I have already put this up on xda but thought it would be relevant here also.
Hello XDA.

These are NOT MAJOR problems for me personally. The phone is brilliant, blazing fast. However if I had to pick out things I disliked/gripes these would be it. And will update if I or we happen to find more.

__________________________________________________ _________________
Hardware

- MicroSD and Sim slot has switched places from original SGS
Its more common to take the MicroSD out than the SIM card. Have to take the battery out just to insert/take out my MicroSD!!!

- Camera prone to scratches
The little platform that the camera is raised on is prone to scratches.Laying on a table the phone virtually rests on the camera lens! Comparing with the SGS the case takes the damage.
Best way would be to stick a bit leftover from invisishield or whatever onto where the "8.0 MEGA" sign is and let that take the weight.

- Gap in Speaker
I don't know if you've noticed but there is a GIANT GAP between the slits of the cover and the internals underneath it. And unlike the SGS I. There is noway to reach inside it get get dirt/bits out. Is a big whole waiting to collect dust IMHO. :S

- Lack of Base comparing to the SGS I
I have to say the speakers on SGS II imho is not better than SGS I. Maybe there was a bit of compromise in the design?
On the original SGS you couldn't listen to it whilst on the table or sofa.
Now on the SGS II there is a massive gap between the outer chasis and the internal speaker inside so you can listen to music perfectly without any muffling when laid on a surface. However there seems to be a real lack of base comparing with the SGS I.

- No cover for MicroUSB slot
Again dust prone. Why they took that feature out from the Original sgs I don't know.

- Did not come with USB2go or HDMI cable EDIT: Samsung Infuse 4G has a USB2Go adapter included in box!
I know they didn't advertise this as one of the strongest points but a little disappointed that it didn't come with it. I actually asked about this at CPW on launch day but the accessories were still all boxed up so couldn't take a look.

- Some people having problems with Screen
Pixel/Lines appearing and disapperaing. But looking at this forum and others only a minority/rare case and I personally don't have this problem on my SGS II.
__________________________________________________ _________________
Software

- Flash videos
Problems with BBC iPlayer, video stuttering. A faint mesh background when you watch any flash embedded videos using the stock browser.
TRY TESTING THIS YOURSELF. Play a video which has a white if not a bright coloured background.

- Menu Key vibration in Game Hub
It is excessively long and loud unlike any other hubs or just when you press the menu key. <<- maybe this is just me please check

- Cannot silence Camera shutter sound
Don't know why but U.K I thought majority of Europe phone firmwares you could.
Never had this problem on SGS.

- Music stopping when going into camera mode
Probably due to the reason above but it is annoying since I have to press play again. Music does not automatically continue even after quitting Camera mode.

- Slow to wake up (Occasionally)
http://forum.xda-developers.com/show....php?t=1066283
There tends to be around 1 second wait when waking the phone up from sleep. (as in when phone has been left alone for quite awhile, surpassing the display time-out)


Thumbs up if you found this helpful, and hope it gives future owners some insight into what the phone is like. Like I said these are minor problems most which will likely to be fixed/changed in the coming weeks with updates.

(PM me if you find anything, I will keep updating, hopefully not )

Thanks
dk

I think a couple of Gb a partitioned off for installing apps to, I saw something like this while exploring. Could be wrong though, anyone more experienced with android might know how this works.

Thank you for making me feel a bit better for not having an SGS2:)

I knew they moved the sim to a better place, but now you'll lose the hot swappable for the memory card:( I know which one I prefer.

Really? I feel the opposite about this thread. If you have bought an SGS2 and these are the biggest negative points you can come up with, then this phone must be awesome. Not a single mention about any lag, fc's or other software issues. Not a single mention about any other faults like the GPS doesn't work etc.

These faults mentioned are pretty minor in my eyes compared to the flood of issues we all had with our SGS 1 on day 1 of release.

thanks dk206! I'm waiting for my phone to arrive, but its good to see honest opinions. No phone is perfect!

I'm with someusers on this, if thats the worst you see with the phone then really its awesome. Nothing major I can see there. A vacuum with a brush attachment can fix the dust/dirt problem withthe usb plug and speaker plug. I never remove the SD card either as I use the mass storage mode to access my SD card. I'll have my SGSII tomorrow and post a sort review of it.

I look forward to hearing more reviews.

Its a very nice phone, recommend it!

Had mine for 2 days now. I love it. Bear in mind I have never owned a Samsung and I have gone from a Nokia N97 mini to this beast!

Bought from Phones 4 U on a vodafone upgrade. Un-branded, which obv means no crappy Voda softeware or random pictures and videos. 18 month contract 600mins, unlimited txts, 500mb web. They waived the £50 cost for me too.

I have known that I wanted this phone for months. It was good timing with my contract due for upgrade end April. I Dont do iPhones. Have an Ipod touch insead.

Obviously you lot will know plenty about the phone already, but here's my positives:

Super slim,
Super lightweight,
Superb camera,
No lag in menu switching (in fact - no lag at all!),
Exceptional web browsing when not on Wifi,
Superfast wifi browsing,
Flash videos,
Excellent phone settings control and customization options,
Motion detection and gyro is slick and flicker/lag free,
Power Saving mode helps,
Amazing screen clarity,
Sound quality on the speaker is joyous, even on ring tones,
Voice control,
Voice to text SMS,
Swype option,
Qwerty or 3x4 numeric keypad or handwritten options for text,
Super fast GPS and maps,
Animated live wallpapers; change from day thru dusk to night,
Free Android Apps! I have added; Angry Birds Rio, Duck Hunt, Tune In Radio, Zedge, Hey Tell.

And very few negatives:

I worry about scratching it! Its so pretty!
No dedicated camera button.
XT9 predicitve text is a little clunky.
Web based flash video quality is not quite as good as I'd hoped.

Ive orderd a silicone skin for it off Amazon to protect its good looks.

Hope this has convinced y'all :o

The OP did say they were minor flaws, let's face it we are all different and will have varying views. I have had mine for 10 days now, and haven't found anything I would complain about. I do wonder how long it will stay looking so gorgeuos (in my eyes) and when I will find the first thing that really dissapoints me about it but I am also new to Android and this is my first Samsung Smartphone. I had an N97 before as well, probably why I am so pleased with the SGS 2 and also got mine through Phones 4U, great service and I always avoided them before, more fool I. Then again I have always avoided iPhones as well, maybe that proves it :-)

Ref the scratching,potential camera damage, you could get a clingo desk holder. I`ve used one for my N8 and they are really good. Check it out.

One bad thing for me - I had before i8910 and it has stereo speakers, Galaxy S2 have only mono and sound isn't very good.

One bad thing for me - I had before i8910 and it has stereo speakers, Galaxy S2 have only mono and sound isn't very good.

Nothing will come close to the sound of the i8910, that was truly epic! The S2 is a step in the right direction however, I find it way better than the S1, less tinny :-)

Nothing will come close to the sound of the i8910, that was truly epic! The S2 is a step in the right direction however, I find it way better than the S1, less tinny :-)

Base is better on the SGS in my opinion. If you have both like me play some songs with base and you'll be able to tell the difference.

One bad thing for me - I had before i8910 and it has stereo speakers, Galaxy S2 have only mono and sound isn't very good.


That was one of the things why I waited a little bit before I got the SGS. But at least it has stereo input:)

Had mine for a week, its awesome but...

minor niggle;

When you clear RAM under Task Manager it stops the Clock Widget.

Major irritant;

Cannot open passworded .pdf's, phone just tells you it has a password on it and that's it, a password entry box would have been nice...

Red

Had mine for a week, its awesome but...

minor niggle;

When you clear RAM under Task Manager it stops the Clock Widget.

Major irritant;

Cannot open passworded .pdf's, phone just tells you it has a password on it and that's it, a password entry box would have been nice...

Red

Have you tried the official adobe reader that's in the market rather than the one that comes with the phone? Might be worth a shot if it irritates you that much.

Have to agree with regards to sound quality not great for mp3 playback (my old Nokia 5800 was very very good compared to the speaker on the S2)

Have to agree with regards to sound quality not great for mp3 playback (my old Nokia 5800 was very very good compared to the speaker on the S2)

You should read my other post about using dsp manager to adjust things or there's a big thread on xda about it. It certainly made a difference for me. It's no i8910 but it certainly decent sound for a phone when setup right. And with the earphones it's amazing quality.

@someuser

Ty for the info, I wrongly assumed that the stock .pdf reader on the phone was adobe...strange that it is not.

Cheers
Red.

I might aswell fill in some experiences I've had for the past two days. I'm not going to talk about the superb screen or how thin it is, you know all that.

I came from an HTC Desire, and before that a Samsung Wave, and before that again a SE X10. I sold the Desire due to it's insufficient internal memory.

I exported the contacts to a vcf from the Desire, thinking it would be an easy job to import them. But the SII threw me some header errors when I tried to import the contacts using that file. I decided to import them using Kies instead.

As a mac user, Kies is not my best friend. I remember when I broke my X10 on the road in Australia, and had to struggle with Kies to get my Wave on track. I had to manually convert the strings in the csv to be imported to the Wave. Totally not that cool when you live in a Jucy van on the road in Eastern Australia. Anyway, yesterday I booted up my bootcamp, and plugged the phone into Kies. Kies is outdated, it said. I saw my phone connected on the Kies desktop and thought to myself if I should just ignore the update for now, and proceed with the contact sync. But I ended up updating. And after restarting, SII would not connect. Just the forever spinning animation. I googled quite a bit, and people had all kinds of weird solutions, some of them not possibly related to the real problem. So I tried to reinstall the drivers used to connect SII to Kies, closed Kies, reconnected, let Win7 do it's thing, and then started up Kies again. And after about an hour of struggle, SII was connected. So, I tried to import the vcf file, and as usual all names are messed up (this just happends every time I change my phone). But also, all numbers not starting with +47 (Norway) was divided with a hyphen several places, meaning I had to manually correct all the numbers too.

After this was done, I tried to sync my contacts with my facebook account. The sync process gave me the error message that the sync could not be performed right now, and would be back soon. As usual google provided a wide range of insane ways to fix the problem, meaning it could only be one solution: Try again and again. And quite right, after about 20 attempts the facebook contacts were synced, with no changes made.

THEN I tried to add an email account. I have a few domains where I have an email adress, and a different username. As far as I could see, there was no way to manually change the username to something else than the email adress itself. So I pulled my hair a little more, and downloaded K-9 Mail to handle my emails. Other useful apps I've got is Spotify, Poweramp (Mp3-player), Prey, Doubletwist (airsync) and so on.

I'm pretty satisfied as for now, but I would love some more out-of-the-box ease instead of messing around for 2-3 hours. Also, Kies Mini does not work with Mac OSX with Android phones, so I use DoubleTwist to sync music and playlists, photos and so on. Smooth app! I guess one can also turn on debugging to mount the sd and usb memory directly.

That was my 5 cents, wich also serves as my food budget after purchasing the SII.

I exported the contacts to a vcf from the Desire, thinking it would be an easy job to import them. But the SII threw me some header errors when I tried to import the contacts using that file. I decided to import them using Kies instead.

You should of just sync'd your contacts with a google mail account then when account is entered into your new phone your contacts will be there:)

You should of just sync'd your contacts with a google mail account then when account is entered into your new phone your contacts will be there:)

I've merged my contacts to the google account now, I was just a bit bummed that I'd never see a contact import->export that left the contacts in fairly good shape :) When exporting from the X10 to the Wave all names went surname first divided with a semi colon. Not very search friendly ;) Facebook contacts is great for me when it works, as most of my friends have their number there.

I always had the numbers on my sim but don't really need that now and I like the facebook contacts too:)

- Camera prone to scratches
The little platform that the camera is raised on is prone to scratches.Laying on a table the phone virtually rests on the camera lens! Comparing with the SGS the case takes the damage.


I agree, what the f were they thinking? If you dont use any protection your camera will likely decreasy in quality within few weeks.
You have to use some kind of protection, I do. If not your camera will not record in HD for a very long time, more like blurry HD.

my only and biggest issue with the phone so far (own it for 1 week) is the speaker:

compared to my previous phone i8910, the galaxy S2 got only 1 speaker, it sounds rather "cheap" for the phone's value, but major thing is when you cover the speaker with hand or fabric from your's pocket, you almost cant hear it ringing.

I bought this awsome leather case for my new phone:

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51O5g3ewVYL._SS400_.jpg
vid (german) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzvGVNzSbEg

but once i put the phone inside (3.5mm socket up) and throw it in my pocket - nada, cant hear anyone calling at all...
it gets bit better when you place phone up side down, but still sound is almost muted... on a busy street its impossible to hear it

only thing i can think of would be cutting out a small hole in leather case over the speaker -_-

I and a few others here ;) had the i8910, you should stop expecting that sort of sound out of a phone speaker right now. The physical constraints enforced upon us by large flat thin phones can't currently hope to reproduce such quality.

I love this phone.

Except:

1. The placement of the power button is stupid... really stupid. If you use it with one hand, like I want and do, you also hit the volume keys on the other side of the phone and vice versa!!! Really stupid. HTC, Nokia and Apple placed the power button at the top for a reason.

2. Battery too short. Not that much really...

3. I can't find any freaking earphone with complete media control for the Galaxy!!!! I want the forward and back track feature please... or maybe I don't know what brand of earphones I need to look for. =(

4. Cannot seem to connect to iMac wifi using WEP. I don't know why.

That's all for now. =)

Hi guys - I actually came here looking for a thread like this.

I recently bought a Motorola Atrix from AT&T and I'm still within my 30 day return period for another week. With the Galaxy sii being announced for at&t tomorrow, I am considering returning my atrix for it. I would love to hear some experienced sii users comment on my following thoughts:

-I love the qHD resolution on my Atrix screen. I hate the thought of losing that, but I keep hearing great things about that SAMOLED display...

-The GPS in my atrix works surprisingly well. My previous phone was an iPhone 3gs and the GPS was VERY hit or miss. It seems to work every time with the atrix. How is it in the samsung?

-I see that you guys are commenting on the speaker. The only thing I'm worried about with the speaker is whether or not it is loud/clear enough for the speakerphone. It drives me CRAZY when the internal speakers are just a little too quiet and it makes the speakerphone worthless (say, in a car with background road noise).

-How is the call quality on the sii?

-Does hdmi mirroring work well? That's the one feature of the atrix that drives me insane. It has an hdmi out, but no mirroring. I just don't understand that.

I think I'm going to have a hard time deciding this week and any comments you guys can provide will be appreciated!

Hi. Thank you for the information. I am planning to get one but now I am not sure if I like the prone to scratches part. I usually am not very careful with my phone. Maybe I can have a protector to avoid it? I also don't like the slow to wake up part. :-(

i just sold my i8910, but you guys complaining about the speakers,, i8910 speakers were probably only one of the few positive things about that phone, remember how samsung screwd us over with the support on that phone, i8910 was useless out of the box, now ive to choose between htc sensation and s2 and i cant decide if im ready to buy another samsung!!

i just sold my i8910, but you guys complaining about the speakers,, i8910 speakers were probably only one of the few positive things about that phone, remember how samsung screwd us over with the support on that phone, i8910 was useless out of the box, now ive to choose between htc sensation and s2 and i cant decide if im ready to buy another samsung!!

Trust me the Galaxy Series are different. This phone alone had like 4 updates within past 3 months.
And half of the "negatives" I've mentioned above, been fixed.
Galaxy S II is a solid all rounder and it will be one of the first among Gingerbread OS phones to receive Ice Cream Sandwhich. Never been happier with a phone since the days of owning a Nokia N95-8GB and for those who know..that was a SOLID phone. :D

I've had my S2 for a couple of weeks now. Very happy with it, though as a first-time android user I'm disappointed with the android market. I've never had an iPhone but an iPod touch, and the Market is pretty crap and feels like a beta (varying prices, fake apps, lack of developer support).

As far as the phone goes, I've only two gripes, both relating to the speaker position. Firstly, the speaker gets covered up with my right-hand when using landscape. Really annoying for games or apps when playing music. Secondly, why do 99.9% of apps only rotate to landscape one way? This would solve my speaker issue. Granted not all iApps rotate both ways but many do (is there an App for this or a Root mod?).

Finally, I love the customisation of the phone, this is down to both Samsung and Android. It makes you feel free :) Jailbreaking is a must on iDevices, it seems less so with Android. Rooting, though, is daunting, and seems a touch risky for little benefit (I hope i'm wrong). An uber-clean idiots GUI would be ideal. Maybe in time this will come in time.

This (http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1103399) thread shows the easy way to root (easiest at the mo I think), once you try it and read through and get the idea of it all you'll see it's really quite simple :)

I got it today... So my experience is very little, but I would say the major negatives I've noticed till now are the back cover of the battery, its a thin plastic piece and not practical when removing it or putting it back.. you feel you're gonna break it.. Also the battery seems to run fast, compared to the fact that im almost using nothing that might suck out the battery.. even no internet and haven't downloaded any application yet.. It seems its going from 95% to 80% in 1 hour or so especially that I leave it beside me with out using it, and I have power save mode on.. Is that normal..
Anyways, I will update you with any new stuff.. If there is something I should know, please be generous and tell me.. Thanks

Dont worry about the flimsy looking back cover- Its unbreakable!

http://m.youtube.com/index?desktop_uri=%2F&gl=HK#/watch?v=ErXqnQKs-tA

http://lightake.com/detail.do/sku.46012

It's in stock. I search that store, located in China,maybe in Hong Kong. I was attracted by "refurbished" and its price. I think the price is near to new phone,so I'm confused by "refurbished".

Ok.. Im still working on the battery issue.. I've changed the bright orange background pic that was as default set, so the display usage of battery went from 78% to 37%. Im thinking of buying the bigger battery with its special cover, though the phone won't stay the thinner in the world, but I would rather sacrifice this for more battery life.
Now the other issue is the wifi connectivity. Is the phone's connectivity usually lower or weaker than that of a laptop. I mean I have the wireless machine in my bed room, while I use the laptop and the S2mobile in the sitting room.. The phone shows a poor signal and I can't open any pages, while internet connection works fine on the laptop.
I would like to know if this is normal.. I mean does my S2 or any phone needs an open space to get the signal, or there is any problem with it.
Btw, is there a way to make a special tone for sms, like a sound from my gallery?
Thanks