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Samsung Galaxy S2 review
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Reviewed: 19 May 2011
Awards
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SUMMARY
OUR SCORE:
PROS
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Incredibly fast
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Dazzling 4.3in screen
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Excellent video playback
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Web browser supports Flash
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Light for its size
CONS
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Too large for some
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Plastic build doesn't feel premium
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Poor call quality
KEY FEATURES
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1.2GHz dual core processor
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4.3in Super AMOLED Plus display
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8 megapixel camera
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Android 2.3 Operating System
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Manufacturer: Samsung
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Review Price: £477.00
Dual-core smartphones
are coming thick and fast now and one of the most lauded contenders is the
Samsung Galaxy S2 (or Samsung Galaxy SII i9100 to give it its full name).
Following in the footsteps of its exceedingly popular predecessor, the Samsung
Galaxy S, the new model packs in a whopping 4.3in AMOLED
touchscreen, an 8-megapixel camera, and a super speedy dual-core Samsung CPU
that runs at 1.2GHz!
Check out our video review of the Samsung Galaxy S2:
You wouldn't guess the
Galaxy S2 was packing all this heat from looks alone. At just 8.5mm thick it's
a true size zero of the smartphone world. That said, thickness is the only
dimension where this phone does undercut the competition; when it comes to width
and height, it's larger than most. Indeed the 66.1mm width and 125.3mm height
make this phone feel just a little unwieldy - you have to grip it with your
fingertips rather than it sitting comfortably in the palm of your hand. It's
very much a personal preference thing but we did find this phone a little too
big.
Samsung has thought
about this usability issue though. Rather than making you stretch all the way
to the top edge to lock and unlock the phone, you can unlock it using the
central button on the front. Also, the power button is housed on the right edge
where it falls more easily within reach – it is still a bit of a stretch
though.
We have few complaints
when it comes to styling, but here too are not particularly blown away. The
front is clearly an homage to the iPhone 4 with a mostly seamless expanse of glass except for the earpiece grille and
central button. It's classy and minimalist, though doesn't quite have the
allure of the LG
Optimus 2X, for instance, with its curved screen edges. Meanwhile
the back is a mix of glossy black plastic and a finely chequered black plastic,
which does a good job of hiding fingerprints and scratches but doesn't feel all
that great in the hand. The latter finish adorns the battery cover, which
prizes off via a thumbnail notch on the left edge, and is alarmingly thin and
flimsy.
You don't notice this
when the back's on, as the support plastic underneath keeps it held nice and
firm, but take it off and it feels more like you're peeling the top off a
yoghurt pot than opening the back of a £500 phone. Indeed, with its thin
profile, the whole phone feels a little delicate compared to the robustness of
something like the iPhone 4. Certainly we'd be particularly paranoid of this
phone coming a cropper if you accidentally sat on it.
Otherwise, we're talking
about a typically well equipped Android phone with a headphone jack on the top
edge, a volume rocker on the left, microUSB on the bottom and microSD nestled
next to the battery under its cover. You get 16GB or 32GB of storage onboard
and can add up to 32GB via the memory slot. There is one further slip up,
though. Quite simply, there's no HDMI port. It's not something that's
particularly useful for everyday use but being able to plug your phone into a
TV is a neat way to view pictures or video. With the help of an adapter you can
use the microUSB port for this purpose but these currently aren't easily
available.
Emerging from the
blackness either side of the central Home button when the phone is activated
are light-up touch sensitive controls for Back and Menu. They're responsive and
fall within easy reach.
The particular version
of Android on show here is Android 2.3.3 Gingerbread, which isn't quite the
latest (2.3.4 adds video chat) but the Galaxy S2 suffers little because of
this, and an update should come relatively soon. As usual, Samsung couldn't
resist giving the interface a bit of a visual tweak.
The most obvious change
is that the main desktop/homescreen (the one the home button takes you to) is
the left most one (as opposed to the middle one) with six others available off
to the right and none to the left. If you swipe as though to access a screen to
the left of the homescreen, it just bounces off rather than looping through to
the right-most one as you'd expect.
This is downright
annoying as it means you can only access one other screen within one swipe of
your finger, whereas if you're free to swipe to the left and right you can
access two pages within one swipe. It may sound very picky, and indeed if you
tap the tiny dots that run along the bottom of the screen you can access all
the homescreens in one motion, but it's just such a silly little usability
failure. And one can't help but think Samsung has done it simply to make the
phone look/feel more like an iPhone, without thinking about the usability.
Another annoyance is the
lock screen. Once you've activated the screen with the touch of the central
home button or side power button you can unlock the phone by swiping the
picture in whatever direction you want. Great! Except because there's no visual
indicator to tell you how far you need to swipe, it can take several goes for
it to successfully register that you're trying to unlock the screen, otherwise
the picture simply snaps back into position.
From here on in, though,
this phone is a breeze to navigate, and has a particularly good homescreen
manager. Just as with other Android handsets, you can simply drag apps to and
from the various homescreens or add folders of apps and widgets to them. However,
Samsung has upped the usability by splitting the screen and having the
homescreens presented as shrunken versions of themselves in a carousel
arrangement at the top, making it easier to see where you want to place things.
You can also resize widgets using a simple grab-the-corner-and-drag method. You
can't start an app folder by simply dragging one app on top of another though,
as on the iPhone and Sony Ericsson's latest Android phones.
This same visual style
is also used to let you rearrange the apps in the main menu (App Launcher).
While this customisation is welcome, it's rather annoying that you can't simply
choose to have all your apps in alphabetical order, as most Android users have
become used to. After all, with all those homescreens as well, having to organise
the main menu just means you have two things to keep on top of.
Also of debatable
benefit is the addition of 'tilt to zoom'. By holding two fingers on screen and
tilting the phone back and forth you can zoom in an out of the usual selection
of apps such as the picture viewer and web browser. If ever there was a feature
to represent the word 'gimmick' in the OED, this could well be it. Thankfully
you're under no obligation to use it.
Samsung Galaxy S2 review - Screen and Performance
3shares
Reviewed: 19 May 2011
Awards
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Video
SUMMARY
OUR SCORE:
Samsung has become known
for its AMOLED screens, which are famous for having incredibly vivid colours,
pure blacks, and essentially infinite viewing angles. However, we've always had
a problem with the majority that we've seen as they tended to look rather
grainy due to their pentile sub-pixel arrangement – particularly the Super AMOLED model used on the original Samsung
Galaxy S. Thankfully Samsung has fixed this with its latest
generation, Super AMOLED Plus displays, as sported by the Galaxy S2. The result
is rather stunning.
Colours simply leap out
at you in a quite mesmeric way while blacks never look grey but truly tarry,
and most importantly it looks nice and sharp with none of the old graininess.
What's more, the display has a particular quality of feeling, as if it's right
on the surface you're touching, not someway behind layers of glass. This only
helps it look more vibrant. Viewing angles have also improved – some older
AMOLEDs could suffer with a strong blue shift when viewed from an angle. While
this is still present to an extent on this model the effect isn't half as bad.
That said, there is a slight blueish tone to the overall display. In general
use you don't really notice it but certainly if you compare a white piece of
paper to what the Galaxy S2 reports as being white, the difference is obvious.
Clearly this isn't the best phone to edit photos on!
It's also worth noting
that with a resolution of 480 x 800 pixels, the 4.3in display doesn't actually
pack in as much detail as it perhaps could. After all, the iPhone 4's display
has 960 x 640 pixels in just a 3.5in panel. It seldom looks out-and-out blocky
or blurry but you do sometimes notice jagged edges to, in particular, black
text on a white background.
Originally the S2 was to
launch with a dual 1GHz CPU but in a brazen act of one-upmanship Samsung took a
little extra time to boost the processor to a competition-blasting 1.2GHz. The
result is a phone that is noticeably the fastest going – it simply flies along.
Every now and then there's the slightest of pauses as you navigate the
interface but most of the time it will be you who is slowing things down, not
the phone. From tapping out texts through gliding round the internet to
flinging agitated aves around, this phone never has a hiccup.
As ever the benefits of
the dual-core processor are not totally obvious, but clearly multi-core is the
way forward and the S2 is leading the pack, with an extra 200MHz and the fast
graphics hardware over some rivals.
For all this extra
speed, the iPhone 4 still feels that bit slicker with
the subtlest of graphical tricks still missing – things like the inertia of
menus as you scroll through them being slightly off on the S2. This is simply a
trait of Android, though, and it's something the S2 combats better than any
Android phone we've seen before.
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