The first Galaxy S was a phone which excited smartphone and Android nerds tremendously. The sequel to that — the Galaxy S II — carries the burden of expectations on account of the bar being set incredibly high. The S II has every intention of meeting and exceeding those expectations. Featuring an impressive spec sheet, it is presented as faster, brighter and slimmer than the original.
On its face, the phone has a 4.3-inch screen with a camera on the top and three buttons on the bottom. The left and the right sides feature the power button and a volume rocker. No dedicated camera button on this one, though. The body is mostly plastic and while it doesn't feel cheap, one does wish for a slightly better build quality. Measuring in at 8.49mm and weighing 116g, it is built for an extremely slim profile and won't create a bulge in your pocket or weigh you down.
The screen is powered by a Super AMOLED Plus display while the previous iteration lacked the Plus tag. The resolution is 800x480 and while there are phones on the market with higher resolution screens, the display type along with a large size results in an excellent viewing experience. When compared to the original Galaxy S, the S II has truer-to-life colours while the original had a greenish tinge.
The phone features a 1.2GHz dual-core processor, which means it'll handle just about anything you throw at it. The RAM, which is now doubled at 1GB, helps with that cause too. The device captures and plays back full HD video without any hiccups. Despite having an added visual layer — TouchWiz — the phone displayed no signs of lag or slowing down. Of course, the Touchwiz interface has been updated to 4.0 so it should feature improvements.
The camera features an 8-megapixel sensor at the back and a 2-megapixel sensor on the front. The camera app gives you considerable amount of control in terms of ISO, white balance and other images settings. Captured video was smooth and crisp too with no lag or dropped frames, even on HD.
With improvements in just about every specification, the Galaxy S II (Dh2,599) is a worthy successor to the previously popular phone, with everything in paper translating into real-life usage. Thanks to its excellent screen, powerful processor and slim profile, it is a beast of a phone without the looks of one.
Bhavishya Kanjhan is a digital marketing professional and an early adopter of all things digital. Follow his tweets on @bhavishya
