Samsung Galaxy S2- King Of Design

 

 

Dual-core power, beautiful screen - the Galaxy S II is the kind of sequel we like..

 

The Samsung Galaxy S2 - or Samsung Galaxy S II, as it's also known - is the phone the Korean firm deems the successor to its best smartphone so far. And with a dual-core 1.2GHz processor, super-slim chassis and feather-light innards, it's easy to see why.
The dual-core smartphone race is packed, with Samsung's own Galaxy Ace 2, the Huawei Ascend P1, Sony Xperia Go, iPhone 4S and many more handsets all boasting the fast processors, although bigger brother the Samsung Galaxy S3, LG Optimus 4X HD and a growing number of others run with quad-core CPUs.
Coming in at around £18 a month and £390-odd ($529) SIM-free, the Samsung Galaxy S2 has dropped in price since its launch and is now an attractively affordable high-end smartphone.

You can check out our Samsung Galaxy S2 video:

The Samsung Galaxy S2 is almost impossibly thin when you pick it up – dimensions of 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5mm mean it's one of the thinnest smartphones on the market, rivalling the likes of the iPhone 4S and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc, but falling behind the tiny 7.69mm-thick Huawei Ascend P1.

It's crazy-light too – when we show you what tech is rammed under the hood, you'll be amazed that it all fits into a handset that weighs only a shade over 100g (116g, to be precise).
Samsung clearly traded the premium feel that an all-metal chassis might have brought for keeping the grams off the Galaxy S2 – pop the battery cover off and you'll find you're holding a piece of pretty flimsy plastic.

However, most of the time you won't be removing this, and it fits nicely into the contoured chassis – the mesh feel on the rear also helps keep your hand from getting warm during extended holding.
The other thing you'll notice when you first pick up the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the screen – at 4.3 inches it's hard to miss, and when you turn it on the Super AMOLED Plus technology hits you square in the eyeballs (once it's got through the toughened Gorilla Glass).
It's not quite in the same league as the Samsung Galaxy S3; while some will argue the pixel quality is higher on the S2 thanks to a different sub-pixel arrangement, it's still markedly lower-res than the S3.

We called the Samsung Galaxy S "the best phone on the market for media" when we reviewed it, thanks to its first-gen Super AMOLED screen. Now the Galaxy S2 has definitely improved on that, with a superbly crisp and vibrant screen - although again, it's been bested by the S3.
In the hand, the Galaxy S2 sits much better than we'd have expected, given the whopping screen on offer, and that's mostly down to its slim depth.

The front of the phone is pretty sparse, with the home key the only piece of furniture on offer. This rectangular button flanks two touch-sensitive buttons – Menu and Back – so there's no room for contextual search here, although this is called up by long-pressing the Menu key.
The volume keys are located on the left-hand side, and the power/lock key is on the opposite flank; both are easy enough to hit without error, and crucially the travel on the power key is softer so that it's much easier to hit when you're juggling it in the palm – compare that to its predecessor, where you could accidentally drop it trying to shut off the screen.

The 3.5mm headphone jack lives on the top of the phone, bucking the lower placement on other 4.3-inch screen phones, and the micro USB slot (which also doubles as an HDMI out port) lives on the bottom.
The only other element of note is the 8.1MP camera with single LED flash on the rear – it's slightly raised, but not so much that it disrupts the Samsung Galaxy S2 when you're placing it on a table, thanks to a rear lip to help you hold the phone.

We actually (foolishly, in hindsight) unboxed the phone while bouncing about on a powerboat on the Thames – and luckily, there was a camera rolling the whole time. (Note - we're well aware of the stupid spec mistakes we made while on the boat. Some were down to information given to us by Samsung that changed, and some due to sheer confusion at being thrown 10 feet in the air and having our spine crushed.)
 Things i found quite nice were:

• Predictive dialing: yes, a very small feature, but important to me nonetheless. Type a name instead of the number for quicker dialing. Should be essential on every device.
• Swype included: Swype is still one of the quickest text input options for me, so having this included was certainly nice to have on the SGS, and now on SGS II too!
• More multitouch and accelerometer features/gestures: pinch to zoom is nice and all, but zooming via holding a pic with two fingers and tilting the device, or moving widgets from one page to another with tilting the device is fun to. even if it’s just to show off.
• Split view in messaging: not many people knew this when i posted the pic, but try holding your screen in landscape position and enter the messaging app!
• Hubs: Samsung included 4 hubs to the SGS II, for socializing, music, reading and games. It’s obvious what all those are for, and if you don’t wanna waste time searching for apps in the market, you’ll feel right at home here. With a flood of Twitter apps f.e., its obvious that Samsung wanted to offer a complete package here and save time searching for apps
• Allshare: Filesharing via DLNA. lovely! worked nicely with all sorts of pictures, videos etc!
• Kies Air: Kies (Sammy’s version of HTC Sync or Ovi/Nokia/PC/Elop suite) can not only be connected via Bluetooth or cable, but also via WLAN. lovely part 2!
• Photo- and Video Editor: lovely to see Samsung not ending their thoughts after shooting a pic. both editors are actually quite usable, with the video editor especially standing out. Tons of features and nice effects to slap on your photos and videos.
• Task Manager: oh yees, a built in Task Manager, giving access to yo RAM-/storage data, downloads, and of couse all running tasks with the option to kill them.
• Chat app: The chat app provides access to Google Talk, Windows Live Messenger and Yahoo Messenger, and worked very well in a short test! (so much stuff to try, so little time!)
  Pros
  
• Awesome display
• Ultra slim design
• 1080p Video recording
• Really fast

Cons

• No camera key
• Touchwiz UI
  

  Verdict

   

  And so we come to the end of our epic Samsung Galaxy S2 review – and we know some of you might have jumped straight here to see what we think.
  However, if you're considering purchasing this phone, we recommend you take a look through our review, as there's a lot to cover in the new phone and we wouldn't want you to miss anything now, would we?
  But if you're after a one-word summary of the Samsung Galaxy S2: awesome. We've were waiting for a phone to set a benchmark among the dual-core breed, and we found it in the Samsung Galaxy S2.
  

  We liked

  *Clears throat* We liked nigh-on EVERYTHING on the Samsung Galaxy S2. It's rare we get to evangelise a handset so much – in fact we haven't managed to do so since we opened the box on the HTC Desire and realised a slick experience could live outside the iPhone.
  

  Buying Guide

  

  But with the Samsung Galaxy S2, things have been ratcheted up a notch. The Super AMOLED plus screen, with improved sub-pixel density, is a joy to behold, and the 4.3-inch screen size is made palatable for smaller hands thanks to the ridiculously thin dimensions.
  The lightning fast reaction time of the phone was amazing too – of course, it falls behind the likes of the S3 and LG Optimus 4X with their fancy-pants quad-core processors, but it's not leagues behind - think Bowser vs Toad trying to accelerate in Mario Kart and you get the picture. Unless you've never played Mario Kart. In which case: it's a little bit slower.
  The pre-loaded applications, including the task manager and Polaris Office Suite, are for the most part excellent additions, and the sheer range of connectivity made the Galaxy S2 a fully-fledged phone out of the box.
  Kies Air, Wi-Fi Direct, USB on the go – this phone is indeed future proofed, and while we couldn't tax the handset with any properly hardcore games, everything we threw at it worked like a charm.
  

  Review

  

  In short, simply being able to open Google Maps and have your location in under a second is the kind of thing we love to be able to do, and the Samsung Galaxy S2 is the only handset we know that does it this well.
  While it's not an out and out positive point, the battery power of the Galaxy S2 was more than useful in every day use. It's not going to blow your mind, but smartphones today have to be very careful they don't drain before you get home, and provided you don't spend most of your waking hours playing with the phone, it will do just fine.
  

  We disliked

  There's not much we didn't like if we're honest, which is testament to the constant evolution of Samsung's phones.
  The keyboard is a little ropey, and the unlocking mechanism (swiping the screen to move it out of the way) looked a little cheap and nasty at times.
  The plastic construction might reduce the weight, but it still feels a bit inexpensive when people will be looking for the ultimate phone design for the price.
  The video recording can be a little patchy at Full HD, with the focus going in and out a bit at times.
  We're still perplexed about why Samsung Apps is still an option here – avoid it and go to Google Play instead.
  

  Final verdict

  You only need to look at the disparity between the things we liked and things we didn't to see what this phone is all about – and if we're honest, some of those dislikes wouldn't have made it into most phone reviews, but we didn't want it to look ridiculous.
  The Samsung Galaxy S2 is a phone we're excited to whip out in a pub and show off to our friends – it's the ultimate media mobile, the next generation in web browsing thanks to slick Flash integration, a very good replacement for a pocket camcorder and, goshdarnit, it makes calls pretty well too.
  If you're at the higher end of phone contracts already, we insist you must check this phone out. If you're more of a budget user, you might want to get the Samsung Galaxy Ace 2 (which is essentially an S2 Mini) but steer clear of any friends who have the full S2 – you'll be green with envy in no time.
  The Samsung Galaxy S2 not only set a new bar for smartphones; it smashed the bar, recreated it in its own image and put it out of reach of the competition. It's not the best phone on the market any more, but it's still gosh-darned good.