshiba TC31501AAMBG WiMAX package and Samsung K3PE7E700B-XXC1 Dual-Core 1.2 GHz Processor.
- The glass panel and LCD are fused to the midplane which will make for costly screen replacements.
- Some components share the same ribbon cable (front-facing camera and ambient light sensor, for example), thereby increasing repair costs.
- Speaker is soldered to the motherboard, making replacement more difficult.
iFixit gave the Samsung Epic 4G Touch a repairability score of 7/10.