Samsung Galaxy S II review

Product Samsung Galaxy S II
Website http://www.samsung.com
Specifications Dual-core Cortex-A9 processor, 1GB RAM, 4.3in Super-AMOLED capacitive touch screen, 8MP Camera with LED Flash, Cisco WebEx support, HSPA+ 21Mbps/HSUPA 5.76Mbps, 16 or 32GB built-in storage, up to 32GB SD card support, 1650mAh battery
Price £500

KOREAN PHONE MAKER Samsung certainly tries hard when it comes to mobile phones. The company has always played a game of numbers, pushing out as many handsets as it can manage. Some are good, some are not so good. But sitting at the top end of the range, the Galaxy S II should be a strong contender for our favourite Android phone of the moment. But is it?

In a word, yes. It's great. It's not perfect, but it's a leap from the original Galaxy S smartphone, which, while sleek and beautiful, was beset with a list of problems that made Apple's patchy record with the Iphone 4 antenna-gate look positively brilliant.

Styling wise, Samsung has taken inspiration from Apple again. Unlike most Android handsets, the Galaxy S II apes Apple's central Home button. On either side of this physical key are two virtual ones. On the left, a context-sensitive Menu control and on the right, the Back button.

Android does a good job of getting a lot of value out of these controls. Hold the Menu button, for example, and you get dropped into search. Double tap the Home button and you're given access to Samsung's Vlingo-powered voice activation system. And if you hold the Home button down, then you're shown recent tasks and the option to go into Samsung's task manager.

With the original Galaxy S, the task manager was a regular destination for us. The phone's terrible lag meant that we would be constantly trying to shut down apps to recover a bit of memory and hope to give a little more processor time to the thing that was hopelessly juddering. On the Galaxy S II, we've barely used it, and that's a good thing.

The Screen
Samsung makes a big deal of the AMOLED display panel it uses in the Galaxy. We, however, are far from sold on this technology. It's certainly bright and vivid, that's for sure, but there's no colour accuracy here. Everything is bright and colourful, to the point of making you feel like you've been dragged into a cartoon by the eyeballs. It will impress you the first time you see it, but it's annoying if you want to watch video or surf the predominantly white-coloured internet without a blue hue over everything.

Extra-special damnation goes to the automatic backlight adjustment, which is utterly dreadful. It seems totally ignorant to its surroundings, changes the brightness level at the drop of a hat - but most certainly not a change in ambient light - and does so with the poise and grace of a darts player attempting ballet.

In case it's not clear, you'll want to switch the backlight adjustment to manual.

We also noticed, and this is a minor niggle, that the AMOLED screen also sufferes from mild, and temporary burn-in if you leave something on screen. We noticed this with Tweetdeck, where, after composing a tweet and pulling the notification tray down, we could see an after image of the keyboard.

It goes away quickly, though, and is never especially intrusive. It is odd though, and it does leave us with several questions about the display technology.

Speed
The great thing about the Galaxy S II's dual core ARM Cortex-A9 processor and its 1GB of RAM is that it makes the phone incredibly responsive. Swiping around from home screen to home screen is a pleasure. Apps usually start instantly, and we didn't notice scrolling quickly through a web page or Twitter app to cause problems by jerking around.

While the processor means the phone is fast and enjoyable to use, we did find that web pages didn't load as fast as they did on the HTC Sensation. Indeed, there were times when we waited a long time for a web site to appear in the browser. We're not sure why this is happening, but coming straight from the Sensation makes this all the more jarring.