Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II preview: Second encounter

Kies Air – PC Suite through the web browser

The Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II comes with Kies Air preloaded. The app connects the local Wi-Fi network (or it can create a Wi-Fi hotspot) and gives you an URL to type into your computer’s web browser.

From there you can manage just about anything on the phone – from contacts, messages (including composing messages), to browsing images, videos and other files straight in your desktop browser. You can grant or reject access to computers and see who’s connected to the phone at any one moment.

It’s really cool that you can stream music with handy playback controls. It works for videos too.

Note: You’ll need a reasonably modern browser with Java and some video plug-in (QuickTime worked for us).

Kies Air in Chrome 10

First impressions

The Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II impressed us at every turn. We were surprised at how much engineers have managed to cram into something that’s just 8.5mm thin.

The new SuperAMOLED Plus display is amazing even if it makes the phone quite a big thing to hold. The camera scored big points as did the overall performance of the phone – and that’s with the 1GHz version we tested. Samsung is yet to churn out those samples clocked at 1.2GHz.

As flagships go, the Samsun Galaxy S II is a prime example. At times we wished for some metal on the body but that would have increased the weight – at 116g the phone is lighter than much smaller handsets.

We’re not sure about the price at which the Galaxy S II will go (pre-orders currently hover around 550 euro), but its predecessor’s price gradually settled at very reasonable levels. If the same happens to this Galaxy, it might be the smartphone to buy this year.

We have yet more tests to perform and aspects of the Samsung I9100 Galaxy S II to explore, but those will wait until the full review. Our first impressions are nothing but positive and that’s quite a way to start.