Skyrockets in flight: Galaxy S II Skyrocket is a delight

I have never used a smart phone for more than a couple of minutes before I got my hands on this phone. The idea of a smart phone never seemed like a decent investment of my time and money. The last time I looked at getting a smart phone the cost for the two year contract totaled $700, something that I was not willing to spend. Since then much has changed. Smart phones have become far more powerful and efficient and the Samsung Galaxy S II android phone has proven to me the near necessity of smart phones for highly mobile individuals.

The phone is very well put together. I thought it was a solid body until I dropped it and saw the crack of the back panel. The case comes in at just over 2 inches in width and about 5 inches in length and about 1/3 inch in thickness. It comes with a bright 4.3 inch touch screen that is capable of playing high definition video and it has 4G and Wi-Fi capabilities. There are 5 buttons on the outside of the phone which help with the touch pad control as well as an audio jack and USB port to plug into power or computes. The phone is equipped with an 8 megapixel camera and flash. The photos it takes are phenomenal. The phone can be purchased with either 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory.

With the Galaxy S II, my life becomes much more organized. The ability to e-mail between my classes without the use of a laptop or computer is so much more convenient and the messaging and social life programs organize all social media messaging into one interface. And the calendar application syncs up with Google’s calendar. The phone’s 4G is faster than the campus Wi-Fi, making the phone perfect for surfing the internet. However, the web app has no forward button which requires the user to retype the address to jump to a website.

Unfortunately, for all the good of the Galaxy S II there are still many problems it has to overcome. Samsung’s native interface for this android phone has left me wanting. Many of the applications overlap in function and each have a notification sound. This meant that my phone would beep and vibrate multiple times for the same message or email I received. Sometimes one application would receive the message update minutes after I read it. Sometimes this caused my phone to notify me of a received message when there was none. This is just an example of the overall inefficiencies of the interface. There is an information bar along the top of the screen that the user cannot interact with, but it would be nice to. Instead when click on anything in that bar a drop down menu appears. Another issue is with the learning curve of the interface. I had the phone for just over a week, and barely had it dialed in to my unique needs.

On the whole, the Galaxy S II delivers as promised, and is a great smartphone for the money