Samsung Galaxy S 2 (International) Review - The Best, Redefined
by Brian Klug & Anand Lal Shimpi on September 11, 2011 11:06 AM EST- Posted in
- Smartphones
- Samsung
- Galaxy S II
- Exynos
- Mobile
Inside SGS2
There have been a number of teardowns of the SGS2, and for the most part usually there isn’t a need to open up devices unless the FCC photos don’t suffice. This time around I still have a number of questions about what component choices had been made for the SGS2, so it went under the screwdriver (and emerged unscathed) just so we could get a glimpse at the goods.
SGS2 comes apart easily enough, with a few philips (no Torx bits) screws on the back and then a couple prods with a plastic tool to get the snaps off. Construction in this regard is very similar to the original SGS. After that, you have access to the PCB, backside, and frame.
You can see how SGS2 achieves its thinness by looking at the layout. The PCB doesn’t run underneath the battery - the majority of device thickness is defined by the SAMOLED+ panel plus battery thickness.
In addition, the SGS2 locates the cellular antenna at bottom in a modular speaker plus antenna module that snaps in and out of the plastic backside. The depth of SGS2 at its thickest seems governed by this speaker and its resonating chamber. Off to the other side is the bottom microphone, cellular feed cable, and gold contacts for getting that connected to the silver antenna.
There’s another second antenna to the opposite side of the module, which is for Bluetooth and WiFi.
If we turn our attention to the PCB we can see the rest of SGS2’s interesting bits.
The EMI cans thankfully snap off easily, and underneath we can see right next to the microSD card slot is the Infineon/Intel X-Gold 626 HSPA+ (HSDPA Cat. 14 - 21 Mbps / HSUPA Cat. 7 11.5 Mbps) baseband.
On the opposite side is the Audience 1026 noise cancelation IC, MAX8997 PMIC, and Yamaha YMU823 audio codec.
On the same side further down is the GPS that SGS2 uses, which is a SiRF GSD4T GPS. That particular die is absolutely tiny and difficult to photograph. More on the SGS2 GPS in a moment, however.
The other side of the PCB is much more interesting.
With the cans off, first we get a shot of Exynos 4210 with its PoP memory. This particular part has two mobile LPDDR2 die in the stack. Next to it, a Samsung combo NAND + DRAM part, with 16 GB of NAND and 64 MB of RAM, no doubt for the Infineon baseband.
Moving right is the Infineon Smarti UE2 RF transciever marked 5712, and the large IC below that marked RFMD RF6260 is a quad-band multi mode power amp which is a bit interesting. It works between 1710 and 1980 MHz, and 824–915 MHz, supplanting somewhat the need for individual power amps for each band.
Down on the long and skinny part of the PCB is a large package which I believe probably houses the BCM4330 WLAN module (more on that later), and next to it is a button cell battery, which seems curious.
Now remember that camera part I mentioned earlier? Well, at the top of the board you can see a ZIF slot, a relatively large IC< and then the camera module.
Compare these two, and it seems pretty obvious that this is exactly that same camera module from earlier, and most likely the large IC with Korea written on it is the Fujitsu M5MO ISP which controls it.
Also up at the very top is another gold connector which meets up with the SGS2’s third antenna, whose purpose is either for WLAN/GPS or another Rx finger for the cellular baseband.
The circular thing with a foam backside is the SGS2’s vibration motor, and other than that there really isn’t much more to talk about. Heat gets carried away from ICs through the EMI cans which double as heatsinks, and on the backside of the plastic back you can see a metal region and small thermal pad.
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Mugur - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - link
Well, for most Android devices I've tried (I currently own 3), if you just leave them doing nothing overnight (even with wifi on on some of them, but no 3G/HSDPA, no GPS etc.) the battery drain is like 2-3%. Of course, if some app or push email or an updating widget wakes them, the drain could reach 20-25%.You just have to play a bit with the phone and find out what is mostly consuming your battery, even get one of the "green" apps on the Market. Through experimentation, I'm sure most people (excluding the really heavy users) will get 50% more time of the battery.
wuyuanyi - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
It must be the final answer for my pending problem.my GS II has this problem and I has been very annoyed.the CPU current produce a EMI on the output circuit ,for the BT earphone DOESN'T play such hiss and noisy.apprecite it to solve my problem rather than suspect whether it is my own case. but the next question is how to solve it ? can we manual fix the shield or , generate a noisy that is against the noisy --with reverse wave?hehe
sorry for my poor ENGLISH
awesomedeleted - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
This is a fresh copy of my current phone...Samsung Infuse 4G...which came out in May. I hate the newer Galaxy S round home button thingy too. What's so special, the name?awesomedeleted - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
Although I now notice a few small differences in hardware, such as 1.2Ghz Dual-core A9 vs. my Infuse's 1.2Ghz Single-core A8, and the 1GB RAM.supercurio - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
Infuse 4G is a Galaxy S "repackaged" with a Galaxy S II look, screen and probably camera sensor for AT&T.bmgoodman - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
So I understand that the audio quality of this phone is a step down from the original galaxy. My question is how big a step down? For a non-"audiophile" who just wants to connect the headphone jack into the AUX port on his OEM car stereo to listen to his variable bit rate MP3 (~128 bps IIRC) music collection, is this something that's likely to disappoint? Is it a notable shortcoming for a more typical music fan?supercurio - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
No doubt cars are in general a noisy environment.Furthermore its very rare to find cars benefiting from good speakers and implementation, resulting in far from linear frequency response, left/right imbalance, resonance in other materials etc :P
Trained ears or sensible people are capable of detecting subtle difference in sound like nobody can imagine ^^ but I don't think it will Galaxy S II DAC issues described will make a noticeable difference when listening to music while driving a car for most people.
Note: I have no idea how was the original Samsung Galaxy phone on this regard, but its a regression over Galaxy S.
Headphones.. that's something else because even cheap ones (price doesn't matter) can provide some low distortion levels and let your perceive fine details.
Deusfaux - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
It is there and does work, speaking from experience with a Nexus S.Deusfaux - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
An HTC I used did it best though, with integrating the feature right into the browser settings. No special URL strings needed to access functionality.aNYthing24 - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
But isn't there a version of the Tegra 2 that is clocked at 1.2 GHz? It's going to be at that clock speed in the Fusion Grid table.t