The Best Android Phone Is…
The Samsung Galaxy S II. Also known as the i900, the Samsung Galaxy S II is the easy winner of the title of best android phone. It has been on the best selling phone list literally all year and has been second only to Apple’s overly popular iPhone. But just why has the Samsung Galaxy S II become the best android phone of the year?
10 Reasons Why The Samsung Galaxy S II Is The Best Android Phone
- It looks classy
- Has an excellent battery life
- Beautifully crisp screen for an enhanced usage experience
- 8MP camera for taking high quality pictures
- Thousands of great applications available from the Android store
- PC-like web browsing (fast, clear and easy)
- Fantastic for media like film, music and games
- The all new “AllShare” feature
- Full HD recording and playback
- Offers superb value for money
Samsung Galaxy S II Review
When the Samsung Galaxy S II first hit the market few believed it could seriously challenge for the title of best android phone and even fewer believed that it could really challenge the iPhone powerhouse. But here we are, a few months on and there is still speculation all over the internet about which is better. The Samsung or the iPhone? Whilst it is a shame that another android phone has not really been able to challenge these two heavyweights, what isn’t a shame is the way Samsung have delivered a top quality phone to the market.
Everything from the design to the built in features have been built with you in mind and Samsung have ensured that their top of the range handset delivers what android fans need. When you pick up the Samsung Galaxy S II’s slender frame for the first time it is not difficult to understand why so many are raving about the phone. Beautiful on the outside and arguably even more beautiful on the inside, the Samsung Galaxy is here to be the best android phone for some time.
Lets start with the moment you take the Samsung Galaxy out of its box and shiny packaging. The first thing you’ll notice is just how sleek this particular handset is. Whilst other smartphones seem to of gone down the route of building chunkier models to pack as many features as they possibly can in, Samsung have not done that. They’ve created a phone WITH those incredible features and at the same time built a lightweight phone.
The slender design makes the large 4.3″ screen feel that little bit bigger and it will remind you of the time you first saw a thin television. With the Samsung Galaxy S II (and indeed the old fashioned television) the large bit at the back no longer needs to stick out like a sore thumb, it is now all built into the thinnest of frames.
The 4.3″ screen is about as big as it gets in terms of mobile phone screens these days. Any bigger and you’d be looking at a tablet so Samsung have maximized this area too. They’ve also made sure that the display of the screen is as best as it can be and for my money, there is no mobile phone on the market right now that displays a sharper, more colourful picture than this one.
And colour is where you’ll really notice the quality of the display on the Samsung Galaxy S II. The superious colour gives you an enhanced reading experience which makes texting, emailing and reading of any kind a particularly enjoyable experience and whilst you may think this is an obvious quality to have on a phone you will be amazed at how many touchscreens have got it dreadfully wrong over the years.
Once you’ve marveled at the quality of display you’ll next want to play around with the phones features. Whilst many of the great features on the Samsung Galaxy S II come in the form of applications from the Android store, the built in applications are hardly likely to leave you disappointed.
Take the 8MP camera for example. A fine example of Samsung going that extra mile to deliver for their customer base. Combine the 8MP camera with the superior screen quality and you have the equipment to produce some fantastic pictures in the palm of your hand. Whilst no phone has really become a replacement for a digital camera, this phone, the best android phone, has certainly come close.
Another cracking feature is “The Hub”, a place where you will probably spend a lot of your time when using the phone. The Hub features a convenient way to use social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter, an easier way to entertain yourself whether it be through books, games or apps and also includes the Music Hub, a very good in house MP3 Player kind-of system which produces very good sound.
Once you’ve enjoyed the entertainment features on the best android phone you will then want to check out the browser and for me, this is where the Samsung Galaxy S II really came into a league of its own. When the advertisement said “Like PC browsing” I didn’t really believe that to be possible and although the browsing isn’t quite like the PC because the screen is smaller and there is no keyboard, the speed, ease and general feel was very similar to that of a PC so that was very impressive. Have I come across a better browser on a mobile phone since that experience? I don’t think so.
By this stage the label best android phone is hard to argue with but what put the icing on the cake was the battery life. In this day and age you could forgive mobile phones for running out of juice faster than a kitchen selling drinks to desert trekkers but the Samsung Galaxy S II manages battery consumption extremely well. I’m not suggesting that you’ll be able to go weeks on end without charging but you won’t have to charge everyday and that is more than can be said for A LOT of smartphones out there today.
Finally, whilst you may think that the best android phone is flawless, that is obviously not the case. No mobile phone is perfect and this is true of the Samsung Galaxy S II also.
Perhaps the biggest disappointment comes from the Android store. Whilst most brilliant iPhone apps are now available on the Android some of the more “niche” applications are still not available and this may be annoying to some users. It is not a massive gripe but if the Android store could come up to the level of the Apple store sooner rather than later this phone would be near perfection.
The only other factor I would like to see improved is the time it takes Android to release software updates. The 2.3 software known as Gingerbread is brilliant but Android still lack behind Apple when it comes to software updates. Considering that most mobile phone contracts are 24 months it would be nice to see a software update every 12 months to ensure that the phones are constantly up to date with the latest trends.
Apart from that, the best android phone is perfection. Samsung have really done a superb job of bringing an android phone that delivers on every front here and thanks to the latest software, continual growth in the Android store and better overall features than the iPhone (yes I said that this is better than the iPhone) this will be the best android phone for a while yet and who knows, this may even be the phone everyone has on their wishlist with a little more positive exposure.