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 all set to bring the tech to market too.
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.)
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