Samsung Galaxy S II

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TameRacingDriver said:

I managed to make it last similar, doing pretty much the same as yourself, when I took a trip to Amsterdam. If you really need it to, you CAN make it last.

As I'll probably be keeping mine a bit longer than expected (no money for an upgrade this year even though contract is up and the current crop don't really "wow" me) I'm tempted to get the 2000 MAH battery and then you can have 2 batteries when out and about.

Like I said, it's actually a MUST to get this battery.

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TameRacingDriver said:

ZesPak said:

Like I said, it's actually a MUST to get this battery.

Is it really THAT good? On paper its 20% better, but I didn't really think that was enough to justify it - actually, the fact of having the spare battery is probably more appealing!

Well, the change is one thing but to me it completes the look of the phone better, the entire back comes to the same level of the speaker chin, recessing the camera about half a millimetre.

On top of that, yes, on paper it's only 20%, but to me that was the difference between having to look out during the day and to not having to look out.

20% might not sound as much, but in true battery charge, it's the difference between 20h of use and 24h.
If you don't use the phone that much and a full day of use is done by the default battery, I think you're good, but to me it means the difference between looking out what I'm doing/giving it an extra charge during the day and not having to worry.

When it's late at night and you need a ride, it's the difference between having 5% left and having run out 3h ago .

Well worth the £25 by any measure.

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TameRacingDriver said:

Must admit, battery life ain't one of its strong points, and whilst the phone does get me through the day most of the time, sometimes it doesn't! Sounds like a good idea then possibly (apart from the advantage of having the spare in your pocket!). Does the original battery fit OK with the new back cover?

It does, I did put a little band-aid piece on it to compensate for the extra space, but I don't think it's really necessary, though I wouldn't want to risk it if it could "shake" and lose contact, shutting down the phone.

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Ok,

I fked mine up :'(.

Was caught out in a storm last night, got soaked, so dit the phone. This has happened before but this time it's fked I think. The phone works fine but doesn't charge anymore. I do have an external dock that can hold a battery so got a back-up, but not too happy about it .

Will try and have it repaired under warranty (it's only a year old), but I'm a bit afraid they'll notice it's water damage.

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Stu R said:

They have water damage indicators, which will be the first thing they check for warranty claims.

I know, but it wasn't submerged, just truly soaked.
I also saw that there is green oxidation on the USB connector, which is probably the cause. It's very hard to reach tough, tried to clear it off but unsuccessful.

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GingerNinja said:

Since the upgrade to ICS, mine has had 2 problems:

1) Terrible battery life
2) Wifi issue - if wifi has been turned on, then turned off - turning it back on again either won't connect, or freezes the phone requiring a battery out reboot.

I'm tempted to do a hard reset.

For the battery life, have you looked at what's causing it? With me it was the exchange program. I just re-installed my exchange accounts and it solved the issue.

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Just a little update, I fked up my SGS2 because of water damage and went to look at a whole range of phones, budget not really an issue, and ended up with another SGS2. The SGS3 was just a bit too big and, the bigger (optional) battery for the SGS2 costs peanuts and really transforms the phone for me.

To me, the SGS2 is still one of the best phones out there for everyday use. Plenty of battery with the 2000mAh optional battery, just the right size in screen and a very slim phone. On top of that they can be had new for £350, which makes it very hard to resist imho.

It has arrived today. I find it very odd for me not to go for something completely new/different as I'm a bit of a gadget man, the One X and S3 were very very tempting but I had such good experiences with the S2 that I just went for it.

The other one is in for repair now and will go to my wife as she's been jealous of my SGS2 since day one .

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Just wanting to add: buying another S2 after owning one as my only phone for a year is the highest praise I can give to any high-tech gadget, as I'm one to always want the latest-greatest-and-best.

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buggalugs said:

I had a few days where the battery was quite noticeably bad, for various reasons I ended up removing the Facebook app though and the battery is absolutely rocking it now, yesterday I was still on 79% when I sat down after work 9 hours after charging it. I had all the syncs turned off in Facebook too.

Facebook app is terrible, even without the syncs constantly running in the background using memory and CPU, and in the foreground trying to get a GPS fix (things you can't disable!) terrible, terrible app.

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Richyvrlimited said:

I think it's a 'feature'. Note how long it takes for the screen to turn on when you return it from sleeping.

? It takes about .1 second? I've had my phone for a year and it still takes just that, don't notice any delay there?

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Richyvrlimited said:

ZesPak said:

? It takes about .1 second? I've had my phone for a year and it still takes just that, don't notice any delay there?

Really? Mine takes well over 1 second, doesn't matter which ROM I've tried, and I've see it mentioned many times before...

That would suck... have you got any custom unlock screens? I've noticed that my HTC Flyer takes a bit longer as well, with the HTC weather st and the likes.
My two SGS2's are both completely stock (on official ICS).

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Richyvrlimited said:

Memorycard slots are overrated, I've never ever used on in a phone, highly doubt I ever will either.

Never saw them to be overrated, some people like them, some don't?
I use mine all the time in the phones, tablet and digital camera.

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Richyvrlimited said:

I have plenty of music on mine too, don't feel the need to carry my entire collection around though, merely what I fancy at the time.

Agreed, I still have a 1GB Creative Zen Nano and actually find enough for my music. Ok, a bit more could be good (4GB maybe), but not really necessary.

I use the SD card mainly to put some movies on. Unconverted MKV's do take up some space

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ZesPak said:

Just a little update, I fked up my SGS2 because of water damage and went to look at a whole range of phones, budget not really an issue, and ended up with another SGS2. The SGS3 was just a bit too big and, the bigger (optional) battery for the SGS2 costs peanuts and really transforms the phone for me.

To me, the SGS2 is still one of the best phones out there for everyday use. Plenty of battery with the 2000mAh optional battery, just the right size in screen and a very slim phone. On top of that they can be had new for £350, which makes it very hard to resist imho.

It has arrived today. I find it very odd for me not to go for something completely new/different as I'm a bit of a gadget man, the One X and S3 were very very tempting but I had such good experiences with the S2 that I just went for it.

The other one is in for repair now and will go to my wife as she's been jealous of my SGS2 since day one .

Extra update: got a call from the store the other day that it's returned & fixed and ready to be picked up. All in less than two weeks, couldn't be happier.
They (Samsung) said that I should try and keep it dry this time but fixed it without cost anyway .

TameRacingDriver said:

For me the higher Res screen is very useful as I do a lot of browsing and it just looks better for everything. I also find the stock jelly bean OS much more polished and nicer to use. Its more stable and hangs into a signal better than my s2. Its a personal thing but its just more of a feel good device for me. I also prefer the fast camera shutter... even though on paper the s2 has the better camera I get better snaps with the nexus.

At the end of the day I value thess features more than the extra storage. YMMV.

The SGS2 and SGN are very similar phones. As above, I bought a second SGS2 when I fked my first one up just because I was very happy with the phone and you shouldn't change a winning formula. But I did have a play with the GN and I do think they're quite equally matched. The big upside of the GN will be of course that it'll keep on getting updates long after the SGS2.

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I agree I was underwhelmed by the SGS3 as well. Great display but then so is the SGS2 and SGS3.
If you don't have the need to have the latest and greatest games, like you said, I think the SGS2 and SGN are the better choice and you can save yourself a lot of £££.

Same goes with the 4 vs the 4S. The only difference now is that Apple is creating a more artificial "barrier" by giving the 4S extra software functionality (like finally free turn-by-turn navigation).
Samsung will probably eventually go the same way, if google brings out the next big version of Android there's a good chance the SGS3 will get it and the SGS2 won't.

But then you can go for the SGN indeed.

TBH what sold the SGS2 for me is my familiarity with it AND the bigger Samsung battery I already have. Brings the phone to a new level, and there aren't much high-end phones to match the battery life then. The GN has the bigger screen and, when in use, battery life does suffer from that.

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Schmeeky said:

I recently thought it'd probably be a good idea to get some sort of protection/antivirus software for my S2, so after a bit of looking around installed Kaspersky..

However, it seems to be a huge resource hog, using around 1/3 of my battery power, and everything seems to take much longer to happen, and I'm also suddenly getting a load of unwanted ad emails.. Should an anti virus app use so much power? And is there anything better/faster out there?

Sorry, but imho a virusscanner is way overrated on Android and very unnecessary. Hardly any real-life reports of virusses that actually do harm in any way. Just be wary when you install programs that, for example, offer you a wall paper and then demand full internet access and access to your contacts.

[ZesPak]

Little bit of useful info: I wanted to disable the camera sounds and it's not an out-of-the-box setting on the Samsung camera for some odd reason. So you'd need to get another camera app. But I couldn't be bothered with that so I went to look for a solution and stumbled across this:

http://jknext.com/mobile/how-to-disable-camera-sou...

web site said:

local.prop method: first, you have to create an empty file named called local.prop and add a line ro.camera.sound.forced = 0 into it.

For that, open Notepad on your computer, paste below code into it and save the file as local.prop. Remember, not to save as local.prop.txt.

ro.camera.sound.forced = 0

Now copy and paste this file to your Samsung galaxy s2 to the location/data/. (The final location of the file will be “/data/local.prop”).

Then, reboot your phone, and all the sounds from the camera will be completely silent if you are putting SGS2 to silent mode.

This worked like a charm! I actually didn't need to connect it either, just created the file using "ES Explorer", no "root" required ether. It's lovely when these little annoyances can be fixed that easily, rather than "have to live with them".