The Samsung Galaxy S II is the phone the Korean firm deems the successor to its best smartphone so far. And with a 1.2GHz processor, super-slim chassis and feather-light innards, it's easy to see why.
The dual-core race is set to heat up massively over the next few months, with the LG Optimus 2X already released, and the Motorola Atrix, HTC Sensation and iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S all set to bring the tech to market too.
Coming in at £35 a month and £519.99 SIM-free, the Galaxy S 2 isn't the cheapest phone out there by a long chalk – so let's see if it can match up to that larger price tag.
You can check out our Samsung Galaxy S 2 video:
The Samsung Galaxy S2 is almost impossibly thin when you pick it up – dimensions of 125.3 x 66.1 x 8.5mm mean it's one of the thinnest smartphones on the market at the moment, rivalling the likes of the iPhone 4 and Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc for the title.
It's crazy-light too – when we show you what tech is rammed under the hood, you'll be amazed that it all goes in a device that weighs only a shade over 100g (116g, to be precise).
Samsung clearly traded the premium feel an all-metal chassis might have brought to keep the grams off the Galaxy S2 – pop the battery cover off and you'll find you're holding a piece of pretty flimsy plastic.
However, most of the time you won't be removing this and it fits nicely into the contoured chassis – the mesh feel on the rear also helps keep your hand from getting warm during extended holding.
The other thing you'll notice when you first pick up the Galaxy S2 is the screen – at 4.3 inches it's hard to miss, and when you turn it on the Super AMOLED plus technology hits you square in the eyeballs (once it's got through the toughened Gorilla Glass).
We called the Samsung Galaxy S "the best phone on the market for media"when we reviewed it, thanks to its first-gen Super AMOLED screen. Now the Galaxy S2 has definitely improved on that, with a superbly crisp and vibrant screen.
The only problem is a slightly schizophrenic auto-brightness - if you try and save battery by having the sensor monitor ambient light levels, then the screen decides to bounce about with light levels even in same conditions.
UPDATE: Samsung has released a fix to solve this problem already, so forget about it. Un-read what you just read. We could delete it, but that would be lying to you.
In the hand, the Galaxy S2 sits much better than we'd have expected, given the whopping screen on offer, and that's mostly down to its slim depth.
The front of the phone is pretty sparse, with the home key the only piece of furniture on offer. This rectangular button flanks two touch-sensitive buttons – Menu and Back – so there's no room for contextual search here.
The volume keys are located on the left-hand side, and the power/lock key is on the opposite flank; both are easy enough to hit without error, and crucially the travel on the power key is softer so that it's much easier to hit when you're juggling it in the palm – compare that to its predecessor, where you could accidentally drop it trying to shut off the screen.
The 3.5mm headphone jack lives on the top of the phone, bucking the lower placement on other 4.3-inch screen phones, and the microUSB slot (which also doubles as an HDMI out port) lives on the bottom.
The only other element of note is the 8.1MP camera with single LED flash on the rear – it's slightly raised, but not so much that it disrupts the Galaxy S2 when you're placing it on a table, thanks to a rear lip to help you hold the phone.
We actually (foolishly, in hindsight) unboxed the phone while bouncing about on a powerboat on the Thames - and luckily, there was a camera rolling the whole time. (note - we're well aware of the stupid spec mistakes on the boat. Some were down to information given to us by Samsung that has since changed, and some due to sheer confusion at being thrown ten feet in the air and having our spine crushed.)
UPDATE: You can now get Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich on your S2. See what it looks like in our walk-through video:
Before we dive into the new features, we'll deal with the most important point: how it feels under the finger. And we're pleased to say it's the best out there in our opinion. Using dual 1.2GHz Samsung Orion CPUs means the Galaxy S2 can keep up with whatever you throw at it without a hint of slowdown.
Be it pinching the screen to call up the exploded view of all your home screens, pulling up an application or simply scrolling through reams of photos, the Galaxy S2 is capable of matching it all. We're not usually blown away by a phone's response, but we literally couldn't beat the S2, even after we opened all the applications on the menu.
The large screen may make reaching all areas of the display slightly tricky in one hand, especially for those with small palms, but that's a rarity, and a secondary hand can easily be called in.
The TouchWiz interface is overhauled again, and to good effect in our eyes. The Samsung Galaxy S2 has a WVGA screen, which is actually a little lower-res than its competitors these days, but it can still pack a load of widgets all over the place.
The same Android system is in place on the S2, but there are loads more widgets on offer to chuck around the home screen, and like the Motorola Defy, these are all easy to resize by dragging the corner to increase the functionality.
We're fans of the way Samsung has split the screen for customising the home screens, allowing users to sweep across the options at the bottom while seeing what space is left on the display, and easy resizing makes the interface as clean as you want it to be.
Dragging down the notifications bar from the top of the screen usually just gives info on emails and messages, but Samsung also lets users turn on Wi-Fi, GPS, Bluetooth and more, plus set the sound options on the phone with a simple tap. The Music player is also controllable from here, meaning you don't have to constantly move in and out of the player to change tracks.
The Samsung Galaxy S2 also features a folder system, much like Apple, except it's a little more convoluted to use that the iOS version. You have to enter the editing mode (by pressing the menu key or long-pressing on the screen) and create a new folder. Then you can drag icons into it, and confirm it's ready. We can't work out how to name it so we know what's in it, though.
UPDATE: Turns our we're just stupid: tapping the name (properly) in edit mode lets you change the name easily. Whoops.
We like being able to organise our apps, but we're sure there's an easier way. If only we could just, we don't know, drag them onto one another and have the folders auto-create? What do you mean we can't? What's a patent?
One new novelty idea, the two finger accelerometer zooming, was pretty cool but a little pointless. The idea is you hold two fingers on the screen for an internet page or photo (basically anywhere you might pinch to zoom) and tilt the phone backwards and forwards to zoom in and out.
It's cool and fun to show your friends, but ultimately a little pointless when pinching to zoom works so much better.
The interface on the Samsung Galaxy S2 might seem a little complex to an iPhone user, as it's chock-full of contextual menus, pinches, zooms, scrolls and dragging. But spend just a few minutes familiarising yourself and you'll find a phone that refuses to give in under the finger, and is full to bursting with functionality.
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