So this is my first foray with smartphones.  I got the Samsung Galaxy S2 with a 2 year data plan through AT&T, and I can't be happier.  I bought this phone on Black Friday, through Radio Shack, for $50 with the plan.

So first and foremost: battery life.  Battery life is acceptable for me.  When I use GPS or watch a movie, yeah the battery gets burnt quite fast, but otherwise, if I control my usage, I can get upwards of 10 hours.  I think I might invest in a second battery or maybe the bigger battery.

Charge time: from a low battery charge, it can take upwards of 4 hours to charge using the AC adapter...8 hours through USB...so long!

Features:  Everything seems to be awesome with this phone.  The dual core processor is great, the 16GB flash memory works well, I will make use of the miniSD slot at some point.

The screen:  sheesh, it is super bright.  So you can put brightness at anywhere from 10% to 100%, or the one-click settings are full brilliance, half brilliance, adaptive brilliance, or brilliance off.  It is so bright that I always leave it at 10% (or the one-click setting set to brilliance off!).  It is just so damn bright.  Samsung's super AMOLED screen is just amazing.  The gorilla glass is also wonderful - no noticeable scratches after 5 months - if you are careful with your phone, you don't need to buy a screen protector.  I would have preferred a 4.5" screen, but 4.3" is fine.  Image quality is stellar!

Android: the AT&T by default comes with gingerbreak 2.3.4.  I found when I upgraded to 2.3.6 the screen became less responsive to my swipes and such.  But otherwise everything else is good.  The phone is ICS-compliant and will be receiving ICS soon enough.

Speaker/speakerphone is acceptable.  I don't use it as much as I would like because people are always complaining that they can't hear me.  And the speaker (as to be expected with smartphones) is quite poor.

The camera is nice.  8.1mp.  The zoom is crap (4x digital), but whatever.  The phone has a built in panorama function that works REALLY well.  Very easy to work with.

No issues whatsoever with reception.  Some Samsung phones have reception issue - no problems with the S2.


Other tidbits:
The battery cover is rather flimsy and feels like I could break it with minimal force.  Be careful.  This is a common complain with Samsung phones.

The phone will produce a hissing noise over your auxillary speakers (e.g. headphones) while you are charging it by a car adapter.  So avoid charging while listening to tunes.


I would recommend this phone to anyone looking for an Android phone.  It is built very well and handles very well.  Problem is, the Samsung Galaxy S3 will be out soon...might want to wait for that.

Recommended: Yes