When you initial got our hands on the Samsung Milky Way S II back in February at Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, you were worried to obtain it in to the office so you could assessment it fully. The Milky Way S II builds on Samsung’s successful line of Milky Way Android phones with new manifestation technology, a dual-core processor, and 4G speeds. The Milky Way S II is existing in Europe and Asia, but Samsung has not nonetheless voiced a U.S. conduit nor sum about pricing and availability. How does the Milky Way S II smoke-stack up against the other 4G dual-core beasts we’ve seen this year? Read on to find out.
Superthin Design
The initial thing I beheld when I picked up the Milky Way S II was how gaunt and light it is. It felt flattering great in hand, too–less plasticky than a few of the previous-generation Milky Way S phones. Overall, the phone has an attractive, minimalist look, but it doesn’t feel as well-constructed as the HTC Thunderbolt 4G or the arriving HTC Sensation on T-Mobile. One nice underline is that the face is done of Gorilla Glass, that is the same scratch-resistant potion that the Apple iPhone 4 . Glossy black cosmetic covers the edges of the phone, whilst the battery casing is a rather groundless textured plastic.
Measuring 4.9 inches high by 2.6 inches far-reaching by 0.3 in. thick, the Milky Way S II is in few instances svelte. But since that it has a 4.3-inch display, it still takes up a lot of space in your slot or handbag. Nevertheless, at 4 ounces, it’s cozy to grip for long durations of time.
The symbol plan is a bit unusual on the Milky Way S II. Right away, I beheld that the Google Search symbol was missing. Touch-sensitive Menu and Back buttons side a earthy Home button. I do not comprehend the role of the considerable earthy Home key, but I didn’t find myself omitted the absent Search key much. You’ll find the volume rocker on the left spinal column of the phone and the Power symbol on the right. The micro-USB dock sits at the bottom of the phone whilst a 3.5mm headphone jack is at the top.
Noticeably absent are an HDMI dock (for joining your phone to your HDTV) and a earthy camera shiver symbol (which I’ll confer in more item later).
Super AMOLED Plus Display
The Milky Way S II’s manifestation is gorgeous–one of the most appropriate we’ve ever seen. It uses Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus manifestation technology, that you initial saw at CES. According to Samsung, Super AMOLED Plus displays have 50 percent more subpixels than the first-generation Super AMOLED displays and perform even improved that their predecessors in splendid light. With a 4.3-inch display, the newest Galaxy’s shade is 0.3 in. longer diagonally than the screens on the older-gen phones.
Colors looked bright, sum were crisp, and the observation angles were really good. Blacks were low and colors were richly jam-packed without being overdone. Even when held in send sunlight, the Milky Way S II’s manifestation remained incredibly visible.
Revamped TouchWiz 4.0 With Gingerbread
Finally you got to examination a phone with the ultimate chronicle of Android–version 2.3 (aka Gingerbread ). Though the Milky Way S II moreover runs a Samsung-built overlay, TouchWiz 4.0, most of the new features in Gingerbread are untouched.
The Milky Way S II’s set of keys isn’t the local Android one, but it retains the multitouch key-chording underline (you can concurrently press Shift and a e-mail to obtain a symbol or number–no must be switch between modes) and the skill to use your voice to scold difference as you type. The copy-and-paste underline behaves more-or-less the same as in the typical Android setup, but it looks slightly different. You can rapidly choose content only by dire and keeping a word. Then you can arrange the lump of content that you wish to choose by boring the arrows that show up around the text. The Samsung’s set of keys keys are slightly longer and more at large spaced than the batch Gingerbread set of keys keys, and the rise is a bit incomparable on the keys. The Samsung set of keys replaces the emoticon key on the Android set of keys with a lapse key, that is a more utilitarian function, in my opinion. And Swype fanatics can rejoice: The Milky Way S II comes with everybody’s preferred set of keys app preinstalled.
The user interface is to cameras differs from the batch Gingerbread version, but you can still switch between the front-facing camera and the back-facing one around a conform to icon at the tip of the camera viewer. Google introduced this tiny but utilitarian underline in Gingerbread in expectation of an attack of smartphones with front-facing cameras due out this year.
TouchWiz 4.0 isn’t sufficient not similar from the formerly version, but there are a few cultured and organic enhancements here and there. I’m not the greatest air blower of TouchWiz, simply because I pick a more candid Android experience. With TouchWiz 4.0 you obtain 7 homescreens that you can customize with all the widgets and shortcuts your heart desires.
Taking a page from (or right away ripping off) HTC Sense, TouchWiz lets you splash your homescreen to see thumbnail-size versions of all of your screens. Samsung borrowed other underline from HTC Sense, too: When the phone is toll or personification music, you can overpower it by flipping it face-down on a surface.
Contacts gets a few cold new gesture-based functions. Swipe right on your friend’s name, and you’ll beginning a call with them; swipe left on their name, and you’ll burst to the SMS composer, where you can send them a content message. Each of your contact’s cards comes with your information history–for example, when you final called, texted, or e-mailed the person.
One humorous new underline is the skill to reject a call by sending a content message.Let’s say that your hermit is mission to inquire when you’re going to pay him back for cooking the other night. A menu will advance up giving you the choice to answer the call, cling to up, or reject it with a content that says “I’ll pay you back tomorrow!”
Samsung throws a few other gesture-based controls in to the blend that seem more similar to gimmicks than similar to something most people would obviously use. For example, you can wizz in and out of images in your art studio or in the browser by sloping the phone. It looks neat, I guess, but it feels type of awkward.
Multimedia: Hubs Abound
The new chronicle of TouchWiz comes with new Music, Game, and Readers Hubs that come together the Social and Media Hubs. Powered by 7Digital, the Music Hub is basically an Amazon MP3 alternative. You can moreover use the Music Hub to coordinate your own library of music. I preferred using the built-in TouchWiz song player, that gets a nice facelift in this chronicle of the software.
The Game Hub, powered by Gameloft, organizes games for buy by amicable games and HD games. The Readers Hub is damaged in to 3 services: Kobo (for Books), Zinio (for Magazines), and Press Display (for News).
Like all Milky Way phones, the S II provides the Media Hub for your film and TV-watching pleasure. Video looked wonderful on the handset’s manifestation and played back smoothly. Even if you do not similar to Samsung’s Media Hub, you’re going to wish to watch a lot of cinema and TV shows on this phone.
Superb 8-Megapixel Camera
Like many other new high-end phones, the Milky Way S II has an 8-megapixel camera in addition to a front-facing camera for video calls. I was really tender with the picture high quality of my photos, both indoor shots and outside ones. The shiver speed on the camera was swift enough to takeover photos of sports, kids, and other quick-moving subjects.
One unfavorable pattern direction that I’ve beheld assorted device makers embracing is the insufficient of a earthy camera shiver button. But superthin, long phones similar to the Milky Way S II need a earthy shiver button. Trying to grip a phone, solid it on your subject, and then daub the manifestation without jolt it a bit is incredibly awkward. A earthy shiver key solves this complaint by permitting you to grip the phone, keep your solid grip, and take the picture. I do not comprehend because manufacturers have stopped putting them on phones–even even though the cameras themselves keep getting improved and better! Okay, I’m off my soapbox.
Performance
The Samsung Milky Way S II is branded as a 4G phone and Samsung sent it to us with a T-Mobile SIM card. According to Samsung, the Milky Way S II can accomplish HSPA+ download speeds of 21 megabits per second and HSUPA upload speeds of 5.76 mbps.
We do not obtain really great T-Mobile HSPA+ connectors at PCWorld’s office in San Francisco. In fact, I couldn’t obtain the Milky Way S II to link up to the HSPA+ network here at all; instead, it kept me on EDGE. I’m going to try contrast the Milky Way S II in a few other locations, and then I’ll refurbish this examination with the speed assessment results.
We take all such speeds with a pellet of salt, however. In our five-city 4G head-to-head testing, T-Mobile’s phones completed respectable, 4G-like speeds. The Milky Way S 4G averaged 3.38 mbps for downloads and 1.13 mbps for uploads. Though it couldn’t grip a candle to the on fire speeds you saw on Verizon’s LTE network (18.30 mbps and 7.39 mbps), it did outperform both ATT’s HSPA+ network and Sprint’s WiMax network.
As I referred to previously, the Milky Way S II is powered by a dual-core processor, and the dual-core power was strong in only about every aspect of the phone’s performance. Scrolling was liquid in apps and Web pages, video played back smoothly, and I zipped speedily by the phone’s menus.
Call high quality over T-Mobile was only average. My friends on the other finish of the line sounded coherent enough, but I beheld a little exaggeration in a few of my calls.
Bottom Line
If you’re in the marketplace for a new phone this spring, you’re going to have a few difficult decisions to make. A lot of prohibited phones have arrived or will withdraw soon, inclusive the HTC Thunderbolt, the T-Mobile G2X , the Motorola Atrix 4G , and the arriving HTC Sensation and HTC EVO 3D . But when it comes to opening and manifestation quality, the Milky Way S II is flattering sufficient unbeatable.
The decision-making routine really comes down to variations in the Android overlays. TouchWiz 4.0 adds a few cold features and functions to the platform, but I feel that it infrequently takes away from the Android experience. There’s moreover a lot of preloaded content from Samsung on the phone. If you’re in to the pure, candid Android experience, I would suggest the T-Mobile G2X instead. Like the Milky Way S II, it’s a 4G dual-core phone, but it runs plain Android 2.2 (which I hope will shortly be upgraded to Android 2.3).
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