The Samsung Galaxy S II is one of the hottest Android smartphones of 2011 in Europe and Asia. After 4 months it’s finally making its way to 3 of the top 4 carriers: Sprint, AT&T and T-Mobile (Verizon is rumored to carry the LTE Nexus Prime by Samsung instead). The Sprint version is first to market, and it has an epically long name: the Samsung Galaxy S II Epic 4G Touch. Yes, the phone has more names than a twice married English noblewoman because Sprint wanted to retain both their Epic 4G branding and the hot Galaxy S II name. Monikers aside, this is a seriously good phone with Samsung’s Super AMOLED Plus display, their insanely fast Exynos dual core CPU, 16 gigs of storage, WiMAX 4G and an impressive 8 megapixel camera.
Display
Sprint, like T-Mobile, has stretched the Euro Galaxy S II display from 4.3 to 4.5 inches. Bigger is better in America we suppose, but that does make the phone harder to hold despite its thinness. We love movies and photos on the bigger screen, but navigating icons and text in the OS and apps is a bit of a let down because Samsung went with the more pedestrian 800 x 480 resolution rather than the new high end standard qHD 960 x 540 like the HTC Sensation 4G and Motorola Droid Bionic. Icons look comically large and menu text is larger than necessary unless you have poor vision that’s not well corrected with glasses. Other than resolution, it’s hard not to love the Super AMOLED Plus display with its better than life super-saturated colors and high contrast. Samsung offers 3 saturation levels under display settings so you can crank up those colors even more (ouch) or tone it down just a little for more natural colors. The phone is viewable outdoors, but washes out and isn’t as easy to see as the iPhone 4 or Droid Bionic.
Sprint, like T-Mobile, has stretched the Euro Galaxy S II display from 4.3 to 4.5 inches. Bigger is better in America we suppose, but that does make the phone harder to hold despite its thinness. We love movies and photos on the bigger screen, but navigating icons and text in the OS and apps is a bit of a let down because Samsung went with the more pedestrian 800 x 480 resolution rather than the new high end standard qHD 960 x 540 like the HTC Sensation 4G and Motorola Droid Bionic. Icons look comically large and menu text is larger than necessary unless you have poor vision that’s not well corrected with glasses. Other than resolution, it’s hard not to love the Super AMOLED Plus display with its better than life super-saturated colors and high contrast. Samsung offers 3 saturation levels under display settings so you can crank up those colors even more (ouch) or tone it down just a little for more natural colors. The phone is viewable outdoors, but washes out and isn’t as easy to see as the iPhone 4 or Droid Bionic.
Android and TouchWiz
The Epic 4G Touch runs Android OS 2.3.4 Gingerbread with Samsung TouchWiz 3.0 (according to Samsung’s specs page, that’s the version number) software that’s evolved since 3.0 since its release many months ago. There are HTC Sense-like touches here, including a carousel view of home screens (though not 3D), and the strange square backgrounds imposed on application icons is gone. The widgets are mostly the same, and are in general useful.
The Epic 4G Touch runs Android OS 2.3.4 Gingerbread with Samsung TouchWiz 3.0 (according to Samsung’s specs page, that’s the version number) software that’s evolved since 3.0 since its release many months ago. There are HTC Sense-like touches here, including a carousel view of home screens (though not 3D), and the strange square backgrounds imposed on application icons is gone. The widgets are mostly the same, and are in general useful.
Performance: Fastest Phone Ever
Along with the stunning and huge Super AMOLED Plus display, Samsung’s own dual core 1.2GHz Exynos CPU with hardware graphics acceleration is the star here. This is the fastest mobile CPU in a shipping phone, and it blows the socks off others by a wide margin. In the Quadrant benchmark, a score of 2,000 is pretty darned good for a dual core 1GHz CPU. The Epic 4G Touch scores 3,100-3,300. Wow. It averages 78 in Linpack’s multi-thread test, which is well above the top performers that manage scrores in the upper 50’s to mid 60’s. Does the phone feel fast? Absolutely. There’s no waiting when working with the camera, the web browser renders so quickly it makes up for our sometimes slow data connections and games run flawlessly. NOVA 2 HD, a game whose controls are sometimes difficult, suddenly became fluid—we are talking fast phone here. The only drawback? Since the phone doesn’t run on the Nvidia Tegra 2, you won’t be able to play Tegra Zone games.
Along with the stunning and huge Super AMOLED Plus display, Samsung’s own dual core 1.2GHz Exynos CPU with hardware graphics acceleration is the star here. This is the fastest mobile CPU in a shipping phone, and it blows the socks off others by a wide margin. In the Quadrant benchmark, a score of 2,000 is pretty darned good for a dual core 1GHz CPU. The Epic 4G Touch scores 3,100-3,300. Wow. It averages 78 in Linpack’s multi-thread test, which is well above the top performers that manage scrores in the upper 50’s to mid 60’s. Does the phone feel fast? Absolutely. There’s no waiting when working with the camera, the web browser renders so quickly it makes up for our sometimes slow data connections and games run flawlessly. NOVA 2 HD, a game whose controls are sometimes difficult, suddenly became fluid—we are talking fast phone here. The only drawback? Since the phone doesn’t run on the Nvidia Tegra 2, you won’t be able to play Tegra Zone games.
