Samsung Galaxy S II Plus review: Golden oldie

Well connected

The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus has a long list of connectivity features. Let's start off with the basics - quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE and quad-band 3G (AWS is missing though). The 3G connectivity is backed by HSPA (21.1Mbps downlink, 5.76Mbps uplink).

The Wi-Fi support covers a/b/g/n, with both 2.4GHz and 5GHz band compatibility, with Wi-Fi Direct and DLNA also part of the package.

There's also Bluetooth 4.0 LE, which builds on Bluetooth 3.0 with the efficient Low Energy mode.

In some regions, the S II Plus has NFC connectivity. It lets you share all sorts of media via NFC by simply touching the devices back-to-back. You'd need two S Beam-enabled devices to get this to work - while not many models support it, there are plenty of later generation Galaxy's around.

You can share with other NFC devices as well, but the functionality is limited to what is provided by Android Beam - Android's stock NFC tool.

And finally, for wired connectivity we have the MHL port. By all appearances it is a normal microUSB port and works as one (a charger port as well). But the MHL port enables video output by using a MHL-to-HDMI dongle. Sadly, there isn't one included in the retail box.

Tweaked Jelly Bean browser

The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus has a tweaked version of the Jelly Bean Android browser, but Chrome also comes pre-installed, if that's what you prefer.

The Android browser

Anyway, the default browser supports both double tap and pinch zooming along with the two-finger tilt zoom. There are niceties such as multiple tabs, text reflow, find on page and so on. A neat trick is to pinch zoom out beyond the minimum - that opens up the tabs view.

The Web browser comes with Incognito mode, which lets you surf the web without the browser keeping track of your history or storing cookies. You can also switch to a more minimalist UI, which currently is in a Lab stage. It disables most of the browser's user interface and gives you a quick five-button layout to access the basics.

Tabs view • Incognito mode • Quick controls