3 words are used to describe the Galaxy S II on Samsung's product page: Vivid. Fast. Slim.
It's hard to disagree with Samsung. The screen is brilliant. Performance is blazing. And the device is so light and thin it is jaw dropping.
The device has been reviewed by many tech sites and bloggers already. So I'll try to keep from repeating things that have been combed over already.
Aesthetics
How thin and light the device is can't be overstated. You would almost begin to wonder if this was really a functional smartphone.
It's large in hand. Using this device with one hand is difficult at best.
There's no notification light. This won't bother people coming from another device without a notification light. But for those that are used to having a notification light, this omission is glaring.
Back battery cover feels extremely flimsy. Exercise caution when removing and attaching it. But this becomes a none issue once it's actually on the device. Also, it's been shown that the battery cover can actually be bent pretty far and still retain it's shape.
A common criticism is that Samsung phones feel cheap due to the amount of plastic used. Aside from the screen, most of it is indeed plastic. However, it certainly doesn't feel cheap. The device doesn't creak or flex. It feels very solid and high quality in hand.
Super AMOLED Plus screen is brilliant. Blacks are true blacks. Colors are saturated (maybe over-saturated to some). However, whites look more like grays. But it's not too noticeable without a side by side comparison. Pixel density isn't as large an issue as I thought it might be. Text look plenty sharp. I struggle to make out individual pixels.
Standby/Power button is located off to the side rather than the top like it is for most devices. This makes sense given the size of the device. The location on the side makes it accessible with one hand. There's a setting that allows you to set that button to double as a call-end key which is nice.
As much as I like this button configuration, it does take time to get used to. It's easy early-on to accidentally hit the volume rocker as you squeeze the device to hit the standby key (and vice-versa).
The location of the light sensor seems awkward to me. It's located on the device's top left. Most people would rotate the device counter-clockwise to get into landscape mode. But if you do that (especially when typing), your left hand will likely cover the light sensor. If you have auto brightness on, your screen will suddenly dim.
On a related note, the light sensor is extremely sensitive. Slight changes in ambient luminosity will trigger drastic screen brightness changes. For this and the above reasons, it make sense to disable auto brightness. I personally just set it at around 30%.
Performance
The phone is fast, but then you already know that. I had a quick hands-on with the HTC Sensation which is also a 1.2ghz dual core beast. The Galaxy S II definitely feels faster than the Sensation. Where the Sensation occasionally has the rare lag, the Galaxy S II simply does not.
In my HTC Desire review, I had mentioned that it was fast and smooth. The Galaxy S II, brings new meaning to fast and smooth.
Onscreen keyboard
Comes with Swype. I won't cover that since everyone knows how awesome Swype is. The following applies to the Samsung keyboard.
The predictive text is very good. It's on par or better than HTC's keyboard. The 4.3" screen allows you to type really fast even in portrait mode.
In IM apps like Google Talk, the Enter key is replaced by a dedicated key for emoticons. This is a minor annoyance since I'm so used to hitting the Enter key to send my message rather than hitting the "Send" button located on top.
If you turn on predictive text and start typing, a bar above the keyboard appears that shows you what the keyboard thinks you're typing. Rather than being an overlay, it shifts everything onscreen up to accommodate itself. When you hit the Spacebar, that bar disappears and everything onscreen shifts back down. This repeats when you begin typing your next word. So, what happens when you're typing full speed is everything onscreen just keeps shifting up and down. As such, you'll need to keep your eyes on the keyboard or else you'll just end up dizzy.
The predictive text sometimes kick in when you don't want it to. Eg, when entering email addresses occasionally.
Browser
Going into tabbed view by using the pinch gesture requires you to do it twice. It's nice but, personally, I'd rather just hit the Menu key and tap "Windows". Usually, I'm zoomed in on the web page when I want to switch to a different window. If I want to do the gesture to get to the tabbed view, I need to double tap to zoom out and then pinch twice. Seems more convenient to just do the 2 taps.
Speaking of browser tabs, you can have a maximum of 8. That's a huge improvement over HTC's 4.
In the Touchwiz homescreen and app tray, there are a couple of dots along the bottom that you can swipe to navigate quickly between the pages. These same dots appear in the browser's tabbed view. But you can't swipe along them like you can in the homescreen and app tray. Not a big deal, but it would have made sense to make this feature consistent across the UI.
The notification bar is always on top when using the browser. Would have been nice to be able to hide the bar, but it's not in the way most of the time. It's only in the way when you go full-screen on Flash content.
The toggle to disable mobile website view is missing. A workaround would be to change the browser's user agent via about:useragent. But this change doesn't stick. It only applies to the current session.
Text does not dynamically reflow according to the zoom level. It only reflows at one zoom level, which is the double-tap zoom. Workaround would be to adjust the "Default zoom" in the browser settings to suit your needs.
Browser is fast. Checkerboard patterns rarely appear and in the instances that they do, they last only for about a fraction of a second. On my HTC Desire, the browser starts to get choppy if I enable javascript and Flash. But even with those 2 items enabled, the performance is outstanding on the Galaxy S II.
Adobe Flash performance is great. With the HTC Desire, I was able to play the Flash-based game Plants vs Zombies but animations were choppy and screen presses were not always properly detected. On the Galaxy S II, the experience is much more playable and enjoyable.
Other Software
There's plenty of videos on TouchWiz and the various preinstalled applications, so I'll try to just briefly touch on a few items.
You can have up to 7 homescreens. Unless you root, the main one is always the one on the far left. The homescreens don't loop. That is, you won't be able to get to the far right homescreen from the far left by swiping once. You navigate between the homescreens by either swiping one by one, tapping the corresponding dots on the bottom, or sliding the dots. You can also do a pinch gesture to get to thumbnail view.
The application tray is side-scrolling. The applications are not in alphabetical order and there's no way to quickly sort them other than manually moving them around (unless you root). The layout is eerily similar to iOS. Navigation is done in the same way as the homescreens.
If you integrate your contacts with Facebook, the contacts' Facebook profile picture will be used. However, the photos appears heavily pixelated. Also, the photos sometimes default back to the Google Contacts photo. I can't seem to figure this out.
A few observations on the included widgets:
-There are several widgets which can be resized to show more or less information depending on your needs.
-With all the various clock widgets, tapping them does nothing. It would make sense to have it direct you to the clock application.
-There are 2 widgets named "Agenda". The first one on the list only shows calendar items on the local calendar, not your Google Calendar which is just silly.
-There are widgets for AccuWeather.com, AP Mobile, and Yahoo! Finance. When you tap each of these widgets, you are taken to their respective applications. Yet, these applications are not available in the app tray.
Music Hub appears to only work in limited regions. Unfortunately, it's not supported where I am.
Social Hub attempts to consolidate all your social networking feeds in one area like HTC's Friendstream. While it supports more sites than Friendstream, it's not very practical to use. Most would simply prefer to use the dedicated apps for Facebook, Twitter, etc. It does include a native IM app that supports Windows Live Messenger, Google Talk, and Yahoo Messenger. It gets a bit confusing if you sign in for Google Talk since there's already a dedicated app for that.
Readers Hub is just a portal to access PressDisplay, Kobo, and Zinio. Not much to get excited over.
Game Hub allows you to download game demos which tries to get you to pay full price after it gets you addicted.
Polaris Office is included which allows you to edit Microsoft Office documents. Most people would be more than satisfied with it. It integrates with Box.net which does offer Google Docs integration if you pay a subscription fee. Because of this, I personally prefer Docs-to-go which integrates with Google Docs after just a one-time fee.
Samsung Apps is just another app store. I see no reason to use this over the Android Market.
Misc
A problem with AMOLED screens is that it's impossible for the user to know if the screen is off or it's just displaying black. When you power off the device, the screen goes black for a moment and then it vibrates just a bit to let you know that it's done powering off. Nice touch.
Boot up time is impressive. It took about 15 secs for a cold boot.
Upon charge completion, the screen turns on and the device emits 2 beeps to let you know. I wish it didn't do this.
Conclusion
+ Huge 4.3" Super AMOLED plus screen is gorgeous; Pixel density is surprisingly not an issue.
+ Fast performance throughout.
+ Solid build quality while still being amazingly thin and light.
+ Excellent camera and video capture
+ Substantial amount of internal storage with either 16GB or 32 GB
- Battery life is below average.
- No notification light
- No dedicated hardware camera key
At this moment, it's hard to argue that there's a better handset other than the Samsung Galaxy S II. It's just that simple.
If you want something that's fashionable, get the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc.
If you absolutely can't live without HTC Sense, get the HTC Sensation or EVO 3D.
If you're on a budget but want to get in on the high-end Android scene, get the LG Optimus 2X.
If you're impressed with the docking capabilities of the Motorola Atrix, then get that.
If you're into the Apple craze, then get the iPhone4.
But if you want the absolute best smartphone, there's only one choice and it's the Samsung Galaxy S II.
