Review: Samsung Galaxy S II

The Galaxy S II is probably the most talked about phone in the Cellular blogosphere for a while now, One of the reasons that Samsung can create such a buzz is their Agility and time to market speed. From the time Samsung recognizes new technology and until they release a product is nothing short of incredible. We saw previous testimony when Samsung saw the Ipad2 release and in less than one month they announced a thinner and stronger tablet and even managed to get a working version to Google I/O, you don't get a more judgmental and hard to please crowd than Android developers.

When Motorola announced the Atrix 4G and LG announced the Optimus 2X it was again clear to Samsung they would have to top those two super-phones.

On the move Samsung changed the specs from Dual core 1GHZ to Dual core 1.2 GHZ. Motorola promised future fix for 1080P video and Samsung delivered it on launch. Samsung was already a industry leader in mobile display with their gorgeous Super amoled display and they improved upon it with Super Amoled plus.

The Galaxy S II had two though hurdles to overcome from its predecessor The slow and buggy RFS  file system and the almost none working GPS. both of were replaced to EXT4 and a good GPS chip in the S-II. Samsung already released one major patch for the phone and a firmware update for the camera. so we can see that they are serious about updates this time.

The Hardware:

• Processor - Dual-core 1.2GHz ARM Cortex-A9 processor Mali-400MP GPU with Orion chip-set
• Memory - 1 GB of RAM and 16GB of internal Nand storage.
• Display - 4.3 inch Super Amoled Plus with 800*480 resolution and Gorilla glass protection.
• Camera - 8.0 Mega Pixel Rear camera with 1080P video, front Camera with 2 Mega pixel.
• Wireless Network adapter B/G/N
• FM radio
• Battery - 1650 MAH
• GPS - AGPS
• Weight - 116 GR
• Internal video codec support for MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264
• SAR ratings of 0.338  European standard.

The story of the hardware on the S-II is very impressive, The Sony Xperia Arc might be thinner, The resolution and speaker on the Atrix 4G are better, But there is no better total package of hardware than the Galaxy S-II. It is screamingly fast, it has a phenomenal screen even in daylight. Plenty of user available memory (~833MB), The camera is excellent. It is very thin. Industrial design in the eyes of the Samsung engineers consists of a black slab with no character They could take lessons from Sony in that department. 

The front Home button is great, the volume buttons are too small and located on the left which is not ideal for right handed people. the power button not unlike the nexus S is too small and hard to reach in a case. The S-II has a great SAR rating less than a third of the amount in the Atrix 4G. The phones like its on steroids, the reaction of the touch screen and the performance is all I wanted it to be. after Android will support multi core functionality this phone will be even faster. The battery is OK but far from great. as you can see in the screenshot above at 9:00 PM I was at 37 percent and it wasn't a heavy use day, no video playing or games. all in all top notch hardware.

Software and OS

software with Samsung is always a mixed review, On the one hand they launched touchwiz 4.0 and as you can see in the pictures above it consists of many cool surprises, from a preview to the widgets and to a live wallpaper that adjust according to the weather forecast. Samsung also gave us a nice photo editor and a video maker ( mostly trimming) that allows adding pictured and videos with soundtrack to create a YouTube video and upload it directly. that's just another place where Samsung copies Apple with its iMovie app. sadly Samsung removed the option to resort the app drawer according to name or date.the initial ROM came with KDD version and the browser kept freezing on me and the "android process" kept eating the battery. I updated to KE2 vie "Kies" which reduced the freezing but I had to use an XDA hack to eliminate them completely. One new addition is SMS sync, it copies your text messages into your inbox and lets you use your e-mail account to backup your text messages.

to summarize the software there is definite improvement from touchwiz 3 it is much more usable and the additional software makes it a complete cellular package. The S-II comes with Android 2.3.3 which the one before last of the Google updates, in fact the only phones which are more updated for now are the Google Nexus ones. I hope the browser and battery glitches will be fixed soon, as much as I love XDA, 95% percent of people are running the stock version.

The Camera:

The camera on the Galaxy S-II is superb as you can see from the photos above, it includes many options from light settings to Panoramic option, photos taken in daylight turned out great, in low light it is not as good as the Xperia Arc ones. I wish they left a hardware button for the camera. The image stabilizer works great even with my shaky camera work. the 1080P  is crisp and well done. ( samples above)

Atrix 4G on top and the galaxy S II below

galaxy s II on top and Sony Xperia Arc below

Atrix 4G VS Galaxy S-II

The toughest part of his review is the comparison part to the competition, there are only two other phones in this dual core level and I only had one to compare and contrast.

• Display - The Samsung screen is much better in direct sunlight, The Atrix has a better resolution with QHD (960-540) which leads to better internet browsing experience. at the home screens and picture/video the Amoled screen really shines. The atrix has a much stronger brightness level. The samsung wins here.
• OS - Atrix 4G comes with Froyo 2.2.2,   the Samsung comes with 2.3.3 with the improved garbage collector, while both phones still await ice cream sandwich to utilize the multicore to its potential.
• Performance - The Samsung kills in every benchmark as you can see in the pictures, in heavy duty graphic games the atrix felt faster despite scoring lower on the benchmarks. both phones are extremely fast.
• Camera - The Samsung camera is better in every aspect even with the XDA hack to allow 1080P on the Atrix the camera on the Samsung is far superior.
• Video out - The Atrix supports HDMI out with supplied cable, and can be hacked to HDMI mirroring. The Samsung supports HDMI over an MHL cable which is not supplied and you need and adapter to charge during use.
• Size and weight - The Atrix utilizes its screen better with very narrow margins, the Samsung is bigger and clunkier. The Samsung is 116 grams while the Atrix is 135 grams. so bigger and lighter wins :-)
• Speaker - The atrix speaker is stronger and clearer, the Samsung one is fine but not as good.
• Community friendly - The Samsung comes with unlocked bootloader and with sideloading enabled, the Atrix is one of the most locked and unfriendly phones you can find. in this blog we support open devices!
• Skin - The touchwiz is full of advantages and its starting to close on the HTC sense, the Motoblur is not usable and slow.

I can spell out feature by feature but I don't think you would chose between them according to features The Atrix has been modified so heavily from stock android that many apps don't work on it from Droidwall to almost all screen capture apps. The locking of the boot-loader is annoying. on the other hand the heavy customizations give you a solid phone with little to no bugs at lunch. Motorola is much closer to Sony and apple in that aspect. The Samsung is much more polished and open, it has much better added software and superior camera. weight and size are a matter of taste. you have to chose which features are more important for you.

Wrap up

The galaxy s II is a great phone, touchwiz 4.0 is a much better experience than previous Samsung phones. Samsung fixed all the things that annoyed me on the first galaxy S line. I still don't like the plastic feel of it although it is also much better than its predecessor. I can easily recommend the S II as one of the two best phones in the world right now.