Samsung Galaxy S II
Tech Specs :
General info
Design
Display
Battery
Software
Camera
Multimedia
Internet browsing
Review :
The Samsung Galaxy S II is the phone the Korean firm deems the successor to its best smartphone so far. And with a 1.2GHz processor, super-slim chassis and feather-light innards, it's easy to see why.
The dual-core race is set to heat up massively over the next few months, with the LG Optimus 2Xalready released, and the Motorola Atrix, HTC Sensation and iPhone 5 all set to bring the tech to market too.
Coming in at £35 a month and £519.99 SIM-free, the Galaxy S 2 isn't the cheapest phone out there by a long chalk – so let's see if it can match up to that larger price tag.
O.S.
The large screen may make reaching all areas of the display slightly tricky in one hand, especially for those with small palms, but that's a rarity, and a secondary hand can easily be called in.
The TouchWiz interface is overhauled again, and to good effect in our eyes. The Samsung Galaxy S2 has a WVGA screen, which is actually a little lower-res than its competitors these days, but it can still pack a load of widgets all over the place.
The same Android system is in place on the S2, but there are loads more widgets on offer to chuck around the home screen, and like the Motorola Defy, these are all easy to resize by dragging the corner to increase the functionality.
We're fans of the way Samsung has split the screen for customising the home screens, allowing users to sweep across the options at the bottom while seeing what space is left on the display, and easy resizing makes the interface as clean as you want it to be.
Dragging down the notifications bar from the top of the screen usually just gives info on emails and messages, but Samsung also lets users turn on Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and more, plus set the sound options on the phone with a simple tap. The Music player is also controllable from here, meaning you don't have to constantly move in and out of the player to change tracks.
The Samsung Galaxy S2 also features a folder system, much like Apple, except it's a little more convoluted to use that the iOS version. You have to enter the editing mode (by pressing the menu key or long-pressing on the screen) and create a new folder. Then you can drag icons into it, and confirm it's ready. We can't work out how to name it so we know what's in it, though.
UPDATE: Turns our we're just stupid: tapping the name (properly) in edit mode lets you change the name easily. Whoops.
We like being able to organise our apps, but we're sure there's an easier way. If only we could just, we don't know, drag them onto one another and have the folders auto-create? What do you mean we can't? What's a patent?
One new novelty idea, the two finger accelerometer zooming, was pretty cool but a little pointless. The idea is you hold two fingers on the screen for an internet page or photo (basically anywhere you might pinch to zoom) and tilt the phone backwards and forwards to zoom in and out.
It's cool and fun to show your friends, but ultimately a little pointless when pinching to zoom works so much better.
The interface on the Samsung Galaxy S2 might seem a little complex to an iPhone user, as it's chock-full of contextual menus, pinches, zooms, scrolls and dragging. But spend just a few minutes familiarising yourself and you'll find a phone that refuses to give in under the finger, and is full to bursting with functionality.
Samsung Galaxy S2 review: Battery life and connectivity
The Samsung Galaxy S2 may be the most well-connected phone we've ever seen – there's pretty much nothing we can think of that's available on a smartphone that isn't somehow crammed in here. Well, maybe infrared, but that's possibly pushing it a little bit.But the more important question is: does all that connecting and suchlike affect the performance of the battery? It's all very well being light and thin, but if it won't work, it's pretty pointless.
Battery life
It's usually pretty easy to state battery life on a smartphone – 90% of them will last a day, perhaps a day and bit. Either way, it's a nightly charge if you don't want to end up with a dead device.
With the Galaxy S2, it's a little more difficult to state the battery life, as we were so busy playing with it all the time we never could get an accurate read out. However, we eventually stood firm in the face of temptation, and it's good (ish) news.Samsung Galaxy S2 review: Apps and Maps
We're glad Samsung has continued to see sense and get rid of its own brand of mapping software on the Google-powered phones – Google Maps is excellent and doesn't need a competitor on these sorts of devices.
The new 5.0+ Google Maps application runs faster than a chocolate-covered pig through GreaseTown on the Samsung Galaxy S2, with elements like vector-based graphics zooming in and out with no hint of slowdown, and the 3D models of certain cities jumping out without a hitch.
The sat nav functionality was equally impressive – no need to download the voice software to make this one work for once, and we were off and running with a simple click of the icon – the Galaxy S2 managed to lock our GPS in less than five seconds, and we were away in no time at all.
The voice search in these conditions works very well too, with the Galaxy S2 using Vlingo technology to understand your words and learn as you use it more often – we're not sure if it's used in the Google Navigation application, but the accuracy certainly seemed improved.
Another point we were happy with – the compass on the Samsung Galaxy S2 was more accurate than anything we've seen recently on smartphones, and actually pointed in the right direction most of the time. We know, startling, eh?
Apps
The Samsung Galaxy S2 is metaphorically bursting at the seams with pre-installed applications, from the decent BBC iPlayer to the standard Android calendar (with support for Exchange too).
Here's the apps we think you'll be impressed with when you first fire up the phone – and we love how many of them there are.
Polaris Office
A fully functional document suite, with support for both viewing and editing documents. An Astro-like file manager allows you to view all your folders in the phone, and a search function makes it easy to find the elements you were looking for.
Voice Talk
Samsung has placed a Google Voice rival on the Galaxy S2, allowing users to tap a big blue button and speak to open contacts, mail, music, navigation and more.
It's powered by Vlingo and promises to get more attuned to your voice as time goes on; we found that this was somewhat true, but overall we tried to speak precisely and clearly anyway.
This application is accessed by double tapping the home button as well, meaning you're only ever two clicks away from issuing commands to your phone using the power of your voice.
My Files
We mentioned the Astro File Manager earlier, and Samsung has placed its own version of the app on the Galaxy S2, making it easy to find the files you've lost.
The only problem is you can't search through these files as you might on Astro – we recommend you still download the free application instead.
Photo/Video editor
The appearance of iMovie on the iPhone got companies all hot under the collar – having jettisoned their rubbish movie-making applications they seem to be, like video calling, back with a semi-pointless vengeance.
You can slice up a video and add a theme and photos and transitions and music and blah blah blah, but it's still relatively boring in the end when you get a pre-made theme of your time at the beach.
Now Photo Editor we're bigger fans of, as you can crop, flip, colour fix and even smart select objects within the photo – all of which make it easy to improve the quality of your snaps.
The smart selection tool is a little weird, as it can be hard to accurately make it choose the right area – but overall, a neat little app.
Task Manager
A simple application that makes it easy to uninstall applications, shut down the ones you're no longer using and clear the phone out completely and reboot the amount of RAM available to you.
The latter can be a tricky one, as it basically shuts down everything that's not doing something critically important at that time. This means all your widgets will reboot and the Galaxy S2 will stutter as it scrambles to reload everything – you have been warned.
Mini Diary
We've seen this on multiple Samsung phone before, and we've never been sure of its purpose. Basically you take a photo, put it in the diary, write where you were (or use GPS to do it for you) and say something funny about it.
AccuWeather provides details of the current conditions and... well... that's it. No uploading, no saving them somewhere else, just a list of photos and places you've been. It's a cute application, sure, but useful? We're not convinced.
Samsung Apps
Of course, there's also a whole galaxy (arf) of other applications available on the Google Android Market – which makes Samsung's decision to implement its own app store all the more perplexing.
It's got around 30 applications in there such as Movies and Road SMS (which allows you to type text messages over the camera screen so you don't walk into things. However, this is only useful if you type with the phone right in front of your eyes, which nobody does).
It's a pointless hub, but Samsung loves it and once you turn off the updates to let you know when there are more apps available for download, you can ignore it happily for the rest of your life.
Overall the phone is a masterpiece in itself. What a phone by samsung.
No comments:
Post a Comment