Review: Samsung Galaxy S2 Epic 4G Touch

A couple of weeks ago I managed to get my hands on a Samsung Galaxy S2.  And in short, it has to be one of my favorite devices yet.  I'm using the Sprint model which is dubbed the 'Epic 4G Touch' surname.  I have had my hands all over this phone for the past 2 weeks and it continues to get more and more awesome all the time.







Let's cover some of the phone's specs right quick:
- Dual-Core 1.2GHz processor
- 4.52" Super AMOLED Plus screen
- 8 MP rear camera and a 2 MP front facing camera
- Voice Talk by Vlingo
- Expandable Storage up to 32GB via MicroSD card
- 16GB of onoard storage
- Mobile Hotspot Feature
- 3G/4G compatible where speeds are available
- WiFi built-in

So you can see from the specs that this phone packs some serious punch under the hood.  But how does it perform?  In a nutshell, smooth as can be.  I have experienced very little to no lag from this device.  And lag is one thing I have noticed in both my Acer Iconia a500 Honeycomb Tablet and my wife's HTC Evo 4G.  Usually the lag on those devices occurs between screen transitions from Applications Menu to Home Screen or when loading up a resource heavy game.  But none of that has been evident thus far in my Galaxy S2.

Samsung packs this phone with the TouchWiz UI overtop Android 2.3.4 (Gingerbread) by default.  This means we get some pretty useful shortcuts and a nice, clean looking User Interface.  Some of the shortcuts are pretty awesome too.  The one I especially like (since I shuffle app shortcuts all over the place) is the tilt to move feature.  Simply tap and hold an app shortcut and tilt your phone to cycle through the available home screens.  It works flawlessly.  If you're not a widget fan, you'll have some work to do since by default there are numerous widgets running onscreen from the first power on.

Namely, you will see the clock and weather widget on the main home screen.  If you scroll to the left one screen you will see a Driving/Handsfree Widget and and a nice looking AP News widget.  If you scroll to the right one screen from the Home Screen you will have the Google Search Widget.  This being the Spring version of the phone it does come with some bloatware from Sprint.  In the form of: Spring TV, Sprint Zone, Nascar, Sprint Radio, etc.

The phone does come with a cool app named Kies Air.  In short it lets you control the phone's contents from a computer's web browser (as long as your computer and phone are on the same WiFi network.  The layout is nice and allows you to see pretty much everything you have on your phone from pictures to the most recent text messages all within your web browser.  That being said, I could play music back but had issues copying files through the network from the PC to the Phone.  Maybe I was doing something wrong.  Still, not a deal breaker for me as I could care less about this feature overall.

The default social networking app is 'SocialHub'.  I had some issues with SocialHub (just being in the form of having to track down settings and options from where I felt they should logically be placed).  Still, not a big deal as I ditched SocialHub for the Plume and Facebook apps for Android anyways.  Another great app that comes loaded on the phone is Polaris Office. And it appears to be the full version of the app as well which includes Windows format compatibility.  So that is a nice inclusion as well.

One of the big topics that is discussed with every Android device is battery life.  And most of the time this is one of the biggest complaints from Android user's.  I can honestly say that my battery life with the Galaxy S2 is pretty good.  In short, carrying it around during the day (from an 8 to 5 workday) my phone doesn't outright die halfway through the day.  Usually when I get home in the evenings around 5:00p or so it is down to about 40% life left.  Which is pretty good in my opinion.  Especially when my wife's HTC Evo 4G tends to get something like 4.5 to 5 hours of life from a full charge.

With that being said, I'm also running it with 4G turned off (we have no 4G in my area yet) and the WiFi and Bluetooth radios turned off as well.  Surfing the web on WiFi around the house causes the battery to discharge much faster.  But still it is fine for casual use or updating a Facebook status.

The camera is outstanding and does a great job.  In low-light areas the pictures still look as long as the flash is turned on.  And the flash is freakin' bright too.  So, if you're into mobile photography with your smartphone you'll not be disappointed.

One last thing to touch on is the hands-free features.  The hands-free/voice recognition features are powered by Vlingo.  Vlingo has been around for a while and can be thought of as an app similar to Apple's Siri in functionality.  And it is pretty good.  Out of the box you can have it read your text messages and send text messages for you.  It can do web searches and pull up GPS info for you as well.  All powered from your voice.  If using a Bluetooth headset it is setup so if you say: "Galaxy Hi" it will wake the phone and allow your voice input to use the phone.  Pretty awesome.

I had only one issue with the phone, and it was more with the software and with Facebook than with the device itself.  If you sign in to Facebook for Android, you're contact list will compile all of your Facebook friends info into your Contacts List.  I didn't like this feature and quickly found an easy way to turn it off in the settings.  Once again, it was an easy fix and not that big of a deal.

I could go on and on all afternoon about how awesome this device is.  I mean, I essentially replaced my iPod Touch with this device because it everything my iTouch did in terms of music and podcasts, not to mention Netflix and Crackle run great on it.  And gaming is jaw dropping on this device.  If you are looking for a great Android phone, without a doubt I would highly recommend the Samsung Galaxy S2.  The great thing about this device is that Sprint, AT&T, and T-Mobile all have their own version of the Galaxy S2.  So if you're on one of these services you can have a go at the S2 yourself (sorry Verizon customers).

Easily this phone gets a 5 star/5 star score!