Samsung's Epic 4G for Sprint seems to live up to its name

That rumored Galaxy S Pro is very real and very official for Sprint this evening, 'cept it's not actually called the Galaxy S Pro -- instead, it'll be known as the Epic 4G when it comes to market "in the coming months." Like the EVO 4G before it, the Epic 4G sort of blows everything out of the water on paper: 4-inch Super AMOLED display, 5 megapixel primary camera with LED flash and 720p video recording paired with a VGA front-facing cam for video calls, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, six-axis accelerometer, and a 1GHz Hummingbird core. Oh, and of course let's not forget those EV-DO Rev. A and WiMAX radios, the latter of which will earn you theoretical downlink speeds in excess of 10Mbps -- speeds that will work nicely with the phone's five-device mobile hotspot support (three devices fewer than the EVO 4G, interestingly).

As software goes, the Epic 4G will be running Samsung's reworked version of Android 2.1 offering features like DLNA support and Social Hub. In other words, this is the closest you're going to get to an EVO 4G with a landscape QWERTY slide -- and at 14.2mm thick, you're only about a millimeter and a half thicker than HTC's entry. Like AT&T's Captivate, the Epic 4G is being described as "a Galaxy S smartphone," so it's pretty clear that Samsung's looking to group all of these things under a global brand with big-time name recognition. Neither pricing nor a launch date have been announced -- but hey, the EVO deserves a few more days in the spotlight, wouldn't you say? Follow the break for Sprint's press release.