Combined with the brilliant design and £400 price tag, the Samsung Galaxy S II seems like the perfect phone. Let’s see how it performs…
Display
The Samsung Galaxy S II features a 4.3-inch super AMOLED Plus capacitive touch screen, which features a 480 x 800 resolution.
As well as this, the screen is a Gorilla Glass display therefore helping to prevent accidental damage to the screen such as scratches whilst it’s in your pocket.
Buttons / Ports
The Galaxy S II has one main physical button, the home button, which is located in the centre at the bottom of the phone. When turned on, both an in-app settings button and back button (both capacitive) are situated on either side.
If we pan around the device, you’ll notice a volume rocker on the left and the power/lock button on the right.
The top features the 3.5mm headphone jack and microphone, and finally the microUSB port, which is located at the bottom of the device.
Camera
If we take a look at the front of the Galaxy S II, you’ll see the 2MP front-facing camera, which will most likely be used for video calling or perhaps recording a video of yourself if you’re a video blogger on sites such as YouTube.
The rear camera is an 8MP camera, which has both autofocus and an LED flash.
Overall, I was very impressed with both the still photo quality and video recording quality of the Samsung Galaxy S II.
The Galaxy S II is capable of recording in 1080p HD at 30 frames per second, identical to the Apple iPhone 4S. The overall HD video quality seemed to be quite good. I’d say that the 1080p video quality was more impressive on the iPhone 4S, but both are very good in their own rights with the Samsung Galaxy S II providing more features within the camera app than the iPhone 4S does.
Audio
To test the audio, I downloaded Spotify from the Android Market Place. After playing a couple of tracks that featured bass heavily and a couple of classical pieces, I came to the conclusion that the Galaxy S II definitely has some brilliant speakers.
I did think that it could do with slight boost in terms of bass quality though because it sounded slightly flat during the bass intensive songs.
I would say that the clarity, crispness and overall quality was much better than previous smartphones from the Galaxy range though.
CPU, Memory and Storage
The Samsung Galaxy S II houses a dual-core 1.2GHz A9 processor and 1GB of RAM, meaning that running lots of different apps, games and listening to music, all at the same time, is not a problem at all for the Galaxy S II.
The Galaxy S II is available in two different versions, a 16GB and a 32GB version. With the option to expand on this with the microSD card (up to 32GB), you’ve got more than enough space to store all of your 1080p videos, photos, music and apps.
All in all, in terms of CPU performance, I didn’t have any problems whatsoever with lag or slow downs of any kind. The dual-core 1.2GHz processor and 1GB of RAM provided more than enough power to keep the applications running at optimum speeds throughout the day.
Battery Life
The battery life was also another factor that I liked about the Samsung Galaxy S II. The specifications state that you can receive up to 18 hours of battery life whilst on a 2G network, which seemed to be almost exactly how long our battery lasted during testing.
Obviously, certain applications will require more power such as recording 1080p video and playing games that require more resources than apps such as Internet, Messages and Gmail.
I did test the Galaxy S II whilst on 3G as well, but seen as though the area I am in does not have great coverage, this will affect the battery life considerably because the phone will use more power whilst trying to connect and find a 3G signal. Saying that, I did still manage to receive just over 7 hours of battery with occasional use whilst on 3G.
Software
The Samsung Galaxy S II runs Android 2.3 Gingerbread, which works brilliantly on the Galaxy S II. A planned upgrade to Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is also in the pipeline, but no confirmed dates have been announced yet.
Thanks to the super fast dual-core CPU and large amount of RAM, Android 2.3 works effortlessly on the Samsung Galaxy S II, with every swipe being as smooth as the last.
Opening applications was also something I noticed as well due to the speed in which they opened! Compared with the other Galaxy smartphones, the S II was extremely capable of running in excess of over 15 applications without any performance decrease during our testing.
A truly brilliant smartphone backed up by a great operating system.
Once the Ice Cream Sandwich update is released for the Galaxy S II, it’s going to be hard for new devices to compete when they’re this good already.
Verdict
Overall, I was absolutely blown away with the Samsung Galaxy S II’s performance whilst we were in our testing phase. And even though I’m a pretty much an Apple Fanboy, I’d opt for the Samsung Galaxy S II over the iPhone 4S in a heartbeat.
With an extreme amount of power, a great camera and a brilliantly smooth and stable operating system, the Samsung Galaxy S II would definitely be on my list of best smartphones of 2011.
With the Galaxy S II retailing at £400 for the 16GB version, it’s also considerably cheaper than other smartphones that don’t perform as well.
Pros
- Fast and smooth UI
- Audio quality
- Brilliant 4.3-inch display
- Still photo quality and 1080p video quality
- Battery life
- Sleek and attractive design
Cons
- A fair amount of app bloatware
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