Good things:
- Awesome screen - all the greatness of OLED (perfect blacks, high contrast, looks good in direct sunlight) without the ugliness that was PenTile. Here you just get the bright, popping colors. Oh, and at 4.3", it's a pleasure to look at from any distance. The resolution is still 800x480, though. Wish they'd up it to match iPhone.
- Very light. I mean, VERY light. Samsung wasn't kidding when they stressed that point. Considering the size of this thing, it's very hard to believe. When you put the phone into someone else's hand for the first time, they usually are confused because they expect it to feel more "solid", and not so featherweight.
- Fairly thin. Good if you wear your phone in the pocket of your pants.
- The UI is buttery smooth, with no hiccups that are common on all other Android phones I've seen. Not sure if it's Samsung's new powerful GPU (Exynos), software optimizations that they did, or a combination of both, but overall this thing is just as slick as iPhone 4.
- It can be rooted, and custom ROMs already exist. No signed bootloaders or other similar malarkey.
- It comes with Android 2.3. That means better perf, WiFi tethering/hotspot out of the box, and the ability to tilt and rotate the map in Google Maps - among other things.
- It comes with Polaris Office. It is a very nice Android office suite - from what I've seen so far, more full-featured than Docs to Go, QuickOffice etc - especially when it comes to supporting advanced MS Office features such as charts. It cannot be purchased from the market, and only comes bundled with select devices, such as this one or Asus Transformer.
- MicroSD card slot, for all those gigabytes of music.
Bad things:
- Battery life doesn't seem to be so good. It gets through the day, but if you forget to charge it in the evening it won't last you a second day (except if only on standby).
- It heats up quite a bit when in active use. More so than any other phone I've used. It's not exactly a surprise considering 1.2GHz dual-core CPU and a powerful GPU, and I suspect that ultra-thin form factor makes cooling less efficient than it could have been otherwise. Overall it's tolerable, but very noticeable.
- Some applications seem to be showing images in 16-bit color rather than 32-bit (particularly the browser). This leads to nasty dithering artifacts, especially on bands of clear colors and gradients. Head to XDA-developers forum for Galaxy S II for more details on this. It seems to be a software issue, so future updates may solve it.
Things to be aware of:
- Front is full glass, back is textured plastic. I love the back for the texture, which looks pretty nice and gives a good grip when held, but it's not as "oh, shiny" as iPhone 4. Lack of metal seems to be what makes it so light, among other things. On the other hand, I didn't notice any creaking, so assembly is high-quality.
- It runs Android 2.3.3, not any later version (as of this writing). This means no voice/video chat in Google Talk. Google Voice can be installed (in US) and works fine. There's no clear schedule on official updates so far.
- Android is not stock, but Samsung's TouchWiz. This is much less invasive than what you typically see on HTC Android phones, and some changes are fairly nice. But many people prefer stock.
- No CyanogenMod (as of this writing). There is a thread on XDA forums where you can pledge $$$ for the first person to make CM run on this if you care. Samsung i9100 Galaxy S II Unlocked GSM Smartphone with 8 MP Camera, Android OS, 16GB Internal Memory, Touchscreen, Wi-Fi, GPS - No Warranty - Black
This phone is awesome. As far as appearance goes, it's *thin.* Like, 8.49 mm thin. Much thinner than the iPhone 3G that I owned previously. Although it's thin, the curved sides allow for easy gripping. The casing itself is plastic, so it feels cheaper than other all-aluminum phones, but its absolute thinness prevents if from feeling cheap. It's a classy phone.
The screen is massive (4.3") and beautiful. It's probably the best single feature of the Galaxy S II. You can view the display from all kinds of angles (good for sharing pictures of cats) and the colors really pop. This is all due to Samsung's patented Super AMOLED Plus technology. It's the secret juice that makes the Galaxy S II's screen really stand out when compared to other phones. One semi-downside of the display is that it's resolution is 800x480 and NOT qHD. This means when watching HD movies you have to deal with annoying black bars around the film to maintain the viewing format.
The awesomeness of the screen, though, really can't be overstated. It's vibrant. Pictures and video are vivid and really pop off the screen, even in direct sunlight. The viewing angles and contrast are great. Really, a superb screen. Blows my old iPhone 3G's screen out of the water. It's a beauty to behold. Web pages render stunningly.
Samsung's S-AMOLED Plus technology also helps with battery life by selectively powering down black pixels to maintain battery life. This means that even though the phone has an impressive two cores clocked at 1.2GHz each and that beautiful 4.3" display, battery life is still impressive. I manage to go two days between charges and that's with fairly frequent usage. I do notice that taking a lot of pictures seems to drain the battery life, though, so you'll want to keep that in mind if you have cats. You should be able to get at least two days of battery life, I'd say. The Galaxy S II is certainly no slouch when it comes to the battery life department.
When it comes to internet, this phone supports 21.1Mbps HSPA+ speeds, so downloads are blazingly fast. This is another area where it blows my old iPhone 3G out of the water. Downloading apps feels almost instantaneous and web pages load very quickly. You might want to check if your area is covered by 4G, as coverage isn't that extensive.
Camera quality is pretty decent at 8 megapixels. Of course, any professional photographer will want to carry around a dedicated camera, but the Galaxy S II more than suffices at Facebook pictures. One complaint I do have about the camera is that the flash tends to be a little strong and people end up looking like ghosts. Maybe Samsung will do something about this in a software update, I don't know if that's possible or not.
One interesting feature regarding photography is that the phone comes with a photo editor app. It's rather lightweight and I doubt anyone could use it for professional touch ups, but for simple things like cropping or stylizing images it's very convenient.
The phone can also record video in full HD (1080p). Quality is excellent, like nothing I've ever seen from a phone before. This will eat through battery fairly quickly though, but I'd wager you would still get 4 - 5 hours of usage even if you were recording video the entire time, which you of course wont be doing.
As far as software goes, remember that this phone has a powerhouse dual-core 1.2GHz Exynos processor that can handle *anything* I throw at it. The phone is always very snappy. It flies through homescreens, menus, and applications. In Quadrant, the phone scores between 3,000 to 3,400+ and in Linpack it gets about 47 mflops.
All in all, this phone is excellent and I'm very happy with my purchase. It's a real upgrade over my old iPhone 3G. It supports blazing fast 4G downloads, has a stunning 4.3" screen powered by Super AMOLED Plus technology, and with two 1.2GHz processors, it can handle any workload that I throw at it.'
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