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Samsung galaxy SII

S

shenfrey

macrumors 68030
Original poster
May 23, 2010
2,558
825
I'm sure you have seen just how much of a monster this phone is, with it's impressive battery life it's insane speed and responsiveness, its very pleasing display and screen size and just how capable it is. However does this phone change your mind about Android or are you still on the fence? Or maybe you just flat out refuse Android.

I think the SII is the best android phone out there (it's certainly the fastest) and as for the operating system in general, I like android. I enjoy the ability to customise it how I please and i enjoy the fact that it is so tightly integrated into google, a service that I personally use alot. I think the Market place needs more time to mature, not grow because I think it is very large as it is, the apps just need to start becoming more capable. But of course having the let go and let god approach of submitting apps always mean that it's not gonna be as a higher quality as the app store (a store which also has it's fair share of crappy apps!)

I think android really has come into it's own now and even though it's not as tightly glued together as IOS is or slick (though the custom UIs out there are certainly a way forward) I believe now it isn't really a case of who has the better operating system, more of a case of which do you prefer. A controlled experience which gets the job done with little to no hassle, or am entirely customisable experience where the problems are in many respects what you make them.

I just thought I'd drop my 2 cents on this android vs iPhone and also plug the samsung galaxy s Ii because I have a few friends who own one and that thing really is a beast, I say that completely unbiased being an avid apple user (heck I'm even typing this out on an IPad)

Thanks anyway guys, I look forward to reading your responses!




Sent from my iPad 2 using Tapatalk
 
OP, you don't actually own the phone, do you?

I got my iPhone 4 about two months ago. Before that I had 3 high-end Android phones.

Terrible experience. After the last one, I was insanely frustrated, put my phone on Craigslist and got an iPhone the next day. Best decision ever. Haha seriously, all the headaches were gone.

No tinkering, ROMs apps, or different Android phones saved me from the terrible OS. One thing would fix something but cause something else (if that makes sense) And the lack of hardware acceleration... Oh gosh.

You MUST own the phone and use it extensively for a good amount of time before you can really realize what it's really like. Trust me

The grass on the other side seems greener, but it's not. It sucks.

Btw, you're gonna get flamed for this thread. People hate discussion of the GSII on here :p
 
Yumunum said:
Btw, you're gonna get flamed for this thread. People hate discussion of the GSII on here :p
Click to expand...

The main reason for this is ignorance to either device. I hate to say it, but your post also contains what I just mentioned.

Good luck with this thread OP
 
wordoflife said:
The main reason for this is ignorance to either device. I hate to say it, but your post also contains what I just mentioned.

Good luck with this thread OP
Click to expand...

I'm not ignorant to either device(s). I come off that way on my post, but honestly, I'm just tired and cranky right now and I don't feel like writing my whole experience/story. :p

This thread is going downhill anyways... Android vs. iOS is an endless debate. Truth is, it all depends on your needs/what you really like. There's big pros and cons to each platform.

I had way too many problems to stick with Android. That's my experience. Maybe you'll do just dandy.
 
Yumunum said:
This thread is going downhill anyways... Android vs. iOS is an endless debate. Truth is, it all depends on your needs/what you really like. There's big pros and cons to each platform.

I had way too many problems to stick with Android. That's my experience. Maybe you'll do just dandy.
Click to expand...

Well said.
It couldn't have been put better.

YMMV with either platform
 
Well I have the Galaxy 2, and it's the best phone on the market. :)



I had an iPhone, and had the chance to sign a new mobile phone plan ~4 months early (without penalty), and I took it. I was looking very forward to switching away from the iPhone. I'll tell you why in a sec. ;)


The truth is, I would have been happy to try any non-iOS mobile phone, it seems. I chose the Samsung Galaxy II because it was on a fairly affordable plan, I got 1.5 GB of internet at higher speeds, the screen is beautiful, and it's quad-band 3G. However, if there was an HTC phone that I wanted, I would have chosen that instead (and HTC's flavour of Android). I wasn't fixed on getting any particular OS, just one that showed that it was more capable.

I gave Win Mobile 7 a very strong consideration, but the mobile phone plan I had to get would have been too expensive!! Also, the OS seems far more suited for a tablet than a phone. On a tablet, it would be the best tablet OS, IMO.

I can't even get a Palm OS mobile phone here in Australia, but if I could, and HP released their new phones last week, I probably would have ended up with one of those instead. ;)



The problem with iPhones, apart from it's One-Size-Fits-All attitude, is that the iPhone just felt like something I used. It was never really mine. Never personal. I love my Apple laptops. I love using them. An iPhone? I never loved it.
I wanted to make my next phone feel like it was mine. I wanted to lay things out the way I like it, like it was my space. I wanted to make my mobile to fetch the information I wanted, and show it to me without me asking for it. I wanted to multi-task easier/better. I wanted to use the browser I wanted. I wanted a bigger screen. I wanted to be able to select a wallpaper, and see it too.


I wanted it to feed me the information I want immediately in real-time, and take advantage of big mobile data plans rather than waste it by just sitting there and....well......being an iPhone, waiting idly by.



Oh yes, and I hate rows and columns of icons. I suppose it's better than an iPad's screen. It's certainly manageable on an iPhone, but it's not slick like the way Mac OS is slick. To me, iOS feels like the Windows XP desktop I have at work. And it's not just the rows of icons, but the clumsiness of multitasking, or seeing more than one app at a time. Widgets on Android let me do that.

Sorry Apple, but rows and columns of icons this isn't a feature. It shouldn't be considered a "feature" on Lion, either, since it's not 1993. :rolleyes:


The thing with the iPhone is this: Most of the things an iPhone is capable of also happens to be done very well.

iTunes is OK.
Safari is really good.
Maps is OK.

It's an easyphone to use. However, even as a person who doesn't normally tinker with jailbreaking, hacking his Wii/XBox/PS3/etc, I still wanted more. I don't normally crave for more, but I didn't want a phone that lay around like a limp dick. Why pay for a toy that does so little. Any phone can make calls, and any cheap "smartphone" on any low-end mobile phone plan can check the internet.


iOS seems so antiquated. :eek: Yes, like an antique. You know....."long in the tooth". It feels like the best mobile OS........from 2007, or, dare I say it, from some time long before that! It just feels like the intro phone with the training wheels to introduce people to the smartphone world. Once they get used to it --- and get hooked --- they need to move on if they want more.

iPhone, thanks for introducing me to email, FaceBook, and Angry Birds on the fly. I just grew up and wish you did a little more.
 
Last edited:
So far, I owned three iOS devices: 1st gen iPod Touch, 1st gen iPad and an iPhone 3G. Looking back, I always liked the hardware but hated iOS. There are just too many artificial and unnecessary restrictions in iOS and if that was not enough already, the uncomfortable ties to iTunes for "syncing" my devices usually drove me over the edge.

For me, the user experience of an iOS device completely sucks. I hate it.

When Apple decided to no longer provide software updates for my iPhone 3G (which was not even a year old when iOS 4.3 was released), I knew I would not buy another iOS gadget but began looking at the Android market instead.

At work, I've been using and old G1 when I'm on 24/7 on-call-duty and one colleague has a Samsung Galaxy S1, so Android was not a new world for me. While the G1s have an extremely outdated Android version on them, the Galaxy S1 already appeared to be far ahead of iOS. We also have a couple of iPhone 3GSs and iPhone 4s at work and while they're faster than the 3G that I had, that was pretty much all that they had going for them. You just hit the restrictions and walls of iOS faster with those devices.

Eventually, I began comparing announced and already available Android phones to make my purchase decision. After several weeks, I decided to order the Galaxy S2 from Amazon and this machine -- IS -- a real beast. Although the iPhone's encasing feels a bit better in the hand than the one of the Galaxy S2, the Galaxy mops the floor with the iPhone's inferior hardware and limited operating system.

The Galaxy S2 is more like a super-mini notebook with a REAL operating system on it and EMPOWERS the user instead of limiting him. Android does not get in your way. You want to assign an individual full length mp3 file as a ringtone to the folks in your address book? Fine. No problem. You want to copy that file directly to your computer or you want to copy a file from your computer directly to the file system of your Android phone? Fine. Be my guest. You want to buy, download and install software from various app stores? Of course you can. And yes, Flash is also there, and it works without slowing down the phone. And we've already had the notification system that iOS 5 will bring you guys by the end of the year since ever. We also never needed anything except our phones to activate the phone. Tethering or using the phone as a full wireless hotspot also always worked. And nobody is holding you back when you want to launch a terminal window and go down to the Unix(Linux) level of Android.

Retina display vs SuperAMOLED+? I'll choose the larger Galaxy S2 screen over the tiny iPhone 4 display any time of the day. I use the Kindle app a lot on the Galaxy, and reading on the Galaxy S2 is a great experience.

I don't care much for the built-in camera of any phone. I'm serious about photography, so I use a DSLR for shooting. However, the S2 has an 8MP camera that cannot just shoot stills, but does also record full HD videos (yes, that's 1920x1080) without killing the hardware. Yes, it also has a flash built-in. And yes, I can even edit that stuff in iMovie on the Mac if I want to and it looks good enough for a cell phone. But like I've said, I don't care about those gimmicks in a phone.

But I care about the dual core CPU and the openness of the software running on it. I admit that Apple's iOS App Store has much more quality software in it than the Android market, but the times they are a-changing here as well. Developers can no longer afford to only support iOS, and they are migrating to Android in hordes. On the other side, there is A LOT of software in the Android store that you could only get through Cydia on jailbroken iPhones because Apple won't allow them for some weird reasons in their App Store - and no, I'm not talking about porn here. Simple technical stuff like WiFi Analyzer, for example.

Oh, have I mentioned that I don't need Cydia software like "iBlacklist" to have blacklist functionality on my Android? It can do that out of the box, no need to jailbreak my phone and put another 20 dollars for that Shareware on the table. Android has such features built-in.

I've said it before on my blog and other places and I'll repeat the simple summary here: The big difference between iOS and Android is that iOS feels as if I only rented the phone while Android lets me OWN the phone. Google and Samsung let you have your cake and let you eat it, too. Android takes me seriously and treats me like an adult, iOS behaves like the hated nanny that always says NO to everything that you want to do.

I don't want to live in their digital prison surrounded by their digital walls. It's my device and I don't accept being told by a hardware vendor what I'm supposed to do with my device and what not.

This is why Apple and iOS have lost this contest and why the grass is so green in Android land.
 
Yumunum said:
Before that I had 3 high-end Android phones.

Terrible experience.

No tinkering, ROMs apps, or different Android phones saved me from the terrible OS.
Click to expand...

Which part of Android's terrible OS forces you to tinker or download ROM apps exactly ? :rolleyes:

You had a terrible experience because you wanted one.
 
This S2 phone is amazing. I checked one out at a cell phone shop and was blown away. I'm hoping to buy the iphone5 soon, but if I wasn't an apple fan, I'd already own this android phone.

Probably my biggest reservation about anything android is google. I hate how they record everything you do on the net, the privacy is terrible as google never deletes anything. I'll save that rant for another thread, but I wish it was apple that put out the Samsung Galaxy S II, seriously.
 
It's a great phone and the iphone 5 better be game changing because If not then I'm going to switch to Sammy.

I'm not saying iphone 4 or ios sucks. I just wanted to try something different. My girl just got the SGII and I have a Nexus S for when I'm overseas. The Android platform has been great.

I still have my 3GS for when I'm in the states and have been waiting for the iphone 5 skipping the iphone 4. So lets see what Jobs is bringing to the table.
 
B777Forevar said:
It may have awesome specs, but the phone feels cheap as hell like other Samsung phones
Click to expand...

That's ok, it can't feel much cheaper than my plastic 3GS with the ill fitting glass (that's 3 iPhone 3GS's I have gone through that don't have a flat glass over the screen, there's always a corner that's not quite flush with the bezel).
 
my friend has one of these. looks like a piece of junk. the hardware looks like a cheap imitation of the iPhone. the OS looks like a cheap imitation of iOS.
 
I'm strongly considering this as my next phone. But, I have to wait until AT&T releases it (Hopefully in August). My Captivate (Galaxy S) is crapping out on me, especially since this morning.

So far, if my Captivate doesn't last until October/Nov, then I'll get this. If it does, then I'll try to wait for the Nexus Prime/3/whatever it'll be called.
 
FrozenTomato said:
my friend has one of these. looks like a piece of junk. the hardware looks like a cheap imitation of the iPhone. the OS looks like a cheap imitation of iOS.
Click to expand...
Actually, Android is slick like Mac OS, and its ability to access files in the file structure makes it like a real OS.

iOS just feels like an old Handspring Treo back in 2001, multitasks like Windows XP rather than Mac OS, and notifications......well....it doesn't do that yet. To get it to do anything, you need to jailbreak it. Hah! Like I said before, I don't feel like I'm renting my Galaxy II. It's mine, and I've made it feel like it's mine by personalizing all aspects of it without hacking it in any way.


And Winni is right: iOS is like digital prison.



Apple better catch up to Android.
 
Battery life

Got a Bell Galaxy S2, unlocked it and using it with Telus with no problems. The phone is blazing fast. Touchwiz seems improved over the previous versions although I'm using LauncherPro now.

I'm not sure why Android vs iOS vs BB vs etc bashing is even necessary. Just pick the one that suits you.

Anyway, just wanted to comment on the battery life in non-technical terms. Compared to my previous HTC Desire, the Galaxy S2 seems to *just make it through one day (unplug in the AM, plug in before bed). I have 3 email accounts, 3-4 widgets syncing and using data in the background. Check Facebook and Twitter here and there, sport scores, etc.

This is without the power saver mode activated or juice defender or whatever achieves the same thing.

Battery life may be unimpressive compared to my Bold 9780. But I find it adequate. I leave a charger at work in case I need it.
 
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