Don't say that! I'd have the Ferrari any day

It's my analogy and I'm sticking to it!

Well the analogy is false since these two phones are around the same price. The GTR is cheaper than the Ferrari!

I got my phone yesterday, and it is as good as I expected. However I will reserve judgement on Android for the moment because I'm having quite a few issues and its sucking up a lot of time reading forums, tweaking settings, hacking etc.. just for basic functionality. Somone suggested doubletwist as an alternative to iTunes, please tell me you were joking . This is one of the buggiest pieces of software I've ever used, and nothing works as it should (including recognising my phone as a Galaxy Tab). I'm going to simple drag n drop for now because I'm so fed up

Anyway I go back to what I said to Nil, if you want something that just works, get an iPhone.

I take it you're a Mac user? For Windows you get:

- a version of Doubletwist that's far more useable.
- Samsung KIES that offers Media Syncing
- Full MTP Support - something Apple doesn't offer in Mac OS to keep the competition out

"if you want something that just work, get an iPhone": and I repeat myself: if you already have iTunes up and running, you're right. If you have a GMail account and don't use iTunes, you're wrong.

What "basic functionality" doesn't work for you? Please explain - and perhaps some people here could help you.

Peter

Hey Peter,

I should be able to work most of the issues out myself as I'm geek enough, but actually no I'm not a Mac user, I'm running Windows 7.

With regards to Double Twist.

• Fails to see the phone + SD memory first time (usually only the phone memory), but seems to work if I plug/unplug USB several times.
• Music/Vids etc.. sync to both memories (even though I untick those for phone memory).
• Paid for Airsync, only to discover that it doesn't sync to SD card

I may try Samsung Kies instead, however a lot of people in forum-land complain that its slow and clunky and suggest Doubletwist as a better alternative.

Irritations

• Duplication of Apps: For email you have an Email App, Gmail App, Social hub? what am I supposed to use? Ditto for buying Apps you have Samsung Apps, Market Place
• And actually why do manufacturers have to produce shells like Sense and Touchwiz, is plain vanilla Android so poor that you can't get by without some form of shell, launcher etc.. It just adds extra layers of reduncy and makes Android look half baked
• I use Chrome exclusively so I *assumed* that coming into the Google ecosystem, my Android bookmarks should be in sync with Chrome.. No. Despite repeated pleading, Google don't see fit to add this feature. So I buy an app to sync them (chromemarks) install it, only to find that it doesn't work with the Samsung itteration of the web browser as became apparent when I read the small print
• I keep getting login fail on Zinio within the readers hub, so I try and download from the Marketplace, except for some inexplicable reason it doesn't appear in a search. However I can confirm its existence if I access the marketplace on my computer, but it now states that Zinio is not compatible with my Phone..
• The email widget has a mind of its own, sometimes showing me days old emails
• Not sure if I should be killing apps all the time, or let the OS handle running processes and memory allocation. Today for example I was out shopping and something was draining my battery fast (70% to 30% in an hour), no idea what was misbehaving.

There are a few more minor issues, but I'll stop boring everyone. This is not about the phone, which is the saving grace of my experience so far.

Cheers

Hi,

ok, I see - you're bringing up the most common annoyances with Android / Samsung here.

As for Doubletwist: can't help you there - I'm using the same tool under Win 7 (64bit) to sync my stuff and it works well for me. Is Windows seeing the second SD card? Until I got the SGS 2, I was using tool called Salling Media Sync, which is much easier to use - however, with the SGS 2, it didn't see the 2nd SD card :-/ This apparently has to do with Google's transition to MTP. On the phones, they seem to offer both MTP and USB mass storage now, which seems to lead to problems. On the tablets, mass storage is gone completely -> there people don't seem to be having sync issues under Windows, but on Mac OS, this breaks syncing altogether, because Apple doesn't support the protocol.

As to the shells: I agree. I prefer plain Android

As for e-mail: use GMail for GMail accounts and the email app for everything else (IMAP, POP3 etc.). I can see how this may be irritating, but if you look at what the GMail app does, it does really make sense. gmail.com offers a lot of functionality (archival of messages, sending from all of your defined accounts / from: addresses, very fast search through all of your messages etc.). The GMail app is a full-blown front-end to your GMail account, while EMail is a POP3 / IMAP client. On the iPhone, things aren't much better, either - if you have a GMail account, you'll have to decide whether you add it as an Exchange account (which offers push but doesn't offer archiving e-mails directly, doesn't offer sending from aliases) or you add it as a GMail account and lose push, but gain archiving. Sending from aliases is still not possible.

Social Hub is an App Samsung added that mimics the like of Tweetdeck etc. It seems to be popular nowadays to keep your Facebook and your Twitter account unified in one app. Blackberry / RIM does the same. I personally don't use it. Simply don't add your Twitter and Facebook account to it and use the dedicated apps.

The Samsung Apps Store I don't use. Sooner or later, however, you'll find it useful that Android / Google allows third-party app stores, much like on jailbroken iPhones but without the jailbreaking. It's part of the "freedom" you have when you buy an Android phone.

As for Chrome: that sucks :-/ I never tried to sync my bookmarks and wasn't aware that doesn't work. On the positive side, check out Chrome to Phone. Doesn't help with the bookmarks, but at least allows you to send links directly from the browser to the phone: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/d...fjbfekfjcgkhco

Zinio: that's odd - I've been using my Zinio account in Reader Hub from day one with my SGS 2. As a matter of fact, it's the one App I use by far the most. Have you tried contacting Zinio directly? I guess installing the stand-alone app doesn't work because you already have a more advanced version of the app as part of the Reader Hub. Samsung has an exclusive agreement with Zinio - the official Zinio app only became available a week ago, while Zinio has been on Samsung phones and tablets for almost a year.

As for the tasks: welcome to true multitasking ;-) The task manager on 2.3.3 usually makes it unnecessary to kill tasks. Here are a couple of things you might want to look at to get the full battery life out of your SGS 2 (which happens to be very good, btw - I usually get 2 full days out of usage out of it, and I use it a lot, with GMail push activated etc.):

- disable GPS for location services unless you need it. Unlike on other devices, it's very easy to enable it again - just pull down the notification bar.

- if you don't use social hub, make sure you didn't add any accounts there. You can find all the accounts that sync stuff under Settings -> Accounts and sync.

- If you use the dedicated Facebook and Twitter apps, have a look at their sync settings as well. Both companies tend to set their sync intervals to 5-15 minutes, which really kills the battery and is utterly pointless. I generally disable syncing for those two apps altogether.

- If you use a weather widget, check the sync and auto-location settings for that as well.

- Other apps, that tend to sync a lot unnecessarily: News & Weather, Google Reader, Google Latitude, almost all 3rd party news apps, almost all 3rd party weather apps.


I've had Skype and Ambience on my former iPhone kill the battery within 1-2 hours before, so things like that aren't exclusive to Android, either, btw.


if you have additional questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Peter

I don't understand why somebody would spend this amount of money on a device that can be summarized in a few words: I run Android - I look like iPhone.
I mean.... I see why you would want to get a cheap Chinese-made iPhone-clone on eBay. But when I spend 500€ on a device, it has to be unique-good, not copy-good.
Thus even if it´s got the best features out there, I would still go for an HTC, a Sony-Ericsson or an LG (preferably an LG, but then it´s a matter of personal preferences).

It's the features that count, not the looks - apart from that, the phone doesn't look like the iPhone.

Well with all due respect, with a statement like that then it's not surprising that you don't understand. The LG Android phones are nowhere near as good as the Samsungs or HTC's, and their software has gotten some bad press. Same with Sony Ericsson for the most part.

No idea why anyone would want ot synch music... the huge benefit of Android imo is drag-and-drop functioanlity... it's a bonus not a hindrance, use it!

Ignore all Samsung software... that's what I do. Just use the stock email app, or gmail if you use gmail. Ditto for the market, as the Android one is obviously the original.

Actually it's one of the key elements of Android... functionality is improved as a result. Use GO Launcher and GO SMS Pro, they are the two best.

With regards to the battery issue... that will be the older firmware you likely have, as well as the Samsung hubs running in the background. I rooted my phone, updated the firmware, and froze all the hubs, and now my battery is an absolute champ.


Android is not the best or smoothest "out of the box" experience, but once it is customised it becomes an awesome platform where you can do just about anything with the phone. If you want something that "just works with no tweaking" then as was said earlier in the thread, the iPhone is for you. However, once tweaked the SGS II is a monster.



------------------------------------------------------



This is my UI at the moment...

I love the fact you can make this phone your own, as opposed to the iPhone where it's a carbon copy of everyone elses.

Zinio through the market only works on 3.0 devices.

http://www.zinio.com/splash.jsp?code=android

as a tip, if you bought an app you don't like, you have a 15min window to uninstall and get a refund.

I like this post.
You start with a nice phrase, you end with a nice smiley, and somewhere in the middle you call me stupid.

I didn't imply that anywhere, I was just commenting that if the basis of your opinion was:

• SGS II looks like an iPhone (which it doesn't really in reality)
• You would buy an inferior phone just to "look uniqie", even if the features were significantly less
• You would rather buy LG or SE, who have gotten a poor rep in the last couple of years due to buggy software and design

...then it's not surprising you didn't get the buzz over this phone. Hardware-wise it is better than anything else on the market in the world at this time, and it has been hailed as the best smartphone in the world by multiple major review sites. There is a very good reason it's getting all this praise.

I suppose it might actually be the best hardware out there (it's obviously one of the very best - I just don't care to identify the one perfect one). If I cared, I would point out that the HTC Sensation has a higher screen resolution.

But this discussion reminds me of some Intel Vs. AMD or Nvidia Vs. Ati discussions that we used to see a lot in forums until a few years ago. Now people have stopped participating in these debates because they realized that no matter what you get, it will be outdated after a few months.
So I really don't care if the G SII is slightly better or worse than the Sensation. Both will be outdated within a semester and I am planning to keep my new phone at least for a year.
So it is really important for me that it looks like a flagship.
Thus yes, I would buy the Sensation over the G SII if I wanted to spend that much. It looks like a proper flagship phone. And since you mentioned something about "inferior phone", as a matter of fact I am planning to get none of the two, because I will most probably get an LG Optimus Black this summer. I consider it a way better investment because I like its slimness.
I am not trying to convince anybody anyway. I used the first person in every sentence because I am talking about MY personal criteria.


PS. The SII doesn't look that much like an iPhone, but the Samsung skin really looks like iOS. And I don't get why they do that, because it's less user-friendly than LG's 95%-stock-Android-UI or HTC's Sense UI.

How is Touchwiz that similar to iOs? Because you scroll through apps sideways? Sweet jesus, call the Android police. In any case, the grid view is completely customizable, much more in Touchwiz than in any other OS.

The reason people are getting on your case, lewton, isn't because you don't care for the SII. There is enough demand for the device, it'll do fine. It's just your reasons seem to be completely arbitrary and you've already had to backpedal on most of them.

As long as it pisses of Apple, I'm happy to see it doing fine.
I just won't buy it.

And I am not backpedaling on anything I wrote.
It does look like an iPhone quite a bit and the UI looks like iOS a lot more than a bit. And I don't get why they had to reduce the number of buttons to 3 given that Google recommends 4. I mean, call me mistrustful if you want, that it gives me the impression they didn't know how to design a device with 4 buttons, so they copied the central one from Apple and added one on each side.

So back to the SII. One thing I must give Samsung kudos for is Kies Air. Having access to your entire phone wirelessly through your internet browser is just so damn nifty. Yesterday I put the browser screen on my TV to show my brother Kies Air, then I kept it running in the background and let him play around with my phone. He took a photo to test the camera, and I just refreshed the browser screen and the new photo instantly appeared on the browser screen. It was hilarious when he went, "Wait, what's that, is that the photo I just took on the TV? "

Totally agree, I only used DoubleTwist once when I was trying to convert videos to play on Android, then I found the RockPlayer app which has so far played everything straight from the PC. I much prefer drag n drop, more so after I spent a few hours setting up my g/fs itouch just to get one song she wanted on it when we were away from her home pc

'oh god we have do download 77mb of itunes, ok ok I'll go back to the internet cafe and get it'
'ok got it, I'll install it, right wheres your itouch', wtf we have to authorise it now, ok ok I'll go back to the internet cafe and authorise it'
'what? we have to copy all your music off the itouch first? why? ok ok, whats it doing? stop, why are you deleting songs you $#!!ing piece of #@¦$'

cue a thoughtful and as it turns out, wide ranging, discussion on buying responsibilities in the relationship viz a vis fabric versus electronics.