User Review: Samsung Galaxy S II

  • Thread starter Thread starter Jaymin
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Posting the thread (So that i dont forget) for now, and update the details in next 1 or 2 days!

@ Sushubh, may be u can move Mascot's experience of S3 purchase, "ACP Pradyuman"s purchase of Pantech phone and such threads to this section.

So here it goes.....

I hadnt took any photo of S2 till now, and just took one to post here (Excuse me for the lower resolution, as my Nokia N78 has 3.2 MP camera!)



PS: Dont ask me, why i have applied "talc" to the phone. Home is under repairs, and there are these particles stuck on it. Will clean it, or just replace the scratchguard, once everything is over! 😀

Few screenshots i had taken on the phone.....





Some background to my purchase......

Now this was my first Android phone (Bought on October 25, 2011). Till then, i was a Nokia loyalist, and never believed that Symbian had any competition in the first place. I had used Nokia 6260, 3230, and N78. But when i saw this beast (Yeah it was a beast then!) with one of my friend, i was just awed & decided that i have to have this phone.

Review.....

Being my first Android, i was just awed by the first hand experience. It was a difficult migration as well, from Symbian non-touch, to Android, touch. It costed me for Rs. 28,000.

Accessories:
1) The leather case, USB cable, the charger & ofcourse the earphones were the accessories i got bundled in the pack.
2) I added it up with the scratch guard, & a 16 GB external Memory for another 499+1250 bucks. I did buy a Philips headphone of Rs. 295 hoping to improve my Music experience, but its lying useless now, as it isnt upto the mark.
3) A few months back i bought a Capdase car stand for it, which costed another 810 bucks and its coming really handy at the Office desk!
4) Yesterday i got iBall Power Bank for the phone, which has costed 2,200......though technically speaking its not just for this phone. Its for all the phones we own at our home!

Coming to the camera performance.....

For a feature rich phone, this kind of camera comes in really handy! Following are some of the snaps i took from the 8 MP Rear camera:





Looking at the snaps, i wud say it is much more than a decent offering. Atleast for a casual photographer! It has helped me capture snaps of some fun/happy moments at office and share it with the colleagues. And they always praise the quality of the camera.

The experiments i have done with it

To begin with, i was very very skeptical of even modifying its looks by installing new launchers. But then i soon got fed up of the TouchWiz Launcher (Default that was installed by Samsung) & installed Go Launcher (The best option i guess for Gingerbread).
When ICS was launched a few days after my purchase, i was waiting eagerly for it to be available officially for my phone as well. In around March 2012 or so, it did become available. I eagerly hooked the phone via Kies to PC & started downloading the update.

The download did finish after struggling for more than 3-4 hours with it. And then, it started to install. During the installation, some damn file failed to initialise & the setup got stuck. I had ended up bricking my phone. Then i took the brave decision (For someone who didnt even change the launcher initially, this has to be a brave step!) to use Odin and flashed the ROM manually.

This adventure, though successful, eventually disappointed me, as Samsung had really messed up ICS with its bloatware. Fed up of that, i took another brave step - root the phone & install a custom OS. I installed the Pure ICS ROM, which was really good, and gave a good ICS experience.

Then came Jellybean.....i installed the most stable ROM available but had a few very nagging drawbacks with it.....

No Wifi Direct, too low Volume, No connectivity via USB as a Mass Storage Device were the major of those. I even tried out Pure JB, which had the same troubles. So i ditched everything & have reverted back to Pure ICS!

Phew! Have covered quite a few things......still, let me know in case i have missed out on anything. I have purposely ignored the specs part, as it is freely available all over the net! Still, the link to gsmarena......

http://www.gsmarena.com/samsung_i9100_galaxy_s_ii-3621.php

For ROMs relevant for this phone, follow this site: http://www.galaxys2roms.com/
 
Yep. Ok, can u tell me which day version u downloaded? On the thread on XDA, i cud see some people complaining about the signal strength, which was fixed.......if u downloaded the latest one, u shudnt be facing any issues.
 
Yep from the link you provided, downloaded today around 3PM.JELLYBAM-i9100-20121123-PAOKP10.zipPlease provide the link from where you downloaded!
 
Thats fine, but there r 3 versions available of it - around 18 Nov, 20 Nov, and the latest one of 23 Nov.Btw the ROM is just superb. U have really high level of customisations.....the fluidity, just superb!
 
The latest cm10 build seems to be giving me amazing battery life 😀 Lasted a complete 24 hours on quite heavy usage.
 
Download and description link please 😀
 


@iCon....

If thats the case, then it shud work fine.

Heres a screenshot......



@x270....

Thats good then. I have installed this ROM based on CM10 kernel!
 
^Dude ! Settle down on one ROM. I've been using cm9 for the quite some time. Would recommend it over cm10 right now, plus its got a stable build while the cm10 builds are nightlies, they're quite stable too, but I prefer cm9.

Here is cm9 -

http://download.cyanogenmod.org/get/jenkins/7078/cm-9.1.0-galaxys2.zip

If you've got cwm, flash this first.

http://forum.xda-developers.com/attachment.php?attachmentid=1370467&d=1349195010

Then flash cm9
Flash gapps
Wipe dalvik
Wipe cache partition
Fix permissions
Restart

😀

Gapps -
http://goo.im/gapps/gapps-ics-20120429-signed.zip
 
That red colored ugly icon in statusbar and repeated wifi gps buttons disappointed me.. Look at spikes arrangements, neat clean and beautiful notification and statusbar. Looks like official even better than official. Hope one day spike will comeup with pure jb with same level of beautification.
 
Pure JB is already there. But its with those same flaws that i mentioned.
 
From spike? Or some other dev?@x720..hehe whats the use of having android if one settle down in one rom....jo hoga dekha jayega! And waise bhi jb is the last update S2 might get.. After it we have to stick to one. 😀
 
Oh thats buggy.. I am looking sort of this pure ics.. I am in love with it.. I found it what I was looking for.. Thx to you jaymin..Just want to try jb, heard/read much about it, CM series I dont like unless they release CM10 sta le version. I see roms quality in how neatly thins are organized and i found spike pure ics just perfect.
 
serious flaw in above ROM Jaymin bro..its file manager not able to read memory card until you give it root access..change boot animation not able to detect zip file from internal or external memory.but some plus point is faster net speed in 2g mode and smooth scrolling with nice features but memory consumption is pretty high.
 

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