0 Samsung Galaxy S II (U.S. Cellular)

The Samsung Galaxy S II remains one of the top Android phones available. In a market that sees a new hot smartphone come and go every few weeks, that's an impressive feat. The Samsung Galaxy S II has already taken the major carriers by storm, so it's nice to see it make its way over to U.S. Cellular. And the Galaxy S II remains just as potent as ever—it's every bit as fast and beautiful as before. But U.S. Cellular will soon be launching a 4G LTE network, and the Galaxy S II isn't a 4G phone.

Physical Design, Call Quality, and Network
Slim, sleek, and still super gorgeous, the Galaxy S II measures 5.1 by 2.7 by .4 inches (HWD) and weighs 4.8 ounces. It's a large black slab, made entirely of plastic with a lightly textured back panel, which feels solid and well built. The phone is comfortable to hold, but beware: With my medium-sized mitts, the phone is too large for me to hold in one hand and drag down the notifications bar with my thumb. Most of that size is put to good use in the beautiful, 4.52-inch, 800-by-480 Super AMOLED Plus display. This is lower resolution than the 960-by-540 display on the Motorola Electrify, but Super AMOLED Plus looks richer, and lacks the PenTile layout that makes the Electrify appear somewhat fuzzy.

The Galaxy S II is a good voice phone on U.S. Cellular. Reception is solid, and calls sound terrific in the phone's earpiece—full, clear, and natural, with plenty of punch and volume. The speakerphone also sounds good and is just loud enough to use outdoors. Calls made with the phone sound clear, though voices can have a slightly muted, robotic quality in the earpiece. I had no trouble connecting to a Jawbone Era Bluetooth headset and calls sounded great. Samsung uses the powerful Vlingo app for voice dialing here instead of the usual Android option. It allows you to dictate texts messages and issue other commands by voice, though it sometimes had trouble connecting me to the names in my address book. Battery life was good, at 6 hours and 49 minutes of talk time.

The phone is a dual-band EV-DO Rev. A (850/1900 MHz) device with 802.11 a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. There's no 4G LTE support, which makes sense right now, since U.S. Cellular has yet to officially launch its 4G network. But LTE is coming, likely at some point within the next month, and we expect it to be significantly faster than the carrier's current 3G network.

Processor and Apps
The Galaxy S II is powered by Samsung's 1.2GHz dual-core Exynos processor, which makes for very fast performance. The phone easily bested the benchmark scores set by the Motorola Electrify, U.S. Cellular's other dual-core option, although the Electrify has a higher screen resolution. Still, the Galaxy S II should have no problem running any app or game you can think of.

Android 2.3.6 (Gingerbread) is the OS currently on board here, along with Samsung's signature TouchWiz extensions. Samsung has promised an update to Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich), but hasn't committed to a timeline. In addition to TouchWiz, the Galaxy S II comes preloaded with a number of useful apps, like Kies Air, which lets you view your phone's contacts, messages, and media through a PC's Web browser. Media Hub is a downloadable music and video store, and Social Hub is a combination Facebook/Twitter client. Unlike with the other Galaxy S II's, there's a refreshing dearth of carrier-branded, undeletable bloatware. The phone should also be compatible with the 450,000+ apps available in the Google Play store.

Samsung has added a few, nifty motion-activated controls to the UI. Some of them are useful, like the ability to flip over the phone to mute the ringer. Others, like tilting the phone while touching the screen to zoom in on the browser or on images, are questionable. Samsung has also added a tiny strip at the bottom of the home and app screens that lets you slide through pages just by dragging a finger over each one.