Samsung Galaxy S2

Editor's Review of the Galaxy S2

The Samsung Galaxy S was an award-winning smartphone, and sold in its millions to Android fans worldwide. However, Samsung hopes that in spite of itself, its latest Galaxy S2 flagship can go and do one better, picking up the crown from its best-selling brother. Certainly on paper the Galaxy S2 has everything, but can this dual-core powerhouse live up to the hype?

Design & Build

The first thing you'll notice about this handset is its size. The Samsung Galaxy S2 is mind-blowingly thin, its dimensions of 125.3 x 66 x 8.5mm making it skinnier than Apple's iPhone 4 and the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc. This is matched by its lightness, as despite its tech-filled chassis, it weighs in at just a shade over 100g.

Unsurprisingly, the Galaxy S II looks great too, and has strayed from being an iPhone 3GS look-a-like to something more original. It's glossy black frontage feels reminiscent of the Samsung Omnia 7, yet has obviously been influenced by its older brother with its physical home key and angular stylings. Our only gripe is that its textured plastic battery cover, although comfortable to hold, lacks the high-end appeal of an aluminium coated HTC high-ender, and fails to show the handset to its full potential. Also, when removing it feels worryingly flimsy, and we were almost frightened to pop it back on.

Asides from its super skinny chassis and dashing good looks, the other thing you'll notice when you first pick up the Galaxy S2 is its 4.3-inches of Super AMOLED goodness. While its WVGA 800 x 400 pixel resolution sounds a bit last-gen compared to today's qHD screens, we'd go as far as to saying that it's one of the best displays we've ever seen - when not covered in fingerprints, that is. In fact, the screen is so brilliant and vivid that we had to reduce the brightness to a very low level to avoid being dazzledWhile we're not sure what the "Plus" in Super AMOLED Plus really means, compared to the display of the original Galaxy S it's much more impressive.

Besides its vivid colours and excellent viewing angles, the S2's touchscreen is extremely responsive. We didn't experience a hint of lag during testing, even when pushing it to its limits with multiple apps and WiFi usage.

When it was first unwrapped at January's CES, we were pretty hyped up about the handset's 1GHz dual-core processor. To keep the Galaxy S II up to date, Samsung bumped this up to a sizzling 1.2GHz, matching the speeds of the HTC Sensation. Having played with HTC's dual-core debut we'd even got as far as saying the Galaxy S II's quicker, after coping seamlessly with everything we threw at it.

OS & Interface

Adding more heft to the S2's already weighty spec sheet is its Android 2.3.3 OS, the newest and whizziest verion of Google's homegrown platform. This arrives dressed in TouchWiz 4.0, a huge bump up from the "3.0" UI found on the original Galaxy S.

Galaxy S2 Hubs

Although we've always preferred HTC's Sense UI, Samsung's new-and-improved Android skin could just sway us with its customizable homescreens, re-jigged onscreen QWERTY and most importantly, Samsung Hubs. We've always been a fan of HTC FriendStream, but Samsung's Social Hub does an excellent job of showing off your Tweets, Facebook updates and incoming messages from multiple accounts. There's also a Games Hub included for downloading AMOLED-optimized apps, Samsung's iTunes-like Music hub, and Books Hub for reading books and magazines on the go.

That's not all that comes pre-loaded on this feature-packed blower. Within its iPhone style app list you'll find BBC iPlayer (which works seamlessly), an a bunch of business applications for Word, Excel and PowerPoint editing, and all the usual Google-branded goodies (Gmail, Talk, Search).

Galaxy S2 Widgets

Another neat feature of TouchWiz 4.0 is its all-new multitouch gestures, which although not necessary, while make your friends go "Ooh". These include the ability to zoom in and out by resting two fingers on the screen and moving the handset back and forth, while moving the smartphone from side-to-side will re-arrange your widgets. Although a nice show-off features and a bit of a novelty, we found the gestures ultimately pointless, and often frustrating and niggly to execute.

Multimedia & Storage

The Samsung Galaxy S2 boasts an 8 megapixel rear-facing camera, complete with LED flash and a multitude of trickery. While it's by no means on par with the Xperia Arc, this high-resolution sensor certainly won't disappoint. Daylight shots came out extremely sharp and full of detail, although its flash struggled to keep up in low light conditions.

Video on the other hand excelled our expectations, even compared to Sony's Exmor R sensor. Thanks to its twin cores, the Galaxy S2 effortlessly captures 1080p HD video, and despite the erratic autofocus, footage was extremely smooth.

The music player on the Samsung Galaxy range has always been pretty impressive, and the the Samsung Galaxy S2's effort is certainly no exception. Besides looking great, you'll find 5.1 virual surround sound, Smart Playlists, and music control widget in the notification bar for easily toggling tracks.

Everything Else

Multitasking

The Internet browser on the Galaxy S II isn't too different from your average Android offering, the only obvious different being its super-fast loading times. Asides from the handset's dual-core chips, there's also HSDPA and WiFi connectivity onboard, promising to cope with up to 21Mbps download speeds. It's not just fast, as even the meatiest of web pages render clear on the WVGA screen, and multitouch gestures worked seamlessly.

As you would expect from a Gingerbread smartphone, there's also native Adobe Flash video support. Without a doubt, the Samsung Galaxy S II coped with Flash better than any phone we'd seen before, and showed no signs of lagging or poor performance.

Being such a powerful, feature-crammed device, we were surprised by the handset's long-lasting battery. Under the hood, there's a 1650mAh juice-box, which thanks to the AMOLED screen, doesn't drain as quickly as on standard smartphones. Unlike the iPhone and Desire HD, the Galaxy S2 should last you a good 48 hours.

Conclusion

As you may have guessed, we loved the Galaxy S2. Samsung has without a doubt triumphed again, be it with the handset's whizzy internals or its lavish AMOLED screen. Samsung can well and truly lay rest to those comments that its smartphones are little more than iPhone imitators, having set its own bar for smartphones to come. Say hello to the best-selling phone of 2011.

Review model provided by Clove