[Galaxy S II Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] derrickonline:
My honest opinion. First off, I switch phones every 6 months, sometimes less than that. I owned an original iPhone, and an iPhone 3G, HTC Touch HD, Palm Pre, before moving to Android when the first Motorola Droid came out. Then I went to the Droid X. Then the G2X, the Atrix, and now an unlocked Galaxy S II.

My opinion? The Galaxy S II is the phone to beat. Hands down it runs circles around all of the aforementioned phones. The Droid X held it's ground for nearly 6 months on my hip (that's saying a lot).

I'm still amazed that Samsung fit so much technology in such a slim body, and I still can get 2 days of battery life out of this thing. Color me impressed. Granted I'm rooted and I know all the tricks of the trade. But I leave Bluetooth and WiFi on ALL the time. I don't talk much on the phone more data than talking but I get two days. I wrote some threads on that.

I do have a love/hate relationship with TouchWiz. Somethings TouchWiz really improves upon (I love being able to organize my apps instead of having one big app drawer). Samsung clearly stole the idea from Apple and allows you to organize your apps per screen. I like that because I organize my apps in categories. For example, all my banking apps are on one page, my social networking on another etc. My other Droids would (like stock Android) just let you have one big app drawer. That sucks because Flixter used to be called Movies (I think they changed it now). So I'm looking for Flixster, but it's actually listed as Movies. Things I don't like about TouchWiz. The cartoony look of their icons. The bloatware preloaded on the phone, and how Samsung has EVERY FREAKIN' FONT set by default to be huge. The first thing I did in my email, text messaging, and any app that allowed it was to reduce the font size. Not only do they make cartoony icons, but they have fonts set up for partially blind people.

The screen is beautiful. It really ****z on the Atrix screen. I do miss the fingerprint sensor on the Atrix. It may be a "novelty" item to some. But I keep my phone password protected. The problem with that is someone could possibly watch you swipe your finger in it's pattern, or watch you punch in a pin. With the fingerprint sensor you could just swipe your finger, you never had to worry about anyone seeing your code.

I also like the 4.3 (4.27inch to be exact) screen of the Galaxy S II. I had a Droid X which also has a 4.3 inch screen and when made properly, the screen size doesn't feel that big at all in your hand. Motorola and Samsung sort of went with a widescreen look. So when you turn the phone sideways it's longer. This makes it much easier to hold. HTC on the other hand made the EVO/Thunderbolt 4.3 inches but it's square. It makes it really awkward to hold. The Atrix was 4 inch screen. That .3 inches makes a difference. Also, the Atrix (though still pretty thin) was thicker than the Galaxy S II. In fact the Galaxy S II is one of the thinnest smartphones I've used in a while.

The front and rear cameras are perfect. Whereas I believe the Atrix had a VGA front facing camera, not a big deal, but a 1.3+ mp camera front facing helps to future proof and means taking self portraits to MMS to someone ensures you'll have a decent pic. The Atrix's VGA quality works find for video chat, but sucks for self portraits (minor issue as they both will do just fine with video chat).

Ohh, and this GSII is packed with technology to help future proof it. WiFi direct, DLNA, to name a few (though DLNA is pretty standard along the Motorola Droid line). I didn't think I would like it, but the Keis air app is pretty sweet. I love being able to transfer, delete, photos, music, manage my call logs, text and MMS messages using my web browser wirelessly, basically you have a ton of control over your phone, wirelessly managing it from a web browser. I can even text using my web browser connected wirelessly to my phone. This is great when I'm at the office, my phone is on my hip. I don't feel like typing on a touchscreen 4.3 inch device, I can have see new text messages on my computer screen, and even respond without ever having to pull out my phone.

It's the phone to beat. If you're asking to go Atrix or GSII. I have to say GSII!