Best screen on any telephone interval, very fast hardware - most likely finest Android cellphone so

The follow-up to the extremely successful GALAXY S, Samsung's GALAXY S II is a powerhouse of a smartphone in a fantastically sleek and lightweight design. Considerably thinner than the unique GALAXY S and rivals such as the iPhone 4 (8.49mm v 9.3mm) the GALAXY S II is stunningly mild (only 117g) and packs the latest version of Android (Gingerbread). The one function most people will discover instantly is Samsung's greatest ever screen; the monster 4.27-inch Tremendous AMOLED Plus display runs at 480 x 800 resolution, has colours visibly brighter and extra vivid than other phones, better contrast and decrease energy consumption, and performs beautifully for gaming and watching video. Plus there's an 8.1 megapixel digital camera with full 1080p HD video recording, video playback at 30 frames per second and a twin-core processor, with each core working at a blistering 1Ghz for an incredibly responsive experience. The GALAXY S II comes with 4 hubs to help you take advantage of your Galaxy S II; Social, your chatting life in one place, Readers, Samsung's new e-book reader area, Sport, the simplest option to obtain and play the perfect games, and Music, with access to over 12 million tracks.

Awesome display screen - all of the greatness of OLED (excellent blacks, high contrast, seems to be good in direct daylight) with out the ugliness that was PenTile. Right here you just get the bright, popping colors. Oh, and at 4.3", it is a pleasure to take a look at from any distance. The decision continues to be 800x480, though. Want they'd up it to match iPhone.

- Very light. I mean, VERY light. Samsung wasn't kidding when they careworn that point. Contemplating the dimensions of this thing, it's extremely onerous to believe. If you put the telephone into another person's hand for the first time, they usually are confused as a result of they anticipate it to feel extra "strong", and not so featherweight.

- Pretty thin. Good if you happen to put on your telephone in the pocket of your pants.

- The UI is buttery smooth, with no hiccups which might be common on all other Android telephones I've seen. Not sure if it is Samsung's new powerful GPU (Exynos), software optimizations that they did, or a mix of each, however general this factor is simply as slick as iPhone 4.

- It can be rooted, and customized ROMs already exist. No signed bootloaders or other similar malarkey.

- It comes with Android 2.3. That means better perf, WiFi tethering/hotspot out of the box, and the flexibility to tilt and rotate the map in Google Maps - among other things.

- It comes with Polaris Office. It is a very nice Android office suite - from what I've seen to this point, more full-featured than Docs to Go, QuickOffice and so forth - especially in relation to supporting advanced MS Office options resembling charts. It can't be bought from the market, and solely comes bundled with choose units, reminiscent of this one or Asus Transformer.

- MicroSD card slot, for all those gigabytes of music.

Dangerous things:

- Battery life would not appear to be so good. It will get by means of the day, but in the event you overlook to charge it within the night it won't final you a second day (besides if only on standby).

- It heats up quite a bit when in lively use. Extra so than some other telephone I've used. It is not exactly a surprise contemplating 1.2GHz twin-core CPU and a strong GPU, and I think that extremely-thin kind issue makes cooling much less efficient than it could have been otherwise. General it is tolerable, but very noticeable.

- Some applications seem to be displaying photographs in 16-bit colour quite than 32-bit (notably the browser). This results in nasty dithering artifacts, particularly on bands of clear colors and gradients. Head to XDA-developers discussion board for Galaxy S II for more details on this. It appears to be a software subject, so future updates may solve it.

Things to be aware of:

- Entrance is full glass, again is textured plastic. I like the again for the feel, which seems to be pretty nice and gives a good grip when held, nevertheless it's not as "oh, shiny" as iPhone 4. Lack of steel appears to be what makes it so mild, among other things. However, I didn't notice any creaking, so assembly is high-quality.

- It runs Android 2.3.three, not any later version (as of this writing). This implies no voice/video chat in Google Talk. Google Voice might be installed (in US) and works fine. There is no clear schedule on official updates so far.

- Android is just not stock, however Samsung's TouchWiz. This is a lot much less invasive than what you sometimes see on HTC Android telephones, and some changes are fairly nice. But many individuals choose stock.

- No CyanogenMod (as of this writing). There is a thread on XDA boards where you possibly can pledge $$$ for the first person to make CM run on this in the event you care.