Samsung Galaxy S2 version known as Epic Touch 4G going to Sprint is now available for pre-orders with Walmart for $99 while it is priced at $199.99 on a new two-year contract with Sprint.

The release of Samsung’s latest flagship phone was delayed for quite sometime in the U.S. while rest of the world had the privilege to own one of the most powerful devices. Another device which was eagerly waited for was Motorola Droid Bionic. Both these phones pack powerful specifications to outmatch present set of smartphones in the market.

Samsung’s phone is not the only smartphone to receive cheaper price tag option. Even Motorola Droid Bionic will be offered by Costco for $279, plus $160-worth accessories for free. Droid Bionic will be available at Costco from September 13. The accessories include standard bionic dock, in-car navigation dock, extra battery and battery charger. One of the most interesting things about Costco deal is that it comes in the form of 90-day return window. That means those who are tempted to buy the iPhone 5 or the Droid Prime can have a switch.

Also the Costco deal makes Droid Bionic cheaper than Verizon at $180. With one-year Costco membership at $50, one can save $130 off the standard 2 year contract and the phone is also cheaper by $20. Droid Bionic is originally priced at $299.99 with a two-year contract with Verizon or $599 at full retail price.

Moreover, even Amazon.com has listed the phone at the cheapest price ever for $179.99 for standard two-year contract. And the unlocked version is available for $699.99.

Both these phones are touted as the formidable competitors for the upcoming iPhone 5 which is expected to be launched in October.

The Samsung’s phone rivals the rumored specs of the forthcoming iPhone 5. Apple has accused Samsung of slavishly copying its own iPhone, saying the design and features infringe upon Apple's intellectual property. All the versions of Galaxy S2 will get 4G treatment, offering data speeds up to four times faster than what is expected in Apple's forthcoming iPhone 5.

However, Motorola Droid Bionic seems to be scoring better with a cheaper price tag to take on the iPhone 5 in terms of pure speed with 4G LTE support. The Droid Bionic comes with cloud-friendly app Zumocast, which lets users bring videos, music, pictures and documents stored on their computers to their handset via remote access, challenging the iPhone 5’s iCloud service.

Here is a comparison between the two phones.

Size:
Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic Touch 4G features 129.5 x 68.6 x 9.6 mm dimension and weighs at 129g. Motorola Droid Bionic comes with 127.5 x 66.9 x 11 mm and weighs 158.8 g.

Display:
The Galaxy S2 Epic Touch 4G comes with 4.52-inch (~206 ppi pixel density) 480 x 800 pixels Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen display. The Samsung’s phone takes advantage of the Super AMOLED Plus capacitive touchscreen, which is the best available technology for mobile displays. And it clearly beats iPhone’s retina display when it comes to contrasts as well as greatly saturated colors, which can make even the most deficient images stand out bright.

Motorola Droid Bionic comes with 4.3 inches (~256 ppi pixel density) 540 x 960 pixels TFT capacitive touchscreen. The smartphone features qHD support which is a quarter of the full HD resolution. The Motorola Droid Bionic easily wins iPhone 4 provided one values clarity over compactness.

Input features:
Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch has input features like Gorilla Glass display, TouchWiz UI v4.0, multi-touch input method, accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, touch-sensitive controls, proximity sensor for auto turn-off and gyroscope sensor.
The input features found in Bionic include multi-touch input method, accelerometer sensor for UI auto-rotate, proximity sensor for auto turn-off and touch-sensitive controls.

Memory:
There is 16 GB internal storage and 1 GB RAM support in Epic Touch 4G while Droid Bionic features 16 GB storage, 1 GB RAM and 2 GB ROM support.

Both these smartphones are in a very advantageous position over the iPhone 5 as they have card slot support. Memory cards allow you to expand the phone's built-in memory. More and more these days, users of portable electronic devices are storing data on portable memory sources. Having a card slot helps in expanding the handset’s storage capabilities and provides a quick and easy way to back up data. The most obvious advantage you get when you buy a microSD card for your smart phone is the ability to store your game data outside of your phone. Depending on the games you’re playing, it’s probably easy to score high with provision for a large memory for game data.

3G/ 4G:
There is Rev. A, up to 3.1 Mbps support for both Droid Bionic and Epic Touch 4G. But they differ when it comes to speed. With Droid Bionic featuring Verizon’s 4G LTE support, it holds speed advantage over Samsung’s phone as Epic Touch will feature Sprint’s 4G.

Motorola Droid Bionic specifically holds an upper hand against iPhone 5 as 4G LTE support is expected not to come with the Apple’s device. But there is a possibility of Apple’s next generation phone featuring HSPA+ of AT&T, as the carrier has begun to market its HSPA+ as 4G. But still the HSPA+ is inferior to the 4G LTE speed.

WLAN/Bluetooth/USB:
Samsung Epic Touch offers Wi-Fi 802.11 a/b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi Direct, Wi-Fi hotspot; WiMax, Bluetooth version 3.0+HS and microUSB version 2.0.

Motorola Droid Bionic has Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n, DLNA, Wi-Fi hotspot, Bluetooth version 2.1 with A2DP and EDR along with microUSB version 2.0 support.

Camera:
In terms of camera, Epic Touch come with 8-megapixel 3264x2448 pixels camera with features including autofocus, LED flash, geo-tagging, touch focus, face and smile detection and image stabilization. And the camera can capture 1080p video at 30 fps. Motorola Droid Bionic differs only with a dual-LED flash support.

Operating System:
Both the phones have Android OS, v2.3 (Gingerbread) operating system. Also both the smartphones will take full advantage of features like the notification bar, cloud synchronization, wireless syncing, iMessage, Twitter integration and Widgets which are going to be featured in iOS 5 powering the upcoming iPhone 5. Also with new operating system “Ice Cream Sandwich looming in the corner, the majority of the fragmentation issues on Android devices will be taken care off. The iPhone 5 is going to have to top this in order to do better.

Processor:
With dual-core 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos Mali-400MP GPU Orion chipset processor, Samsung phone holds slight edge over Droid Bionic’s dual core TI OMAP4430 chipset 1 GHz in terms of speed. However according to Engadget Texas Instruments' OMAP 4430, NVIDIA's Tegra 2 and Samsung's Exynos 4210 went head on in a gauntlet of browser and graphical benchmarks, and it looks like the LG Optimus 3D's OMAP 4 came out on top, boasting of minor but significant improvements practically across the board.” Given how many other SoC vendors are shipping dual-core Cortex A9 SoCs, the A5 was likely no different from NVIDIA's Tegra 2, TI's OMAP 4 or Samsung's Exynos in that regard, armed with a pair of Cortex A9s running at 1GHz.

Battery:
Motorola Droid Bionic has Li-Ion 1735 mAh battery giving up to 10 h 40 min talk time and recent test revealed that the phone could last close to 8 hours on 4G LTE, which is a big plus point for Droid Bionic as previous phones using LTE support faced issue with battery drainage.

Also for users who want to take full advantage of battery power, there is an optional battery support being released for Droid Bionic with whopping 2760mAh battery. Some users have reported that even with some data consumption and heavy use, the battery managed to last 24 hours.

While Samsung Epic Touch 4G has Li-Ion 1800 mAh battery support, which will offer more than 10 hours of talk time.

Other advantages of Galaxy S2 smartphone include the support of NFC and MHL (Mobile High-definition Link) USB support. The main specialty of MHL is that it is optimized for mobile devices by allowing the device's battery to be charged while at the same time playing back multimedia content. Both these features are just in rumor stage for the iPhone 5 and most probably are not expected to make into the phone, according to some tech analysts.

While Motorola's Droid Bionic will have advantage over the iPhone 5 with HDMI, which helps the users to connect to digital audio, video sources and video game consoles to compatible digital audio devices, computer monitors video projectors, tablet computers, and digital televisions. And the WebTop application enables users to launch a full Firefox 4.0 browser that gives access to the phone’s interface as well as 200,000 Android Marketplace apps.

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