A really smart smartphone

MANILA, Philippines - When you begin using the Samsung Galaxy S2, you understand why Apple has gone to court to keep it out of the US market.

This slim and light Android smartphone is fast, powerful and gorgeous, and can run rings around Apple’s iPhone 4 and will probably give the upcoming iPhone 5 a run for its money.

The Galaxy S2 is thin and light, measuring only 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5 mm, making it one of the slimmest smartphones around today, and it weighs a scant 116 grams. The textured back cover can be pried off to reveal a user-replaceable battery and slots for the SIM card and a microSD.

The physical design is simple and elegant with no unnecessary bells or whistles. The power and screen-lock button are on the right side of the unit, while the left side is home to the volume control. A 3.5-mm audio jack sits on the top side of the phone, while the microUSB connector (for charging and data transfer) sits at the bottom.

There’s a bit of a plastic feel to the unit, but the phone seems solidly built and is easy to handle. It certainly won’t add a lot of weight to your bag.

The front of the Galaxy S2 is one sheet of glass, spanning the entire device, and looks quite a bit like the iPhone, with only one button at the bottom of the screen (unlike other Android phones that have several). The backlit menu and back keys show up only when the unit is on and unlocked.

On the top of the screen, there’s a speaker, the front-facing two-megapixel camera and light sensors.

The look and feel, of course, is at the bottom of Apple’s lawsuit against Samsung, which it claims has “slavishly” copied its iPhone and iPad — but that doesn’t really concern us here.

Turn on the Galaxy S2 and you’ll immediately appreciate the sharp and brilliant picture from the phone’s 4.3-inch, 400 x 800-pixel Super AMOLED (active-matrix organic light-emitting diode) touch-screen display that works well even in bright daylight.

The large display makes it easier to type on the on-screen keyboard and makes it more enjoyable to browse, read, play games or watch videos on the smartphone. The AMOLED technology also gives you great color and contrast and lower power consumption to boot by lighting up only the pixels that are need to render the screen.

The Galaxy S2 gets its speed from a dual-core 1.2GHz processor and one gigabyte of RAM, which means greater responsiveness, smoother animations, faster browsing, better gaming and impressive performance all around. It also means a much faster boot time than many other brands and models, including Apple’s iPhone 4.

Samsung’s new phone also gives you a lot of space to keep your apps, photos, music and videos with 16GB of onboard storage, expandable via microSD. (While Apple offers a 32GB iPhone 4, it does not have a microSD slot, making it impossible to expand storage and difficult to transfer data onto your iPhone.)

The eight-megapixel camera on the Galaxy S2 shoots at resolutions of up to 3,264 x 2448 pixels and captures videos at 1,080 pixels at 30 frames per second. Again, the Galaxy S2’s dual-core processor makes a big difference, as images and videos are captured and processed faster than you’d expect on a mobile phone.

Browsing the Web couldn’t get any easier with the Galaxy S2’s built-in browser. With plug-ins enabled (a setting in the browser), you can watch all the Flash-based videos you want, right on the browser. And no, you can’t do that on your iPhone, unless you install third-party software.

A tilt-to-zoom feature of the phone makes it easy to enlarge the screen.

The Li-ion1650mAh battery will get you through a full day of use on a full charge, unless you use the phone to watch videos all day long.

At the heart of the Galaxy S2 is Gingerbread, the newest version of Google’s Android operating system. That’s Android 2.3.3, in case you’re interested — not 2.4 as some earlier reports had it. The upgrade to Gingerbread from Froyo (2.2) means the Galaxy S2 enjoys the enhancements built into the new operating system, including new themes, an improved touch-screen keyboard, copy-and-paste functionality, a new download manager, and probably most important of all, improved power management that translates into much better battery life.

Thoughtful enhancements complement the Galaxy S2’s fine features. For example, to go into silent mode, you simply flip the phone over. Makes sense, right? I thought so too.

All in all, the Galaxy S2 gives you a great experience, whether you’re using it simply as a phone, or enjoying its considerable multimedia capabilities. In other words, Samsung’s Galaxy S2 is one smart smartphone. For P29,990 it’s yours.