Istorya.net is the most popular community driven forum in Cebu, Philippines.
I love reading personal reviews written buy ordinary people, and by ordinary, I mean the average working guy who doesn't work for a tech review site and lives life regularly.
Here is one of them:
Samsung Galaxy S II - An Istoryan's View
by:aridoasis
I got my Galaxy S II two weeks ago, and I'm very happy with it. I decided to write this personal review as I've noticed that there is a growing community of Android users here.
Before anything else, my previous 4 phones were the Galaxy S, OmniaHD, Samsung Jet, and the original Omnia.
Aesthetics
It's slim. Very slim.
It doesn't feel too fragile, and has a nice grip. I'm using a Case-Mate Barely There case, and even with it on,
the phone is just barely thicker than the original Galaxy S.
The battery cover is feels flimsy, but snaps into place and doesn't creek.
There are 2 mics,the top one for used for noise cancellations in-call. I like how the moved the micro-usb port to the bottom, making it easier for docking.
I like the fact that there is a physical home button, but miss the search button. Though search can be fired up by a long press of the menu key.
Aside from the above, it's basically a slate with clean, smooth lines. Simple and elegant.
Screen
4.3" Super AMOLED plus. The only qualm I have is that it could be just a bit brighter. Other than that, it's perfect. The colors are crisp, the saturation is excellent, and the blacks are as black can be.
OS/Performace
I'm sort of a purist, the the only modification I've done to the system is root.
The phone is slick, and I have not encoutered any lags with any apps at all, even with multiple apps. If you head on to the Galaxy S II forum at xdadevelopers or search youtube, you'll see a demo of the SGS2 with 20 tabs of MegaVideo open, with all videos playing, and the phone has no lag whatsoever - talk about power!
TouchWiz 4 brings a lot to the table compared to 3. Now you can pinch to zoom out on both home screen and app drawer to display all the screens. When moving widgets/icons, you can tilt the phone left and right and the pages will move automatically. Some widgets are now resizable as well. What I live most about TouchWiz though is that I can arrange icons and drop them into any screen in the app drawer. And and as a self-confessed OC, I've sorted my apps by function. There is also the options to create folders in both the home screen and the app drawer.
Although there has been numerous complaints about the battery life, I'm perosnally very happy with it.I'm averaging around 23 hours before my battery gets to 15-20%, considering that I'm a power user (always-on data
connection, frequent checks on Facebook, Twitter and Pulse, Games [Taptap Revolution, Fruit Slice, Gun Bros, Quake III, Angry Birds], 1-2 hours of music, 1-2 hours of Youtube videos).
It's able to play 1080p mkv videos with no problem as well, so I've always got great movies on the go.
The GPS bug in the SGS1 has been fixed, and I can get an accurate lock in under a minute.The camera quality is good. Color reproduction and saturation is managed well. There is an issue of a pink spot appearing when taking images of a white/pale area, but this has been determined as a bug with white-balance and should be fixed in an update. This doesn't really any of the photos that I've taken though.
Accessories
The phones supports USB On the Go, and having purchased the cable adapter used for the N8, I can confirm that it works. Browsing files from a flash drive/card reader is smooth and simple.
TV-Out is supported via an MHL to HDMI apapter. Great news because it's HDMI, sad news it that the adapter is not yet available. It's set to come out in June though.
There are also several docks by Samsung set to be released in June.
Conclusion
All-in-all, I am very happy with the phone.Considering the pace that I've been shedding phones the past couple of years, I'll be sticking with this for a while. It's the most complete phone I can find. I don't think there's anything it can't do (phone-wise).
Any questions are welcome.
You can also find me at the xda forums using the same nick.
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