[Galaxy S II General] BarryH_GEG:
Wow, a lot was covered in the past couple of pages. Some I wish I knew before I bought the phone. Here's what I've taken away:

1) The variance from screen to screen in SAMOLED is high. The poster who saw 11 phones each with screen variations from each other is pretty telling. I also did a search on "amoled screen problems" and forum posts popped up for pretty much every brand of phone that has the screen. Bottom line is you get brighter colors, blacker blacks, and along with that more risk that individual phones will perform differently. For those seeking perfection it doesn't look like SAMOLED offers any guarantees.

2) Expectations are different. I think I lucked out as there really isn't anything noticeable to me in everyday use. But because screens vary so much (see #1) it's really luck of the draw and may be that way for a long time unless technology and/or production processes improve. The response to this comment will probably be "but I owned a (insert phone here) and it never had any screen problems." From what I just read I'd ask if you saw them all? There might be something particularly funky with the new 4.3" screen or the SGS2 production process but apparently AMOLED has some drawbacks in every application.

3) If you accept that AMOLED has inherent flaws, Samsung obviously knows this. I read an interesting article that said the only reason Apple didn't go with SAMOLED in the iP4 was concerns about inventory being sufficient. I'm assuming they did a little research before considering the technology. You guys make it sound as if Samsung has three guys in a rice paddy designing and building their phones. They probably have hundreds of people in R&D, production, and QC with a million dollars of equipment at their disposal. A 95% quality benchmark is relatively easy to hit. Each point beyond that doubles in cost so 98-99% is a likely target. They probably have some sort of allowable flaw rate of "X per 1,000 units." If they're like every other company they continually pull random samples off the line to make sure they're hitting their QC benchmarks and tolerances. In short, they know when there's issues and they're willing to accept them to a prescribed threshold. Because we got phones early in the production process the "X per 1,000" may have been much higher than projected. Regardless, those waiting for some type of massive recall or mia culpa from Samsung are probably going to be waiting for a long time.

4) I posted pics of my phone for everyone to see and given the chance to swap it for a perfect specimen I'd probably avoid the hassle and keep it. It's literally fine for me. If in looking at the pics what's shown doesn't meet your standards, wait a couple months before making a purchase. Apparently mine's a better specimen and there's risk that whatever you get could be worse. Of course, what's good for some is awful for others so without a specific phone in front of you I guess its really hard to see where in the spectrum your expectations may fall.

So, basically, here are the options:

1) For those buying now, live with what you get and hope later production runs improve. Then, get your screen replaced under warranty at some point in the future.

2) Return the phone and re-buy a better specimen at some point in the future should things improve.

3) If you buy now and get a really crappy specimen, exchange it within the 7-28 day DOA window until you get an example you can live with hoping "perfect" might be available in the future.

4) For those importing the phone to the U.S., you should really consider the risk that exists. If you get a crappy specimen, you'll either have to ship it back to the UK or have Expansys do it for you. Since each phone seems to vary wildly the next one could be better or worse. Knowing what we know now I probably wouldn't have gotten the phone or waited a few months for things to shake out.

To those that are happy (I am), enjoy your phone. To those that aren't, pick one of the three options above. While storming the castle with pitchforks and torches makes for great theater, it rarely accomplishes anything. The SGS GPS issue was legend and much worse than this as it effected every phone. It took Samsung six months to react and they never publicly declared it an issue. So this thread can grow to a 1,000 pages and every online site could post a story a month about the SGS2 screen and nothing may ever happen since, like I said above, Samsung was most likely aware of the issue before we were.

Food for thought.