Samsung Galaxy S II first decent review up...

No problems!

Build quality
If the one you held had a wiggling home button then it was a dodgy handset as mine certainly dosn't wiggle! the phone feels like a unibody even though it isn't, like in my review I mention it feels as solid as a DHD which is Unibody (not held a Sensation yet to compare) butobviously much thinner and lighter.

Freezing
I've not had any freezing. Whether the one at MVC was network branded or not I don't know but mine is sim free so fully retail and I've had no problems. There have been 2 firmware updates for it from Samsung over the past week, KE1 and KE2 and I have had them both and neither have had any bugs either although KE2 has an issue on Orange network at the moment (I am on Vodafone). KE2 fixes the overly sensitive autobrightness and improves the Swype Keyboard sensitivity.

Facebook
It does have integration via the Social apps Samsung include but I uninstalled all of these in the same way I uninstalled all the HTC stuff on my Desire as I dislike having all that bundled in and prefer to use the official apps and widgets for them. Because of this, I have not used the built in integration so can't say how useful it is on any handset really.

Samsung appear to be supporting the phone quite nicely too. 2 updates within a week and the dev community at XDA is also pretty big. the phone is bootloader unlocked and mine is rooted and fully stripped down just how I like it. Samsung phones of the future will all be bootloader unlocked too so those who like to root and use custom ROMs will be right at home.
 
robbiekhan said:
No problems!

Build quality
If the one you held had a wiggling home button then it was a dodgy handset as mine certainly dosn't wiggle! the phone feels like a unibody even though it isn't, like in my review I mention it feels as solid as a DHD which is Unibody (not held a Sensation yet to compare) butobviously much thinner and lighter.

Freezing
I've not had any freezing. Whether the one at MVC was network branded or not I don't know but mine is sim free so fully retail and I've had no problems. There have been 2 firmware updates for it from Samsung over the past week, KE1 and KE2 and I have had them both and neither have had any bugs either although KE2 has an issue on Orange network at the moment (I am on Vodafone). KE2 fixes the overly sensitive autobrightness and improves the Swype Keyboard sensitivity.

Facebook
It does have integration via the Social apps Samsung include but I uninstalled all of these in the same way I uninstalled all the HTC stuff on my Desire as I dislike having all that bundled in and prefer to use the official apps and widgets for them. Because of this, I have not used the built in integration so can't say how useful it is on any handset really.

Samsung appear to be supporting the phone quite nicely too. 2 updates within a week and the dev community at XDA is also pretty big. the phone is bootloader unlocked and mine is rooted and fully stripped down just how I like it. Samsung phones of the future will all be bootloader unlocked too so those who like to root and use custom ROMs will be right at home.
Click to expand...

Battery
Battery life is good from the week and a bit I've used the phone now. I've noticed life improve as the charge cycles built up the past week. I am getting 1-2 days of regular usage and throw in camera/tv show watching and so on and it's on par with my Desire which has a single core processor and smaller screen and doesn't do hardware acceleration for video.

Right now I'm on over 12 hours and at 52%. I watched the latest Simpsons in 720p at lunch, surfed the web briefly, checked emails, updated apps via the Market and generally messed about with it. WiFi was on at all times (as always).

Obviously putting it into Flight Mode while watching movies and so on saves even more battery..

Samsung have put in some really neat features that other phones do not have. Check out the XDA Features discovery thread as they are similar to the original Galaxy S while others are new.
 
Thanks mate... you just helped me make up my mind. For the same price, choosing Arc over Galaxy II would be a mistake. Meh, if only Sony would fit dual-core chip to the handset, it would be different game. :) As always... world changes, and Sony still claim that everyone else doing it the wrong way :p
 
It's going to be a fight between the SII and the Sensation really. The SII is still better specs wise but the Sensation has some cool features like stereo recording and output and probably better built in apps via HTC Sense but the features of the SII and the speed of Samsung updates as well as SAMOLED+ mean the SII will always remain the better phone in practice and on paper!
 
How's the GPS? If the GPS is spot on with the SGSII I'll fork out cash and make the jump from my Vibrant.

Edit: nevermind, saw your previous post on the GPS. I can't wait for this thing to launch stateside.
 
Any update on US availability? My wife just shattered her iPhone, so it's the perfect time for me to switch to android and give her my iPhone.
 
Ampsonic said:
Any update on US availability? My wife just shattered her iPhone, so it's the perfect time for me to switch to android and give her my iPhone.
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Samsung is supposed to have a big press release in s few months but nobody knows what it is for sure.
 
There has been the first plausible rumours of the SGS II coming to other carriers. A case manufacturer listed code names for the phone on other carriers: Attain, Within, and Function. All of which have been registered by Samsung. No other information besides that.

Your review so far robbie makes me want this phone to have Verizon LTE that much more, and is going to make me that much more disappointed when it doesn't have LTE.
 
This phone is awesome, no wonder Apple is sueing Samsung. The SG2 makes the iphone 4 look like shit in comparison and it's making Apple nervous and angry.
 
Thanks for the review links, I'm finally going to be able to get rid of my 3GS in July, providing this arrives in July anyway, only got the bloody iphone to save on service charges with the missus, and there were no Android phones to speak of at the time I was looking to upgrade with AT&T.

Harry1969 said:
This phone is awesome, no wonder Apple is sueing Samsung. The SG2 makes the iphone 4 look like shit in comparison and it's making Apple nervous and angry.
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I think they are worried about Android in general, it's only been around for a year and a half, and it's damaging their sales, the next phone would have to be a big step up from the last one, I wasn't even interested iphone 4, still think the 3GS was the better phone, regardless of not having the retina screen, front camera, and iPad CPU...and a crap antenna, or was that an extra feature?
 
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I'm disappointed with that phone. Might be fast and so.... but It's damn ugly. After using it for few days, it doesn't fit comfortably in my hands, it's just looks as iPhone clone, and a cheap one. After few days of course, buttons work flimsy. There is not even dedicated camera button

All the samsung apps and hubs are useless, nothing as good as Sony's Timescape on Arc. Colors are too bright on the screen.

What really pissess me off is that most of the games are not working. Nvidia is doing dirty tricks again, making all the dual core optimised games work only on Tegra 2 devices, and Samsung went with their own gpu.

I'm going to trade it for Xperia Arc, and never touch anything from Samsung with ten foot pole
 
The GPU issues while I agree is crap since some Tegra only games have been hacked and worked fine in any phone, is also google's fault.
Like it or not...here we see the advantages of direct3d instead of having to program for different GPUs.
 
CuE0083 said:
Doesn't Samsung have a bad track record for updating Android phones?
Click to expand...

For some reason yes even though they were the first to upgrade a phone to gingerbread (i9000) and rolled out froyo updates for all Galaxy S phones that were put on hold for months by the US carriers.
 
shaolin95 said:
The GPU issues while I agree is crap since some Tegra only games have been hacked and worked fine in any phone, is also google's fault.
Like it or not...here we see the advantages of direct3d instead of having to program for different GPUs.
Click to expand...

I can play all the TegraHD games just fine.

Install Chainfire3D and all Tegra games are available.

Simple.
 
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