The Samsung Galaxy S II

When I received a text from my local cell phone supplier offering me the Samsung Galaxy i9100 S II, it was not really something that I had in mind. I decided to check it out on gsmarena - a site that tests and reviews every phone on the market, so their view must be worth something.

The review was fantastic - hardly a fault was found.

So with four iPhones and one IPad in the house already, I got to go for something completely different. Or perhaps not so different! The Galaxy has been accused of being a copy of the iPhone. But there are real differences.

First of all, the screen is a massive 4.3 inches. Plenty of space available. The phone is ultra thin weighing a mere 116 grams. Unlike the iPhone, no glass.

The Galaxy uses the latest Android operating system. This is my first android phone and so far so good. It certainly offers much more flexibility than any other phone that I have used. There also seem to be endless aps available. As for loading music, I was able to simple drag and drop from my computer. Not restricted to a single computer as with my iPad. I didn't have to do anything to add my contacts. They simply added themselves when I added my Gmail address. Simple. Hopefully it keeps the systems in sync.

Text editing is good. Unlike the iPad it is a simple matter to get back to a misspelled word to correct it. The phone offers handwriting recognition and voice recognition. I tried dictating a few sentences on google talk. The first sentence was perfect. The second garbage. And so it continued.

The 8 mp camera is one of the features of the phone that interested me. This one seems good. It also takes hd video at 1080p@30fps. The video has continuos autofocus. I will be trying this out later.

The Galaxy comes preloaded with dozens of apps. One of these allows you to create and edit MS Word, Excel and PowerPoint docs. It also comes with FM radio.

My main gripe so far is with the sound quality. As with the iPad, I felt that a top end device could have done a lot better. Even the much cheaper Nokia 5800 has better sound. The headphones are cheap and nasty too. The sound improved greatly through a pair of Apple headphones (something that was sadly not included with the iPad).

I do like the fact that the phone is light weight, has a large screen and is easy to use. Time will tell more about the quality and longevity of the phone.