Samsung Galaxy S II Skyrocket 4G Android Phone, Black (AT&T)

Fast. Complicated. Eats megabytes for breakfast. January 9, 2012

Reviewer:  Robert Felice  (Silicon Valley Boy) -

I've checked out what other reviewers have had to say about this phone, and find myself in agreement with most of them.

The phone is amazing.

Here's what else you need to know:
a) data plan
b) apps
c) user manual

Data Plan: you will need a separate data plan for the phone. My wife has an iPhone 3G, with an unlimited data plan from AT&T. But that phone doesn't use the 4G LTE network. AT&T is slowing building out its 4G LTE network, and it may not be available in your area. You have to buy a plan whether or not you currently have 4G LTE coverage. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that 4G LTE was available in my area, even though the official AT&T coverage map didn't include it.

I bought a 200 megabyte per month plan. It seemed like a lot of bytes. Then I started using my phone. Trulia has a great app that lets you find the houses for sale in whatever neighborhood you find yourself in. You can see the entire listing, just like you can at home on your computer. You can even download pictures (bad idea!) Use an app like this, and the megabytes go down the drain. I went through 30 megabytes in the first 6 days of my billing cycle.

So, unless you sprang for an unlimited data plan, I wouldn't recommend streaming movies, or even your music, off the web. And keep an eye on your usage. You can become a data how a lot faster than you might imagine!

Apps: there's a ton of apps available from the Android store, and Amazon has done a pretty amazing job of providing apps for the phone on their site as well.

So far, so good. The problem is that AT&T had added a number of their own apps, each of which has a low-cost or entirely free alternative. But none of the AT&T apps can be removed. They are part of the read-only memory on the phone, and you can't delete them without "rooting" your phone. This isn't a deal breaker for people with some technical smarts (and who aren't afraid to risk turning a $600 phone into a brick), but for most of us, you are stuck with these things.

Very annoying. And, quite expensive. For example, AT&T offers Family Map (a "find my phone" service) $10 a month. You can find a 99¢ alternative on the Amazon app store.

Yes, the other Carriers do this, too. That doesn't make it right.

User Manual: This is a complicated device. It comes with a 20 page Quick Start Guide, and nothing more. I'd like to say the Quick Start Guide covers all the basics, but it doesn't tell you how to answer an incoming call. I hear you saying to yourself, "How hard can that be? When the phone sees an incoming call, it displays the standard green and red buttons. You press the green one to answer the call, or the red one to send the call to Voice Mail."

If only it were that easy. To answer a call, you have to "swipe" your finger from the green button across the screen towards the red one. You can push the green button repeatedly, but you will never answer your call.

If you dig around on the web long enough, you will find the missing manual for this phone (hint: it's on the Samsung web site). Answering a call is detailed on page 42 (Chapter 3, Call Functions). I think there is something fundamentally wrong with the industry when one of a product's two main functions is buried about one fifth of the way into the User Manual.

To be fair, the Quick Start Guide does provide a link to AT&T's excellent Tutorials web page. I recommend you go there as soon as you have set up your phone. The interactive tutorials are short and the list of topics is comprehensive. It will take you some time to work through all of them, but it will be worth it.

In conclusion, there are two types of cell phone users: those who upgrade regularly, and those who don't get a new phone until they either lose their old one or it breaks. I am in the second category. I only upgraded to this phone when my trusty Treo 680 finally bit the bullet. I don't know when "swipe to answer a call" became such a ubiquitous gesture that it didn't need to be explained, but as far as I am concerned, this topic really belongs in the Quick Start Guie.

I think you will enjoy this phone. It's thin, light, and packs a ton of features. Read up on managing your battery life (hint: turn off GPS and Bluetooth when you don't need those services, and invest in a car charger). Also, watch those megabytes (another hint: use your home or a public WiFi network whenever you can, because data transferred over a Wi-Fi connection doesn't count toward your wireless data plan).

Great Phone November 11, 2011

Reviewer:  Eliseo Roman  (Hawthorne, Ca) -

This is a great phone, I have owned it for 3 days now and i really like it. The build quality is great, even though it is plastic. The phone itself looks beautiful and feels great, the weight is also good it doesn't feel to light or to heavy. The screen is one of the best ive seen on any phone. Everything cant be perfect though.

I am not in a lte market so i cant comment on that aspect. As far as the phone goes you do have to keep a couple of things in mind. The phone has a 4.5 inch screen, although this sounds great it has some obvious draw backs. With the screen being so big one of the draw backs is size. It is not a comfortable phone to carry around and putting it in you're pocket as well as pulling it out can be awkward. I wear slim jeans and this has become an annoyance. When you talk on it you notice the size, it feels like holding a scientific calculator to you're ear.

The second draw back is once again the screen size. This being 4.5 inches it takes up more juice than some of the more standard sizes. I am currently experimenting with ways to reduce battery drain but still end up with a dead phone by the time i go to bed (I am worried about the days i go out and stay up past 11). Another thing that I am concerned about when it comes to battery life is the lte antenna. I am pretty sure lte takes up more battery life than standard hspa or hspa+, and I am a little upset that this phone does not have a switch to turn of the lte antenna. Also unlike most android phones i have used before you do not have the option to switch to 2g networks only, there is probably a work-around for this via the android market but i haven't bothered.

I will not comment on the UI because i find that irrelevant on an android phone. Some people complain about Touch wiz but i find that android has workarounds for any annoyances. I use Launcher pro on all my android phones because of the heavy customization that i am able to do. Touch Wiz has not hindered me at all.

Regardless of these complaints witch i consider to be minor, i love this phone. I am looking into purchasing an extra battery, this is due to my forgetfulness though. I sometimes fall a sleep and forget to charge my phone and i have always owned extra batteries for all my phones.

Oh and one last note, I love the camera on this phone. I find that it is really quick and there is plenty of settings. Recording video is also excellent.

Review for Samsung Skyrocket November 11, 2011

Reviewer:  Tech Gadget geek "gadget testing geek"  (Chicago, IL USA) -

I will start with the bad things first:

Price: I initially bought it from Amazon wireless and they said it won't be delivered until December, so I canceled my order and went with ATT premier store and paid full price on the phone. It is like 70 dollars more.

Battery: I took it off the charger at 9am today, right now it is almost 2pm and I am at 63%, I did used Google Navigation (while charging in the car). And mostly light browsing, power saving mode seems to help a lot, with 60 percent it can last me till the end of the day with almost 5% left. (Tested that yesterday) So battery life is not great but given it is an LTE phone with 4.5 inch screen, I would say this is 50/50.

Accessories: Lack of accessories for now, you might want to get a good case for this considering it is a very delicate and expensive phone, you don't want to test the durability yourself.

And no HD screen. & ATT customer service, ATT wouldn't give me the unlock code even if I paid the full price (there's way around it online)

Good things:
4.5 inch screen: after you play with this for awhile and go back to 4.3 or 4 inch screens, don't even think about that. It is really not too big in my opinion, keeping it in my jean's front pocket is not a problem at all, I was using captivate before and this feels pretty much the same in the pocket.

Application speed: Not much FC, the phone is really smooth so far, hopefully it will stay this way through out the lifespan.

Browsing speed: The rendering is so fast (Compared to Captivate, probably other devices as well but this is fast)

LTE speed(Chicago) + GPS: Amazing, using google navigation is near instant lock on, no loosing signal so far.

TouchWiz 4: compared to the previous touch wiz, I think this is more refined and it's definitely a plus.

Overall: Good buy if you are in the LTE market, I was worried about all the benchmark about the processor, but seriously it doesn't matter at all to regular consumer. For T-mobile users, I believe their Samsung Galaxy S2 Hercules is pretty much the same phone lacking of LTE, but it is on the 42Mbps HSPA+ network instead of the LTE, pretty much the same phone, even same battery (As noted on samsung webpage when you are shopping for accessories)

Update: Forgot to mention that the headphone that came along was quite decent.

Update 11/22/2011: I am getting random shutdown issues, I am not sure if this is a problem with the phone or if this is GB 2.3.5 issue. Is anyone else getting this problem?

Fastest, best looking, 4G Android I've ever owned November 28, 2011

Reviewer:  Pixiegirl19 

I've had this phone one week, and am in love with it. The samsung galaxy SII skyrocket the best phone I've ever owned. While AT&T is still installing LTE in our area,(greater Philly suburbs in NJ) the HSPA+ backhaul speeds, are still up to 5 times faster I got 5326(down)&1455(up) with mobile on, and I got speeds close to my Comcast broadband in downtown DC @19K(down)& 4K(up), so I know what the phone is capable of when LTE is finally deployed here.

Okay here is what I really like about this phone. The 8 megapixel camera takes crystal clear pictures with autofocus, and the front facing camera takes very good pictures using the spot button on the touch screen. My only complaint with the camera part is that there is not an exterior button that allows you to shoot pictures , I'm not sure what samsung was thinking there. As far as running programs is concerned there is a whole lot of memory for apps to run (1GB) and this phone blazes through multitasking, with the dual-core 1.5GHz processor. I've had 34 apps running in the background, and could still play the need for speed shift that comes with. The built in 16GB USB memory is nice as the total amount with my 32GB micro SD put it at about 45gb's total.
I'm hopeful a firmware update by Samsung will allow 64GB cards to be compatible when they come out, but the USB out to storage mode is great if you already have a 64-128GB USB stick, like my 128GB corsair GTR , that uses hardly any battery when on the train to DC from Philly, and gives me plenty of storage for movies, music, apps, and games, that have fairly decent storage sizes...

I was able to update to Android 2.3.6 as soon as I got the phone setup. AT&T has this great app ready2go, that allows you to quickly setup all your social accounts from , then everything is transferred to the phone, and you are ready to go.

Games are quick and look great, while I would have appreciated, a slightly better resolution for the skyrocket, as the screen is larger everything looks deeply colorful, and words from webpages and e-books are easy on the eyes, and very enjoyable. The audio is second to none, with 5.1 surround coming out the 3.5mm speaker jack, and of course, 1080p with 5.1 surround out via the USB to HDMI adapters available.
I would have appreciated stereo speakers withim this, but the speaker does sound good on it's own.

Pros:
Fast
Light
Thin
Well made
Big screen
Multitasking
Great looking screen colors

Cons:
No camera button on exterior
No Bluetooth 5.1 audio (however I don't know of a phone yet with this ability)

P.M.
I only found one case which was considered "protective" in my opinion. The Argos SGP
leather case, folds open, and keeps the screen protected when not in use, and is the best looking for men or women, in my opinion. I had to cut a notch in the area that folds over the bottom to charge the phone when closed. I used a light yellow colored thread, made for sewing leather to reinforce the opening I'd created, then a paperclip held the notch open while the matte black oil-base paint dried on the exposed , to seal out up..

Good Phone bad Bluetooth March 18, 2012

Reviewer:  Owner  (SC, USA) -

I really like how powerful this phone is. Unlike some others, I haven't had any problems with battery life. One charge at night while I'm sleeping and it is good until bed time the next night. My biggest complaint is the Bluetooth. I have had a Plantronics Voyager Pro headset for about 3 years now and it is the best headset I have ever owned. Unfortunately, Samsung seems to not support any headsets besides theirs real well and it is a crap shoot whether or not you can get the voice dial function to work with your headset. I am not the only one having this problem, there are complaints on all of the message boards about this issue. Samsung's tech support is virtually useless. They told me my phone doesn't even support Bluetooth when it clearly does, they have told others that it only works with Samsung headsets, they have told others that voice dial was not included with the phone. The LTE network is blazing fast, like others it isn't officially in my area, but WOW.

I do have trouble reading the screen in direct sunlight. Also the AT&T bloatware was horrible, and with no way to uninstall it, it just gets ridiculous.

So in conclusion:

PROS:

Processing Power
Large Screen
Network Speeds
High Def Media and Cameras

Cons:
Poor sunlight visibility
Poor Bluetooth compatibility