Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II 16 GB Sim Free Smartphone

I bought Galaxy S2 after a thorough review of the phone and continuously monitoring feedback given. I must say, I am not disappointed but truly amazed how intuitive and well designed. I would agree with most of the reviews before and will try to cover some aspects not so far covered in reviews in the hope that it will help other prospective buyers in making a decision to buy a smart phone, after all you would be paying more than for a 42" HD TV.

I have been a iPhone 4 and Blackberry user and use the phone for e-mails and browsing a lot. Before deciding to purchase this phone (now have used it for about a week)I considered Blackberry Torch and iPhone4 and very much aware of capabilities and limitations of these.

e-mail, contacts, calander: you can set up multiple e-mail accounts (I have set up and using 3 accounts: gmail, hotmail and MS Exchange server). All work very well. You can synchronize e-mail, contacts, and calendar of all these accounts on the phone and they appear on the the respective application colour coded making it possible to see from what account it came from. Further you can access e-mails separately on different accounts on the same e-mail app.

Browser is very good and reliable. Yes, flash content can be viewed. Browsing is much faster and smoother than iPhone4.
Apps: Yes, it is not as extensive as the iTunes but there are enough Apps available (some preloaded, available from Samsung, and from Android market). Most Apps are free compared to iTunes. I did not have any problem with the Apps I downloaded so far.
Music Hub: It is primarily for you to download music from 7digital. The player there is not great. But there is a separate App for music which works fine with your downloaded music.
Social Hub: for e-mails, integrates well with Facebook, my space, twitter, LinkedIn etc.
Games Hub: There are free games for you to download and play as well as premium games for you to purchase.
Kies: provides the interface management App when connected to the computer (same as iTunes for iPhone). This is possibly one of the weakest. It is very slow to update. Having said that it works fine if you are bit patient. But to add music or download/upload photos or movies you really do not need it. You can use widows explorer to do that job directly accessing the phone and placing or taking content you need directly from or the the folder concerned.
Kies Air: this is one the good things. You can access all your content from the phone on a web browser by pointing the browser to the IP address given by Kies Air. For this you need to get connected on the your home wireless network. It works fine, and you can play music, view photos or videos wirelessly on any other device that is connected to your network and which has a browser. If you have a TV with a browser (Smart TV or other)or laptop you can play content fro the phone on it without any wired connection.
I connected my Galaxy S2 to a friends iPad this way wireless and could view photos but could not play music as iPad do not support flash. Good for the Galaxy S2 and shame for iPad/iPhone.

Maps, navigator, Google earth and similar Apps work fine. The Navigator works fine and is very responsive. It consumes the battery power and if you want to use it for long needs to be charged through the car charger. You would require a USB car charger and the supplied micro USB cable.
It has FM radio, treat on the move compared to iPhone. Comes with great set of high quality headphones with additional ear pieces.
The notification system is very good with all notifications iconised on a bar top of the screen which can be pulled down whenever you want to see the notifications.
Yes, with all these facilities battery life is low and you need to charge every day if you are a heavy user of these all functions. One way to improve battery life is to limit pushing of e-mails. These can easily be done on the settings menu.
Camera rear(8MP)works really well. The front camera at 3MP is also very good. Managed to get few very good quality photos. The quality of photos is better than iPhone. Screen quality is equal or better than iPhone. Comparing the screen size the iPhone4 now seems like a distant toy much smaller. There are many Apps available on the Android market (most as free downloads) which can integrate all your photos in (for example Facebook, Picasa etc.) one App.
Office & Pdf Documents: The Polaris App is pre-loaded in the phone. It can read and edit all office documents such as Excel, Word and PowerPoint.
Voice commands: Works fine. You can easily dictate your e-mails and all is then converted to text. I could get over 90% accuracy even with my first attempt. It is a treat to use.
I am using the Sunny Savers gel/Silicone hybrid cover (£3.95) which nicely fit in to the Galaxy S2. A perfect companion.
All in all a very good phone and I am very pleased with the quality of it.

UPDATE after 3months
I recently went to Australia and used my phone as a Navigator. It works superbly without any problems. Google maps and the navigator gives turn by turn instructions (audio as well). GPS works fine. You need to keep the phone connected to the car charger otherwise the battery get fully drained quickly. It saved me more than $100 as map downloads and navigators are expensive over there.

As a man who gets bored very easily I decided to upgrade from an iPhone 3Gs to the HTC Desire HD...I took to android very well claiming it was the best thing since sliced bread (or should I say gingerbread )..once again a little bored I decided to bite the bullet and spent a little more money on the Galaxy S2 a decision that I promise you will not be one you regret. I'm sure almost every user scouring these reviews is looking for a definitive answer to the question "Is it better than the iPhone 4S"... Im afraid it all depends on taste, I personally believe it is a lot better, I do not fall easily for gimmicks such as "Siri" or use many apps (The main reason most people send their hard earned cash on an iPhone) although the android app store is full of pretty much the same stuff as the Apple one, just this morning I picked up an excellent little keyboard app for 10p called "SwiftKey X Keyboard" which I assure you is a sound purchase. I like a nice big screen, where I can send lots of texts, easily make calls and check my various social network accounts from time to time and this is something that the Galaxy S2 delivers for a much cheaper price than the iPhone. Do not think that I am out just to slate Apple, i am writing this on an iMac and just last week purchased a Macbook Air. I just don't think they can justify charging that much when the the Galaxy S2 is just as good if not better, cheaper, lighter and dare I say...better looking. What you should really do go to a phone shop and try both phones, or even a different smartphone (just not a blackberry that would be silly). however If you are like me and enjoy the comforts of your room/media hub then please take a chance on this phone, you will not be disappointed...I bought the one from amazon just to make sure it was genuine, It works with my Vodafone sim card which is part way through a contract. Hoped this helped. Tyer100.

THE PHONE

The other reviewers have covered how truly awesome the Samsung Galaxy S2 (SGS2) is, and I can only agree with them. What a stunning piece of communications technology! This would be a 5 star "perfect" product in my view if it weren't for a serious manufacturing problem that has been covered up by Samsung and left many SGS2 owners extremely frustrated.

After my experience with the SGS2 (which I still own and love) I need to pass on what I have learned, so this review is intended for people who are experiencing the Dreaded SGS2 Echo Problem, or for those who are concerned that they might have the problem if they buy one of these phones... yep, it's a roulette wheel... there's always the chance you'll get a duff phone.

THE ECHO PROBLEM

The "echo" problem affects a number of SGS2 phones, and can manifest itself if the phone is used with a protective cover or case. This fault has affected a number of SGS2 users, and driven many to madness. Just Google search "galaxy s2 echo problem" and you'll see what I'm talking about. Unfortunately, if your phone is affected then you're one of the unlucky ones because, as I found out, it is a hardware fault with the phone!

I bought my SGS2 a few weeks ago, and started looking into which protective case to get. One or two cases sounded ideal for my needs, but I was concerned about some reported "echo" issues, in which the person on the other end of the call hears their own voice echoed back to them quite loudly, making a conversation difficult. So I looked at reviews for other SGS2 cases from other manufacturers and I found similar reports. Then I found lots of reports on forums of people getting this problem with various cases. Confused and concerned, I decided to order one of the cheap cases made from TPU that you'll find everywhere for a few quid, and my plan was to use this while I decided on which high-quality case to buy.

When the cheap temporary case arrived I popped it on the phone and my first caller, without prompting, complained about their own voice being echoed back to them. To say that I was gutted is an understatement. I had spent all that money on the phone and committed myself to a two year contract with my mobile provider, but I had a phone that I either had to leave unprotected in order to make calls, or put a case on and have my called party complain about voice echo all the time. The naked SGS2 is a slim and slippery phone, and dropping it on to concrete or tarmac would do some serious damage - I wanted to use a protective case!

After a bit more experimentation, I found what others had found: that the echo disappeared if I (a) switched off noise reduction every time a call was established, or (b) just used the speakerphone feature, or (c) removed the case from the phone. Updating the phone's firmware to the latest version made no difference at all.

To cut a long story short, I eventually called Samsung UK. Their response was shockingly dismissive, and you could tell they had been pre-programmed to completely deny that this issue existed. They told me that unless I was using the official Samsung case then they couldn't help me. As you may know, the official Samsung case is a thin piece of mesh plastic that clips to the back of the phone and offers virtually no protection at all. It is interesting to note that Samsung were going to sell an official heavy duty case similar to the Case-Mate or Otterbox, but then withdrew it from sale. Google search "samsung galaxy s2 d30 dual shell case"... this is now shown on just a couple of websites, and marked as "discontinued". I believe it was withdrawn because it highlighted a widespread problem with their own product, the SGS2.

I eventually took my SGS2 back to my mobile provider, and demonstrated the problem. Luckily they offered to exchange it, and I was amazed to find that the echo problem disappeared completely! I tried my cheap TPU case - no echo. I bit the bullet and ordered a more expensive dual skin tough case - it arrived, I fitted it... still no echo! :-) The problem had been isolated to the phone itself... a hardware fault. There was nothing wrong with any of the protective cases at all. I later found reports of other users also narrowing down the problem to the phone hardware itself: a husband and wife both bought an SGS2, and one had the echo problem while the other didn't. There were also stories of a part in the phone being replaced by the Samsung repair service and the echo problem being cured.

This fault has been known on forums since May or June of 2011, and I bought my SGS2 in October... after all this time, the echo problem is still very much alive. I'm stunned that Samsung have done nothing about it in 5 months. They could have tweaked the firmware on the phone so that the in-call 'noise reduction' feature could be disabled in the settings options, which would enable the user of an affected phone to mask the echo problem and use a protective case... but then I suppose a firmware tweak would have been an admission of guilt from Samsung.

I've got no idea how widespread this problem is, but searching the internet reveals user after user reporting this issue and asking how it can be fixed.

CONCLUSION AND ADVICE

If your SGS2 is affected by the echo problem, then ANY protective case that you put on your phone will cause the other party in the call to hear their own voice a fraction of a second after they speak, making a conversation a complete nightmare. Some cases might make the echo louder than others, but if your phone is affected then any case will cause you grief.

My advice to those who are about to buy an SGS2 is to go for it!! Seriously, it's a miracle of technology, a beautiful smartphone. BUT if you want to protect your expensive phone with a case then make sure you buy a cheap TPU case at the same time you buy your phone. Put the case on the phone, make a few test calls - your called party will know immediately if the echo issue exists. If they get echo then I would immediately return the phone for a replacement or refund. Bear in mind that there's always the chance that the replacement might also have the echo problem!

I love this phone, but would like to see a consumer watchdog take up this issue with Samsung. Otherwise they will get away with another manufacturing error cover-up, just like the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 "oil slick" issue. Don't get me wrong, it's not just Samsung who have tried to brush off responsibility for manufacturing errors. We live in an age where products are superceded every few months, products are rushed out and product testing is left to the consumers.