Better Late than Never: Unboxing the Samsung Galaxy S II

I know that some of you will say that this post is ridiculously late since the Samsung Galaxy S II was released over a year ago but what the heck we only got our hands on a unit just last week, haha! This smartphone ushered in a new era for Samsung because it put the company on a head-on collision with Apple. The device is stunningly beautiful, has amazing power, takes wonderful photos, and it can connect to HSPA+. Add to that the decent price and you have a truly great product.

Packaging

The Samsung Galaxy S II comes in a simple, elegant, and classy black box. They’re definitely positioning this model differently even with the packaging. Almost all other Samsung smartphones come in the usual white box with the model photo printed at the front.

What’s the first thing that greets you when you take off the top cover of the box? The Samsung Galaxy S II! The first time you pick it up you’ll be amazed at how thin and light it is. Samsung definitely put in a lot of love and effort into the hardware design.

The 4.3-inch Gorilla Glass screen is superior and easier to use compared to the usual 3-inch to 3.5-inch screens that other smartphones usually have. You have a bigger surface for browsing, texting, reading, and watching videos. By the way the screen is Super AMOLED Plus, 480×800 pixels (~217 ppi).

What else is in the box? You get the charger, earphones, and the battery.

Compared to the newest Samsung Smartphones

The Galaxy S II definitely is the inspiration for the design of the succeeding smartphones of Samsung. In fact if you put it side-by-side with the Galaxy Note they look exactly alike save for the size!

Like what we said above the Samsung Galaxy S II is very thin. Check out the photo below to get a feel for the size.

Don’t let the slim form factor fool you though. Inside this is a 1.2GHz dual-core processor. In terms of storage you can have add a 32GB micro-SD to the 14GB it already has built-in. That’s a lot of movies, photos, and songs already. 🙂

Apps run very smoothly and the Samsung Touchwiz UI over the Android 2.3 Gingerbread works fine. There are rarely any lags and you’ll definitely have a great over-all experience with this phone. It’s so good that looking back you’ll think that Samsung is actually ahead and the iPhone 4S was Apple’s response to this. I can’t wait to see what the Samsung Galaxy S III has when it debuts this year.

We won’t do a full review anymore since the phone is a year-old already. If you want to read a more comprehensive take on this though you might want to visit this post from Yugatech.