Nahno McLein

So my smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy S2 has proven its power to me over the last few weeks and mastered difficult times as in Christmas and New Years, where I travelled a lot and interacted with friends more than usual.

So here is my conclusion:
Objectively seen, I'm completely amazed. Subjectively, I don't know how I could live without a smartphone.
The S2 has been my daily companion since day one and after learning the language for the device, I learned what it was capable of - and vice versa where it lacked a bit. The camera as shown in my last post has fascinated me and I've been using it wherever I can. However, it depends largely on the light source whether pictures turn out well. On the other hand, for New Years and Christmas market lights, I used the scene feature and it was quite stunning.

The display is more than I wished for. My photographer friend gave me some high-class pictures (I used the phone as a USB-device and it's working smoothly) and even she was surprised by how clear and bright the photos looked. On the plane back to Germany I watched a film, which was never really comfortable on my old Nokia N96. Now it's pure pleasure and would even work without headphones. I didn't think the speakers would be that great - but then I guess I don't have really high expectations for sound. The headphones were quite long, which I love, and the sound is great as far as I can tell.

Internet works perfectly. Only downside are trains but even there it worked better than my friend's older Samsung phone. I used Google Maps and GPS a lot to find my way around in London and also used the internet for tube directions - have never found it easier to travel. I don't have to look up plans before my trip anymore.

Battery - my one and only criticism - relatively seen. It lasts for a day in heavy use, however, on trips when I take lots of pictures, it runs out quicker. That's a bit annoying. However, other smartphones don't seem to do much better here and considering that the smartphone is a small laptop, I can live with that. I just need to remember to charge it in between or buy a new battery for those rare occasions on trips where I might want to use it as Ipod and camera all day.

Organizing skills. It took me a while to snychronize the S2 with facebook and have my events show up in the calendar (but only the one's I said yes too). Other than that I love using my calendar and have the most important ones per day show up on my widget. I also finally got Skype and Twitter working - I guess I made some installing mistakes at the beginning. All in all I'm really happy about the Android market for apps. Everything I need and more.

I even used the phone to read e-books and it's fantastic. Never had to wait for anything to happen. Well, Samsung Kies is not really working on my computer but I didn't have problems using the Kies Air function instead (or mostly just USB - it's faster anyway).

I can honestly say I'm happy with my choice. Today I read about the Android 4.0 version coming out for the Galaxy S2 soon. We'll see how that's like.