The Ultimate Smartphone

The Samsung Galaxy S2 in all its glorious colour

A fantastic smartphone that is super fast and super bright

What We Like

If you want a luxury smartphone that has it all, then look no further than Samsung’s Galaxy S2, because it would appear that this phone has it all including a 4.3 inch display, an 8 megapixel camera and a 1.2GHz processor that powers Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

The Galaxy S2 is a big phone, but we were delighted with how light it actually is, and how easy it is to hold. It fit snugly into our hands, and although it weighs a mere 115g, it is very well made and feels solid.

The resolution is 480 x 800 pixels, which isn’t as great as the iPhone 4, but the screen is very clear without any fuzziness or blur. This is due to the Super AMOLED Plus display technology, which is very impressive and ensures that colours are bright and vivid, which means that even in sunlight we were able to see the screen.

We were absolutely thrilled with the dual core 1.2GHz processor; it makes everything you do with the S2 super quick, even when we were downloading new software, texting, had Flash video playing in the browser, and running a few apps in the background.

All that speed makes browsing a joy, but that is compounded by the large screen and the smooth touch interface.

Samsung have included some apps, which we actually found to be good. We particularly found the Task Manager useful because it monitors and closes down any apps that you have running in the background that are unnecessary to that moment, which is a great way of preserving battery life.

Also included are Samsung Hubs, which are preloaded apps designed to be useful when it comes to dealing with your music, gaming, eBooks and social networking experiences. We were particularly thrilled with the eBook app; you can download books, digital newspapers and magazines and there is quite a variety, although not as much as from the Kindle app from the Android store.

We were more than happy with the camera, the images are really good quality and there is a multitude of scene modes and different options for you to play round with. The camcorder shoots 1080p video and plays back smoothly and crisply.

What We Don't Like

There isn’t really anything bad to say about the Galaxy S2, apart from perhaps being really picky about the fact that it isn’t pure Android: Samsung has put its own mark on Google’s operating system with a new version of its TouchWiz 4.0 skin.

Conclusion

The Galaxy S2 appears to be an almost perfect phone; it is amazingly fast, has a fabulous display, a great camera and an excellent operating system, and if that isn’t enough it looks good too. The downside is that it doesn’t come cheap, but if you are in the market for this calibre of phone, then we think that the S2 is a serious contender.