It is an awesome smartphone featuring a stunning Super AMOLED Plus display, 8 megapixel camera and a powerful 1.2GHz dual-core processor. These features make the Samsung Galaxy S II ideal for any media application. Best of all these features are contained within a smartphone which has a thickness of just 8.49mm.
The stunning 4.3 inch Super AMOLED Plus display produces an incredible visual experience. Images are bright and colourful with smoother graphics and outstanding contrast. This technology is unique to Samsung with the i9100 benefiting from its inclusion.
An 8 megapixel camera is included with a LED flash that enables you to capture those special (or silly) moments in the highest possible quality. It doubles up as a camcorder, providing the Galaxy S II the ability to record and playback in full 1080p high definition at 30 frames per second. A generous 2 megapixel front facing camera has also been added for video calls.
The Samsung Galaxy S II looks good not only on paper, but it looks good in general. In terms of specs, you’ll find a 4.3″ WVGA (800×480) Super AMOLED Plus display. Unfortunately, we don’t get the qHD (960×540) screen now shipping on other high-end Android smartphones. Powering the device is an impressive 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos dual-core CPU, supported by 1GB of RAM and around 15GB of on-board storage. The Samsung Galaxy S II supports Wi-Fi (b, g, n), Bluetooth 3.0, FM radio, and can do quadband GSM and UMTS (850/900/1900/2100) along with support for HSPA up to 21Mbps. In terms of sensors, the handset has the following: light, proximity, gyroscope, plus it has an accelerometer. There’s also an NFC chip inside. For imaging, there is a 2MP front-facing camera which cannot take video (but can obviously be used with video chat apps), and a rear 8MP camera with flash that can record 1080p video. You can output 1080p video to a television or projector with the HDTV Adapter, which is not yet on sale. Powering the device is a 1650mAh battery.
The Samsung Galaxy S II is a beautiful phone, it really is. The facade is characterized by a large piece of Gorilla Glass for the 4.3″ WVGA Super AMOLED Plus display. From this front view you can see the 2MP camera and the proximity and light sensors. There’s a single button on the front of the device, which takes you back to the homescreen with a single tap, and with a double tap, it will launch the voice command app. Though you can’t see them when not illuminated, there are back and menu buttons to the right and left (respectively) of the home button. It’s nice to have a dedicated home hardware button on Android phone. You can also use this button to take the phone out of standby.
The screen is gorgeous. In our tests, the Super AMOLED Plus doesn’t seem to be dramatically better than the Super AMOLED, but Samsung already had a good thing going with Super AMOLED. Color saturation is well-balanced, outdoor screen visibility is great, and contrast is incredible.
The Samsung Galaxy S II is the thinnest smartphone we’ve ever tested, period.
On top is the 3.5mm headphone jack next to a secondary microphone which is used for noise cancellation. Noise cancellation only works when not on the speakerphone. In our tests, the noise cancellation did indeed work well, though when active (meaning, when there is a lot of background noise detected), the caller on the end reported vocal quality becoming a bit metallic.
And on the bottom we have microUSB for syncing and charging.
On the right side we have the power/standby button.
And on the left side, we have the volume rocker.
On the back of the device we can see the 8MP camera sensor with an LED flash. The back battery cover is a thin piece of plastic, and it has a nice texture on it to provide a secure in-hand feel. Also back here you can see the single speaker, which is plenty loud and provides a great speakerphone experience.
Behind the battery cover is the 1650mAh battery, microSD slot (which you must remove the battery to access), and SIM card slot.
Web browsing on the Samsung Galaxy S II 2 is a fantastic experience.
Photos taken with the 8MP of the Galaxy S 2 looked fantastic. Colors were accurate, contrast was great, and the pictures were sharp.
PERFORMANCE
While the Samsung Galaxy S II is one of the best-performing smartphones we’ve ever tested, we did run into some trouble. For example, pressing the home button often resulted in a 1-2 second display before the homescreen appeared. Then, once on the homescreen, some widgets had trouble redrawing. This was easily fixed with a third party launcher, confirming our suspicion that TouchWiz 4.0 on the homescreen is a bit resource intensive.
The copious amount of RAM on the Samsung Galaxy S II, a full 1GB (only about 833MB is accessible) means that many programs can stay in memory at once. While the phone has a great task manager, we seldom found ourselves having to worry about memory management, since at any given time, at least a third of the RAM was available.
BATTERY LIFE
Two processors means a lot of battery drain. The Samsung Galaxy S II has an impressive 1650mAh battery, but we wish it were bigger. With heavy use, you’ll barely get through a day. With moderate use, expect to charge by the next morning on the second day. This puts the Galaxy S 2 a bit below average in terms of battery life.
But what’s unique about the Samsung Galaxy S II, and all Galaxy S devices, is that the backlight can be turned down very low without impacting screen readability as much as you’d expect on an LCD. We found that by turning off automatic screen brightness and setting the slider to about 1/8, we were able to increase battery life by 30-40%. Not bad. Turning off automatic screen brightness also means that the screen becomes less visible outdoors, but it’s still readable.
REVIEW CONCLUSION
Seldom do we rate a phone a full 5/5, but the Samsung Galaxy S II is one of the most advanced, well-rounded, and powerful smartphones we’ve ever tested. Samsung truly delivered on its second-generation Galaxy S. We can’t get over how thin the Samsung Galaxy S II is, and it’s a true joy to be able to browse the web with such smoothness and speed.
There certainly is room for improvement here. Samsung ought to work on making TouchWiz as lean as possible, and it’d be nice to turn it off entirely and revert back to stock Android for maximum speed. We also wonder whose idea it was to have the device make a beep when the battery is fully charged…if you like waking up at 3AM, this won’t be a problem for you, but for those of us that like to sleep soundly, it’s a big annoyance.
We rate the Samsung Galaxy S II 5/5
The Samsung GT-N7000 Galaxy Notes is a smartphone based on Android OS 2.3.3, with support for UMTS / GSM and HSDPA, EDGE and GPRS. The phone is equiped with super AMOLED touchscreen display which has a resolution of 1280 x 800 points. The device features with a 8.0 megapixel camera with flash, Bluetooth connectivity, wi-fi, integrated speakerphone, email management, polyphonic ringtones, MP3 player, FM radio and expandable memory!