Let’s first talk about the build quality of the Galaxy S II. It is a solid thin yet big smartphone, which most you might find it quite large in your palm. Apart from the flimsy battery cover and the placement of microSD card slot – I don’t really have a problem with its build quality. Everything is neat and done to perfection by Samsung.  Now, coming back to the two problems –battery cover is a big issue, it is fragile and whenever I am planning to remove it for something – the fear of breaking it pops up my mind.  The placement of microSD card slot is another issue as you need to take the battery out each time you switch SD card.

The Samsung Galaxy S II is 8.49mm thick, which makes it the thinnest smartphone one can buy outside Japan, where NEC Medias rules with 7.7 mm thickness.  Most of the material used on the sides and back of the display is of plastic. As expected, Samsung has used Gorilla Glass over its Super AMOLED Plus display. The presence of Gorilla Glass saves your display from everyday scratches and even occasional accidents. It also saves you the cost of a screen protector, but many of you might want extra precautions, which is not a bad idea. This sheet of glass also covers the capacitive buttons, the sensors and the front Cam on the top of the screen. The only disruptions on the front of the SGSII are the home button and the earpiece.  These capacitive back and menu buttons are backlit, but go off very soon. That did bug me. They should go dark only when the display goes on sleep. The menu capacitive button also works as the search button when pressed longer.

On the left side, there is a volume rocker, and other side you will find the power on/off button. Sides are clean and sleek. Yes, dedicated camera button is a miss by Samsung again, and might bug some of you.  On the top of SGS2 is the 3.5 mm headset jack and at the bottom is the mic and the microUSB/Charging/HDMI port. On the back is the expected 8MP rear camera with flash.

Last point for now in hardware, SGS II is unbelievably light and without battery it was almost like feather weight in the hand . Samsung has put in serious work to make its weight so less with all these features tucked in.

These days all the good smartphones are plagued with the not so good battery performance, but then it is a matter of setting your bar. I think that if your phone works fine for 24 hours after charging – including the heavy WiFi usage, calls and casual gaming then its good and that’s what I was expecting  from SGS2. Yes, it will last one full day after doing the above stuff, but don’t expect more than that.

Samsung has put-in a 1650 mAh battery and it gives a decent performance, but in the long run companies should start putting efforts in battery-tech too. While everything else in the smartphone arena is getting obsolete within six month, we are still using those old-age batteries.

Samsung Galaxy S II support HSPA+ network, which means you can buy any of private telecom operator SIM cards and expect rocking speeds on your phone. While normally Airtel never gives good speed on its 3G connection and I was able to get 5-6 Mbps, that’s a lot. I was expecting more on Reliance GSM or Tata Docomo.

Coming to Call quality, the sound and call quality is above average, and there weren’t been any known issues, but sometimes I did found the volume from ear-piece lower than expected – maybe I need an hearing-aid these days