Samsung Galaxy S II
Just Tested
Home cinema amplifiers
Denon AVR-X2000
The AVR-X2000 brings Denon back to the AV receiver top table in this ultra-competitive price category
Read
Soundbars
Otone Sonora AV-Lance
A decent, affordable effort from Otone but sound quality is tainted by a distracting brightness
Read
DACs
Chord Electronics QBD76 HDSD
Chord’s QBD76 HDSD is a top-class converter that delivers a brilliant sound from a well-built package. It has plenty of visual appeal, too
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In this month's mag
July 2013
SUPERTEST: Soundbar solutions £250-£450
GROUP TEST: 46-47in smart TVs
GROUP TEST: Standmount speakers £350-£450
© 2013 Haymarket Publishing
Comments
bizaare, the rating switches from 5 to 4 star on refresh and vice versa.
Apologies for the confusion. We originally gave it five stars last year, but better, newer competition means it was later taken down to four. We've amended the rating on the main review page, but when you click the Opinion tab it still displays as five. Unfortunately I can't fix that in the CMS as it's auto-generated.
Having used this phone for some weeks now, great as the hardware is, the samsung Kies software is a total disaster.
Fine for backing up but little else. It offers to import playlists from iTunes for instance. BUt on your phone youll find it has dumped all the tracks injto one alpha numerically sorted bundle. No lists exist on the phone..so you have to recreate them manually and then sequence them!
Same for photos.. all dumped into one folder. The only workaround is to forget the Kies software and add your own folders onto chosen storgage and then resequence from there.
The email software does not allow you to "select all" so you have to choose delete then select each tick box for each email to delete to trash. The repeat the process to empty the trash. VERY annoying and timewasting.
The camera, always makes the shutter sound. Even with volume levels set to off and silent mode activated it will still make that noise. Add the usual non transference of bookmarks to your browser leaves you with getting mozilla and transferring bookmarks in that way.
Overall once you get past these problems its a great smart phone.. I just wish it was a bit smarter! Hope of some update may resolve this but who knows!
It is one hell of a phone and very light, altough I was not an iphone user (my daughter is) this must be one or two steps on from the iphone 4. Camera brilliant, very fast in use OS, huge screen and supports flash. I agree about the Kies software, it is pretty rubbish, including an inability to sync properly with MS Outlook. I tried to do a firmware update last week and the Kies crashed and took the phone with it. The phone has had to go back to Samsung to have it's OS re-installed, so never bothering with updates again.
Unless you are a Apple junkie, this is the only phone to get
Am I understanding this right? You had to be without a phone for days and sent yours back for re-install, all due to a simple update? How come you can't restore yourself, is that a normal procedure for Samsung/Android phones? Sorry but you make it sound like the only phone NOT to get.
Could I please ask if you would recommend this Samsung Galaxy S II over the HTC Sensation?
Or near enough the same on balance or features/quality/etc 
I've been a using HTC products for nearly 10 years now and I'm still using an old HTC HD2 (Leo) with Android (NAND ROM) which is brilliant, but starting to show it's age a little and could do with a proper refresh
So what's it to be?
Thanks
Surely, the fact that it's not an iPhone, is the best thing going for it ?
What is the battery life like?
Does it include NFC?
Will Samsung upgrade the OS as new versions are released?