[Galaxy S II General] sandmik:
Hi,

I will answer your question under two main thoughts.

1. Having used HTC already and nothing but HTC:

I have been an HTC person since day one. I owned the XDA,PDA2K,Tytn II,HTC HD2

Always seen HTC as a good phone, however I did have several hardware problems with them. (XDA,PDA2k none, but the PDA2k keyboard got very loose). Tytn II, one day I was using my phone and it reset, when It turned on again, the RAM available was 0. Basically I had a phone that was "read only". Could not save anything on it, not even the call log, however it used to make calls :) I had to change the memory chip in it to make it work again. HTC HD2, same problem happened once and after around 1.5 years of usage, the touch screen started to become buggy. I thought it was a software problem until finally the touch screen died after around 3 month of the initial symptoms. I did not fix it, I just sold it as is... I know two friends of mine who have had the same touch screen problems with the HD2.

2. HTC sensation vs. SG2:

I am the chief software specialist at telephone.com. So you can imagine that I am a hardcore developer and a very advanced user. I read over 50 pages worth of detailed reviews between the 2 phones and I must say, SG2 got the favor, always and the comparison wasn't close, Just a small recap: Wifi is better (has N), 3G speed is faster,Camera is better (both front and back), the front being the only one with 2MP in the market, most of them are VGA. Battery better, screen much better (although the resolution on the Sensation is slightly higher). GPS lock was faster during the reviews I read. Hardware in SG2 includes active noise cancellation or whatever it is called, should make your voice calls better quality.SG2 is faster (benchmarking). Memory is more, with built in 16GB and still with the possibility of sd card...

Joining these two thoughts, I decided to try out Samsung, I have never owned samsung phone before.

I have it now for around 1.5 month and the phone is simply excellent, flawless. The only problem with it was the "Wireless sharing" application that runs in the background sometimes and drains ur battery quickly. I developed the habit of killing the process after turning off wifi as I did not root my phone yet and not planning to unless I feel the urgent need for that.I think this process only starts if it detects "DLNA devices" (or Allshare devices) on the wifi, which I do have in my home. Also if I use it heavily, It tends to warm up to an above average level, I wonder if this would cause hardware problems in the long run... I usually let it rest my turning it off or exiting the CPU intensive application.

As for the plus side of using a samsung:

-Screen is excellent, beats the LCD very easily

-Being very lightweight, at first you do feel the "cheap feeling" as we are trained to feel it robust/reliable when a phone feels heavy. But after using it for sometime, especially long phone calls, I fell in love with how light it is. after 10-15 min of talking you don't feel you have a phone on your ear, which is a feeling I never had with any other phone before.

-Battery life: better

-After using touchwiz4 and getting used to it, I now like it more than the HTC Sense. The main reason behind this is that, while it may not be the best looking (but it will grow on you), interface is very smart/practical. I could intuitively find my way around the phone and using it, it is like the interface was designed for me :) Lots of thoughts went into making it practical when using it, even small things that the end user misses or dismisses as not important, takes lots of thought by the designers of the phone.

-The SG2 could have used dual flash for the camera, I miss this from the HD2, since sometimes at night, it does come in handy and I do feel I miss the extra light...

I hope this post makes it clearer for you to decide :)

I think SG2 is an excellent phone, it can easily change you from the HTC train to Samsung in no time, at least it happened to me :)

Best of Luck in your choice, although there is really not much room for luck in choosing, just be smart ;)