Samsung Galaxy S II Hands-On Review

So I have had my Galaxy S II from Bell for nearly a full 48 hours. I bought it out full price and unlocked it for Rogers. For starters, to my surprise the phone was actually smart enough to program the APN to rogers network setting without the need to manually entering it yourself. With my experience I have always had to manually enter the APN settings to get the MMS and data working agian. This for me was a big plus, as it will be for many other less tech savvy users who also choose to unlock.

Frame and Design:

Starting with the back side of the phone. The mesh-like material used is a great improvement from the original Galaxy S with its smooth back. It looks a little more stylish and does a great job hiding finger prints. The speaker placement is questionable, as it sits at the bottom left of the phone. so far I have not had issues with covering it up while playing a game or texting, but when you lay your phone on a bed, couch, or something soft, the speaker loses nearly 75% of its sound. This often makes it a bit harder for me to hear an incoming text, or email from the next room.

The 8MP camera and LED flash of course are in the top backside and are well protected, the phone does not rest on the camera lens as experienced with previous HTC models I have recently had, which has always been a little bit of a worry for me.

Switching over to the front side, the Galaxy S II has a bright and beautiful 4.3′ Super AMOLED plus screen. Comes with its 2MP front camera on to the top left had side, right next to the light sensor which is hidden. Down at the bottom you have you physical home button, with your touch back botton on the left and menu on the right. The Galaxy S II lacks a search button. Micro USB connection at the bottom and headphone jack at the top.

The Galaxy S II is probably one of the biggest phones I have ever wrapped my hands around. It’s slimmer then the iPhone, but a little taller and wider. The feel of the phone feels a little fragile and very light to the point I feel if I dropped it, it would be lost for ever.

U.I and Performance:

If you have ever used a Galaxy S phone before, then this will be no surprise to you. Nothing has really changed since the previous models of Galaxy S, perhaps a couple extra widgets, but thats about it. As you can see from the sample picture, it highly resembles the iPhone layout.

What really makes this phone stand out from the previous models and many of Android phones in general is the motion control. The motion control allows you to place two fingers on the screen and actually move the phone side to side to slide to the next picture, pull the phone towards and away from you to zoom in and out. The motion feature is really neat and has a couple really cool and fun uses.

Like any Android phone, the Galaxy S II does come with some bloatware. Samsung Galaxy S II includes its normal Social hub as previous Galaxy S as seen before. The social media hub includes things like Linked in, Facebook, Mail, Twitter, Music, and other simular services in to one easy to manage application folder which helps these services integrate with the entire operation of your phone.  The social media hub is a great idea and works well, but unfortunately I find it to be a bit of a mess and see it as pure bloatware.

The pull down notification bar includes toggle switches such as: Wifi, Bluetooth, GPS, Sound/Vibrate, Auto rotate.

The Galaxy S II with its dual-core 1.2Ghz CPU and 1GB of ram,  it’s not surprising that the operation of the phone is a treat in its own. The menus scroll by smoothly, apps and screens load up very quick and its just amazing to work with. That being said, I have noticed that the phone doesn’t get hot on the back under heavy use as experienced with many other phones.

One thing that really stood out for me was the Bluetooth broadcasting. While playing music through a bluetooth car system or headphones, the phone is able to project the currently playing song on your bluetooth device. This is the first of many Android phones I have owned to be able to make this feature come to life.

Sound and Media:

The sound quality on the phone is very good. Playing at full volume through its built in speaker, it maintains a decent sound without distortion. Not to mention the volume on this device goes quiet loud, and comes with headphones that are actually of pretty good quality to match. As seen on many Androids the headphones also serve as an antenna for the FM radio app built in to the Galaxy S II.

On the video compatibility side, I was able to drop a couple of unconverted videos that would not play on some of my other recent android phone and have them play flawlessly. This of course is a great feature to have in your pocket, because who really wants to spend hours converting videos, or trying to find the perfect 3rd part video application.

Galaxy S II has about 2GB reserved for Application data, and 11.5Gb Usable built in storage. On top of all that it’s MicroSD capable, so if you pop in a 32Gb chip, you will have a crazy amount of space to work with.

Battery life:

The most common question that normally flies out customers mouth is “How is the battery life?”. The battery life on the Galaxy S II is pretty amazing. I am able to get 2 days out of medium to heavy use.

Here was my results and test contiion:

• Wifi / Bluetooth ON – Wifi sleep which screen turns off.
• Screen brightness – Auto
• Sync 2 Mail accounts (Push)
• 20 Emails / 20 +/- SMS
• 7 Hours of Bluetooth audio.
• 10 minutes websurfing and 1:20 of Screen use
• 6AM to 6PM.
• I came home with 60% Battery and 50% by the time I went to bed.

This phone has a battery that just wont quit.

[Optional Rooting]

Though I normally don’t post to much about rooting, due to the fact that I prefer to leave it to the professionals such as XDA. This Galaxy S II just begs to be rooted and to unlock its true potential by removing all of its bloatware. Removing the bloatware not only clears the clutter, but bloatware often runs in the background of your phone taking up ram and resources. Just imagine all that unoccupied ram going to something more useful.

The best thing about the Galaxy S II and rooting is that it’s so incredibly easy, that anyone with a little bit of understanding can do it.

**Please note that Rooting your phone can be risky if you dont know what you are doing, please do your research before even attempting to do so. Screwing up the process in some cases can result in bricking your phone**

Overview and final words: This phone is stunning in the least, the people were right for putting so much hype on this phone. Though the frame of the phone does feel like it’s pretty fragile, it easily makes up for it by standing out above all the rest with all of its outstanding features.

If I had to complain about something it would be the placement of the light sensor. Quite frequently I ran in to the problem where my hand would cover the light sensor while holding the phone in landscape mode, thus reducing the brightness while trying to play a video game. This is easily fixed by taking the auto brightness off. With auto brightness off, you’re able to place your finger on the status bar and without pulling it down, you can slide your finger left to right to control the brightness of your screen in this little secret brightness slider.

This phone has so many feature to cover every single one of them. If you have any questions, I will be happy to do my best to answer them.

Want to get additional information, or chat with Tom Gray? You can find him on his Google+ page.

Link to Tom Gray’s Google+ Page.