I was on the fence for weeks between Epic and Evo Shift. I ended up picking up the Epic but then had buyer's remorse. It worked out in my benefit though - because my friend had accidentally given me an open box Epic (he owns a bunch of Sprint stores).
I found out later that night I had the open box one and he was out of stock on new ones so he just told me to play around with the Epic to see how I like it.
Coming from Windows Phone 6.0 to Blackberry, I was used to widgets and nice displays but I needed the things my Blackberry had spoiled me on.
Little things - like the blinking LED to let me know I had a message.
In order for me to get the Epic up to speed, I had to:
root it, upgrade it to froyo 2.2, add in a bunch of free and paid (i didn't pay..sue me - I am a computer tech nerd) apps.
All of this took considerable time. Then I had the issue that the keyboard would not register all of my presses. I thought that might have been my particular unit so I tried a different demo line Epic. Same thing. If I am typing quickly, the keyboard doesn't register some of my key presses.
Then I played with the demo Shift. The processor was faster, I really liked the HTC Sense UI, I was able to do everything out of the box without the major tweaking headaches. The Shift also gave me better 4G signal for whatever reason.
When I updated my Epic to 2.2.1, 4G ceased to exist! I can also use the Evo Shift with more laptops in a hotspot scenario.
Sure the screen isn't as pretty and I no longer have the 5 row keyboard (4 staggered rows is okay by me - the build quality on the HTC keyboard is still better), and I don't have the dedicated camera button or front facing camera anymore - but who cares!
I still kept the 16GB card out of the Epic too.
I have a phone that does its primary job as a phone first! But they are still both good phones...
I hope someone else finds my info useful.