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 an iPhone 4 user since last year I had the chance to try out my first Android phone, the current top of the line Samsung Galaxy S II (i9100) thanks to TRND. COM
And I have to say I am really impressed with what I saw and experienced with this Samsung phone.

---- Hardware (general build and feel) ----
Extremely lightweight, very nicely balanced. The handset size seems very good (perfect for a man's hand although my wife also likes it very much), actually hides its actual size due to its thinness and weight.
Materials used have a good haptic touch, although it feels slightly less expensive then the iPhone 4 (probably because it uses more plastic and less glass/ metal).
The back cover is slightly difficult to remove because it initially feels flimsier then it actually is but unproblematic once you get used to it and no problem at all if you need to insert a microSD card, replace the SIM or change the battery.
A very high quality in-ear headset is included which I massively prefer instead of the Apple headsets - but this may be a personal decision.
-> Conclusion: In all the Samsung is on par with the iPhone 4, each has its own merits.

---- Screen ----
Large (4.3"), very crisp and sharp display, great colors (better then the iPhone4 Retina display in this regard but also a bit darker).
The screen (using an enhanced AMOLED technology which Samsung coined "Super AMOLED Plus" is probably the best stand-out feature of the Samsung and puts it over the top of all current smartphones.
-> Conclusion: In all slightly better then the iPhone 4 due to size and colours.

---- Operating System ----
Uses Andoid 2.3.3 (named Gingerbread), the most current smartphone version of Google's Android OS. With many great and useful Android features (notification), but others like Apple are catching up fast to we need continued progress. And this is good for the consumer!
I had no crashes or reboots using the Samsung during the last four weeks, only once the Facebook app needed to be restarted but I guess that was the app itself and not the OS.
-> Conclusion: Probably just as good as IOS 4, I prefer the Apple although this may very much depend on the personal preference so I will call it a draw. (3:2)

---- Samsung OS Add-ins ----
Samsung added its own refinement ("TouchWiz 4.0") on top of Gingerbread to enhance the experience.
I loved the fast access to settings like turning on/off Bluetooth, GPS, WiFi etc and some scalable widgets seems useful.
I am not too sure about the hubs concept - I personally rather like to use specific or native apps for specific media types.
Samsung also included a DLNA compliant server application, which enables the phone to wirelessly "send" pictures, videos and music from the handset to a number of devices like modern TVs, Playstation 3, Xbox360 or even to a Windows 7 PC.
I personally like the optional Swype keyboard which Samsung provides - this enables you to type words without lifting your fingers. After using it once on the Galaxy, I missed such a feature on the iPhone.
The Samsung also has a remote management feature ("Samsung Dive"), which enables finding or disabling the phone if it lost, similar to the "Find my iPhone" service of Apple.
Samsung provides an own software suite for Windows and OSX PCs called Samsung KIES, which even enables a wireless sync to the PC. Media management of KIES is good but not as good as Apple's iTunes. There are a few sellers for Android music (most prominently Amazon) but Video content does not seem to be available anywhere.
-> Conclusion: Better then IOS 4, although this may really depend on the personal preference, especially if do not like to "bring your own media".

---- Speed ----
The Samsung has a 1.2GHz dual core processor and it shows in general responsiveness - I never had the feeling of lag while using the touchscreen or apps. Of course measuring and comparing speed within apps is difficult (for example Angry Birds game seemed slower - lower FPS - then on the iPhone4) but the web load rendering on WiFi and 3G is noticeably faster than the current iPhone generation. Also a reloading of web pages was rarely required, possibly also be a due to increased memory (1GB RAM). The problem with speed within graphic intense games may be a general issue with Android OS, not anything Samsung can directly improve.
-> Conclusion: Slight preference of Samsung, but YMMV because this may depend on the apps used. Will probably be no difference for most users.

---- Battery ----
My own requirements are that any phone should last at least 36-40 hours with my normal usage pattern. 40 hours would be perfect. Take a fully charged phone from the bedside, use it normally during the day and only require charging again the evening of the NEXT day, when you go to sleep. This way you know you'll have enough power if (i) you could not charge it daily and (ii) required more usage then normally (e.g. on a trip when you need to use GPS and 3G more frequently then usual).
Until now the only current generation smartphone capable of that was the iPhone4. Now the Samsung got this right, it gets me through a whole day and a half. Although my iPhone (even with it's almost year old battery) is slightly better, above the 10% charge around the 40 hour mark with own usage, I did not get the chance to "condition" the Samsung battery as I regularly do with my iPhone. So your mileage may vary. And of course you can carry a swappable replacement Samsung battery (reasonable cheap - around 20 on Amazon), which is not possible for an iPhone at all.
-> Conclusion: Very slightly prefer the iPhone, but the Samsung would be ahead if I took a spare battery into account.

---- Camera ----
Until now I believed the best smartphone camera was on the iPhone4 but Samsung definitely beat Apple's phone. Each and every picture I took (outdoor, indoor, low-light) was better on the Samsung Galaxy S II, even if I compare the front cameras of both phones. And the HD video capabilities also seem to better then Apples top model. I only miss a build in HDR functionality (even the pseudo HDR Apple delivers would have been good) but this can be remedied using a number of camera apps from the Android market. And a dedicated camera button would have been great but the
-> Conclusion: Samsung first, iPhone4 is clearly only second best, and other phones have al lot of catching up to do.

---- Connectivity ----
It has all the current features (3G/HSPA+, WiFi, FM-Radio, HDMI & USB) but what really is a standout feature for me personally is the Bluetooth rSAP support (Remote SIM Access Protocol) as part of its package of Bluetooth protocols. This enables my build-in car phone to connect to the Samsung, something no iPhone and barely any other smartphone can do!
The Galaxy S II version for the German market does not have 4G but it would be useless anyway with its current rollout status here.
-> Conclusion: Samsung wins, at least with FM Radio & HDM, even if people do not care about rSAP Bluetooth as I do.

---- Future OS Upgrade ----
Not known, currently has 2.3.3 (Gingerbread), any newer version (e.g. Ice-cream Sandwich) will depend on (a) your phone provider (b) Samsung and (c) Google. But most manufactures promised to update at least for 18 months and then there is always the rooting community. But since Apple has provided around 30month of firmware updates to its prior iPhones the 18 month do sound only very basic.
-> Conclusion: Here Apple has set a benchmark to beat (firmware support up to 3 years), Samsung has to prove it can deliver on its promise.

---- Price ----
The price may depends of the type of contract you have with your provider but if I take the unlocked and no contract version into account, the Samsung is very reasonable and much better then its direct competitor. The street price (e.g. Amazon) six weeks after it's launch is around 470 GBR, an iPhone 4 still costs at least 510 GBR one year after it's launch.
But do not forget that the one time cost of a mobile is usually nothing compared to the total you are paying monthly for the 2-year contract.
-> Conclusion: The Samsung Galaxy S II is the better deal ("more bang for the buck"), with or without a contract.

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---- Final Conclusion ----
Definitely the best Android mobile phone, it wins or is at least on par with all the key factors. My (subjective) comparison would give it an 8:6 lead against an iPhone 4.
The Samsung Galaxy S2 has no real weakness, very much unlike most its competitors.
For any "new comer", current Android users as well as many iPhone users it should be a no-brainer to choose the Samsung Galaxy S II.
And I would have probably switched to this Samsung without hesitation but at the moment I would need to justify the loss of all the investment I made to the Apple ecosystem (apps, accessories, media).

---- What Samsung should improve? ----
- Documentation: There was not much, especially more info about Samsung's own apps and pointers towards the KIES Windows/Mac software would have been great.
- Branding: Is it called Samsung Galaxy S II or Samsung Galaxy S2 or Samsung i9100? Just own your brand and decide on ONE name with one spelling, worldwide! Especially do not allow the carriers/providers to change the name (as it is often done in the US).
- Camera: An external hardware shutter button would be nice, as would be build-in additional camera app features (like HDR or filters).
- Updates: Apples keeps it iPhones up-to-date with new Firmware for about 30month (at least that what they did with the first two generations). Read more ›

I've been using feature/smartphones for around 10 years and every few years I come across a phone that you know is a classic. The S2 is one of those. I upgraded from an HTC Desire HD -- and it's quite an upgrade.

The phone has a plastic chassis, and this has been criticised as being "cheap" but, in fact, it's a feature since it makes the phone very, very light. That's more important than it sounds. My Desire HD was a lot heavier and, after a long period of use, it got tiring. This thing is feather light. It's also tough. Check out the "drop test" on Youtube, which compares the S2 with the iPhone 4S when dropped onto concrete from various heights. The S2 is relatively unscathed while the iPhone is smashed.

Feature-wise the S2 has just about everything. The dual core processor compensates for Android's inherent lag and makes it feel like an iPhone. The screen is just fantastic. In fact, it's so good you can use it as a lie detector -- because if anyone tells you that it's just "OK", they're lying. It's stunning. My wife has an iPhone 4S and side by side the S2 makes that phone look washed out and lifeless.

The phone also has a good camera, certainly the best on any phone that I have used, and definitely comparable to a low-end dedicated camera (minus the optical zoom). The HD video recording, in particular, is good.

The only weak point is the battery. It's miles better than the Desire HD but it still struggles to last a full day. This is, in part, due to the fact that you will not stop playing with the phone but, still, a slightly bigger battery would have been nice (you can get a higher capacity battery for £8 on Amazon).

The S2 is destined to be a classic smartphone. It's been out for over six months now and it's still the best phone available by some distance.