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
Keyboards
By default, the SGS2 comes with Swype and the Samsung keypad preinstalled. I’ve moved away from Swype in recent months and started taking to the default gingerbread keyboard quite a lot, and it’s odd to see that Samsung has removed it from their stock ROMs. For me, this was one of the major enhancements that came with 2.3, and it’s puzzling how many different OEMs choose to purposefully not include it, and instead include their own strange keyboard in its place.
The Samsung keypad honestly is less than ideal and feels like it belongs back in the Android 2.1 world from whence it came, which is likely why Swype is set as default. It lacks autocorrect functionality by default and generally just looks drab.
Getting autocorrection enabled requires diving into the menus and enabling it for your given language, and even then isn’t that great. I guess I’m confused why Samsung would elect to not include the excellent 2.3 keyboard and instead force users to install the APK themselves.
Messaging
SMS is one of those things that each phone needs to do perfectly, and I think it’s especially worth taking a formal look at when an OEM moves away from the stock Android application. Bring up messaging and you get a list of ongoing conversations sorted by last activity, just like you’d expect.
Tapping new gives you a nice, clean composition page complete with character count. The conversation view is threaded and in large speech bubbles, complete with date and time stamps on each message.
Honestly I can find no fault with the Samsung messaging application. It doesn’t make the mistake that other OEMs have made by making font overly huge or decorations take away from usability and vertical space, though the composition box could stand to be a row shorter so more of the thread is visible. In addition, I spent a lot of time hammering on the SGS2’s messaging stack to try and make it slow dramatically like I’ve seen a few other Android phones do - no such lag took place, which is a great sign, even after a few weeks without deleting anything.
Browser
Like the original Galaxy S, on SGS2 samsung has made enhancements to the browser that dramatically increase smoothness. At the time we could only explain the performance increase by shrugging and claiming it was GPU accelerated. We know a bit more now about what enhancements are required to make browsing smooth in this fashion, and the answer lies in a backing store. A backing store is essentially a nice way of saying cache, and in this case what’s being cached is the rendered page itself, which is either rendered into a texture or some intermediary that’s a step above final rendering.
A backing store is what makes iOS’ browser so smooth, and you can see it render into the texture (or if you overscroll beyond the render, where it hasn’t yet) with those little grey rectangles. Render into a big texture, and then it’s a relatively free GPU operation to transform and clip that texture when a user scrolls around the page, though zooming will require a re-draw. Until Android 3.x, however, the stock Android browser hasn’t had a backing store, which is why translating around feels choppy. As a result, it has been the burden of OEMs to make their browsers feel snappy by incorporating their own backing stores. HTC works with Qualcomm to bring an appropriate level of smoothness to their devices, I already mentioned Android 3.x has one (which will no doubt carry over to Ice Cream Sandwich), and Samsung again has one this go-around in SGS2 just like they did with the original SGS.
So how good is SGS2’s browser backing store? Very good. Far and away this is the smoothest Android 2.x browsing experience, by a large margin. The only downside to the whole thing is that the browser has 16 bit color, again undoubtedly to make this an easy texture for manipulation by the GPU. I’ve also noticed one or two times that the browser will go to a white screen instead of showing the content after it’s loaded, which to me indicates that getting the backing store always working perfectly with a big page can be a challenge - perhaps GPU memory is at a real premium when this happens. I’m told this is fixed in newer firmware editions. That said, the tradeoff is well worth it, as zooming, translating, just about everything is buttery smooth. Browser smoothness is finally basically at parity with iOS.
What’s very impressive is that Samsung even manages to keep Flash 10.3 plugins animated while panning and scrolling around, something that currently HTC temporarily halts while translating around in their browser. It’s hard to communicate just how smooth and fluid the SGS2 browser is, and I’d encourage interested parties to watch our video which demonstrates it.
Finally, there’s one last semi-hidden browser feature - custom user agents. Enter “about:useragent” into the URL bar, and you can pull up a menu and select between a number of different user agents and masquerade the SGS2 as an iPhone, Galaxy S, Desktop (OS X 10.5.7 Safari), Nexus One, Lismore, or custom. This is something again I wish the stock Android browser would offer similar control over.
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kreacher - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
I was disappointed to see that there is no mention of the screen 's inability to display 24bit gradients while Samsung claims its a screen capable of displaying 16M colors.supercurio - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
See my answer for Astri.Maybe you only checked a gradient in Web Browser or a specific app that forces 16bit surfaces.
Each app has the ability to choose how the rendering is done in this regard.
Internally, the Super AMOLED controller works in much more than 24bit in order to proceed to complex color-space conversions between the a digital frame buffer and an analog, very large dynamic range OLEDs.
lemmo - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
Great review, and incredible detail on the audio quality. Shame the SGS2 has taken a step backwards on audio. Any info on the likely spec for the audio on the Samsung Nexus Prime?Also, any recommendations on reviews of best smartphones for audio quality? cheers :)
supercurio - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
Thanks for the feedback!I really need it in order to improve next review.
Organize it differently for better readability, maybe evaluate other aspects as well (like recording)
I have no info about what's in Nexus Prime but I'd like to :P
If somebody can send me a report: https://market.android.com/details?id=org.projectv... I'll study it.
Best devices I know in terms of audio quality:
- with Voodoo Sound: Nexus S, Galaxy S family, Galaxy Tab 7".
- with or without Voodoo sound: Asus Transformer
- soon with Voodoo Sound: Galaxy Tab 10.1 (incredible power stage for the headphone amp)
- iPhones/iPad: clean DAC but boring headphone amp (unable to drive many cans to adequate levels)
And.. many I don't know! (yet?)
lemmo - Wednesday, September 14, 2011 - link
Thanks supercurio, very helpful. I'll keep looking for more info on the Nexus Prime.Shame none of the other phones/tablets you mention have got the right spec for me.
In practice, do you think the 'average user' will notice the poorer audio quality on the SGS2?
yellowchilli - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
a very very good read thank youi've owned the sgs2 since its EU launch..it's interesting to see the slight differences/improvements samsung has put into the US release (e.g. the power button, camera ui)
mcquade181 - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
I've had my SGS2 here in Australia for two months now and on a recent snow trip noticed some deficiencies compared to my friends Nokia N8. We both use the same provider (Telstra 3G on 850MHz):1. Whilst travelling there were periods where I completely lost reception whereas the N8 still had a signal and was able to make calls. This suggests that the SGS2 is a bit lacking in cellular sensitivity (and note that the N8 is not all that flash either when compared to the old Nokia N95).
2. In our snow accomodation I could not get a reliable WiFi signal from the local hotspot whereas the N8 could (it was marginal, but it did work).
3. Bluetooth on the SGS2 is unreliable with some devices. It keeps disconnecting after a few minutes.
That said I do like my SGS2 and is better in many other ways to the Nokia N8 - in particular earphone volume and call clarity where the N8 is deficient. Of course android has a much wider selection of available apps than does the Nokia, although surprisingly ALL my favourite apps are also available for the Nokia.
Regards from down under, Graham Rawolle.
willstay - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
What a coincidence. After two Androids, I actually bought N8 and later sold it to get SGS2. Before Belle, swype was only available in landscape and my must-have apps are not there for Symbian.jcompagner - Tuesday, September 13, 2011 - link
yes that is the only drawback i also can find of the SGS2..Wifi reception is really not up to standards.
kmmatney - Monday, September 12, 2011 - link
I'm not happy with the battery tests - they don't show real life usage. I'd still like to know what happens with the battery if you just leave the phone in your pocket for most of the day, or what happens if you leave it in standby overnight. All of my co-workers complain about battery life with their Android phones, and all want to get iPhones the next time around. The batteries seem to drain excessively with the phones doing nothing, and they are often dead when they go to use them. Who cares if you can browse the web for 7 hours or whatever...I just want the phone to be ready to use if its been sitting on my desk for half the day, or if I forget to charge it overnight. This is way more important - at least for someone like me who travels. (actually, I work a lot in wafer fabs around the world, and crappy reception in the fabs often drain battery quickly).I guess it will depend on what Apps are installed, and you use push notifications, but it would be useful to have a test where you charge the phone, and then let it sit for 8 hours doing nothing, and then report the battery life. The older Android phones seemed terrible at this, while my iPhone 3GS is great.
This phone looks awesome, but I would need this information before I would consider buying it.