The Samsung Galaxy S II is a very big deal for Samsung, as it’ll be their flagship for this year. Last year the Galaxy S line, with its Super AMOLED display, great battery life, and snappy performance provided by Samsung’s 1GHz Hummingbird chip, found its way onto all major carriers across the globe in different versions. We expect that the Galaxy S II will have a similar fate, because it ups the ante in a big way.
With the Galaxy S II, Samsung is ushering in the era of its larger and improved Super AMOLED Plus display, which provides incredible contrast and great battery life. Also new is Samsung’s 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos CPU, which is a challenger to the Tegra 2 and dual-score Snapdragon, both of which are on the market currently, or on the way out. With the Samsung Galaxy S II, we’ll also get to see Samsung’s latest iteration of their TouchWiz interface, which has been completely overhauled for this new smartphone. For tons of multitasking power, you get a full gigabyte of RAM. Wow.
Beyond that, Samsung spent a lot of effort making sure their next-generation flagship was thin. In fact, the Galaxy S II is the thinnest smartphone on the market right now at an incredible 8.5mm, compared to the already-thin HTC Sensation, which is around 11.3mm thick.
There’s one place Samsung didn’t meet our expectations: screen resolution. While Motorola and Samsung are pushing screen resolutions on Android to qHD 960×540, the Galaxy S II is stuck at WVGA 800×480.
As mentioned, we expect the Galaxy S II to land on most major carriers for a subsidized price. If you’ve got the cash and you can’t wait, you can grab one for £440 (that’s around $725) over at Clove.co.uk. This unlocked version happens to have the correct bands to do 3G on AT&T.
First impressions:
- This is the thinnest phone we’ve ever tested. It’s pretty remarkable just how thin it is
- TouchWiz 4.0 is packed with goodies! Lots to explore
- Web browsing is extremely fluid. There are also some interesting gestures to help with zooming. More on that soon!
- We’re clocking insane 4mbps+ download speeds over cellular data thanks to the Galaxy S II’s HSPA support (note: that’s not HSPA+)
