[FAQ] GT-i9100 Galaxy S II FAQ thread

soraxd · Apr 22, 2011

hey everyone, so obviously this is a FAQ thread, which means if youre -Qing it it, i should be 'FA-ing it'? ..lol that sounded corny, but you get the idea. please feel free to ask whatever in here, or suggest something youd like to see here, or add something you think shouldve been here already, best way to get something added is to PM me. lalala

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GT- i9100 Galaxy S II FAQ

Release Dates:
Factory Model: May 1st
UK: May 1st
US: Q3

Where to Buy:
MobileCityOnline
Clove

i9100 vs i9103
both of these are variants of the Galaxy S II, to be respectively released in different regions, however key differences will will include:
i9100: Super AMOLED Plus screen, 1.2 GHz Dualcore Exynos processor
i9103: alternate screen (possibly SLCD, but yet to be confirmed), 1.0 GHz Dualcore Tegra 2 processor
List of Regions for Each Variant: INFORMATION NEEDED

Technical Specifications:
The Galaxy S II features a 480 x 800 pixels, 4.27 inch screen, 1.2 GHz Dualcore Exynos processor, 8MP camera with LED flash capable of 1080p/30fps video recording and playback in .MP4 format, 16GB or 32GB internal storage, with a 1650MAh Li-Ion battery. (full technical specifications can be found here)

What File System Will the Galaxy S II use?
EXT4

Does the Galaxy S II have Capped FPS like the Galaxy S I?
Yes, the Galaxy S II has its FPS capped at 60fps because of Vsync.

Hows the GPS on the Galaxy S II?
"Great!" check it out for yourself Picture, Video1, Video2

Does the Galaxy S II have a Notification LED?
unfortunately no, it doesnt, but the app 'BLN' has been worked with so that the Menu and Back LED buttons work on certain kernels, with certain messaging apps, such as Handcent.
one kernel that has BLN support is Ninphetamine

Is the Bootloader Locked?
No, it is not locked

Is it possible to run Nvidia Tegra Zone games on Galaxy S 2?
Yes, with the creation of Chainfire3D

Does having a Dualcore Processor in my phone use more battery than a Single Core?
No, on the contrary, having two processors do half the work to complete a single task requires less energy than a single core doing all of the work, it also keeps the temp of your phone down, since neither processor are overworked.

What Media Formats/Codec will the Galaxy S II support out of the box?
Video: MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263/H.264 AVC/VP8/3GPP/VP8/VC-1/WebM
Audio: MP3, OGG, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB/AMR-WB, WMA, WAV, MID, AC3, IMY, FLAC, XMF
Image JPEG/GIF/PNG/BMP/WBMP/AGIF

Will the Galaxy S II have NFC?
no, the i9100 variant will not, however a NFC enabled MicroSD card may be released to support NFC

Is there root for the Galaxy S II?
yes there is! a swell dev by the name of Chainfire made it, heres a link. you can also find it included in most Custom Roms

Cant i just use superoneclick, or an update.zip to root?
at the moment no, but as more people start to get this phone, development will start to pick up

Will the Galaxy S II get a Voodoo Kernel?
No, supercurio, Mr. Voodoo himself, said that he doesnt see any room for improvement on this phone =/

My Galaxy S II is locked to a network, how can i unlock it?
theres an app for that, and here it is

Is there a cyanogenmod available for the Galaxy S II?
yes here it is

What about MIUI
yep, right here

How can i backup my apps, or app/game save datas?
Titanium Backup can do all of this, its free and available in the market

I dont know much about whats available, can you recommend some cool mods?
Long press volume buttons to skip songs
Calls Recording
google talk with video calling over 3g (its just an app you install, nothing manual)

rwc3b · Apr 22, 2011

I'll bite.

This will be my first Android, coming from an iPhone. I'm probably going to get a bunch of, "use the search function" but is there a comprehensive resource on rooting and roms and such for newbies? Like a wiki or something?

I see there are threads with thousands of posts and that makes it pretty damn daunting to try and sift through the useful info. Plus, I'm married so my wife won't allow me to sit at the computer and do hours upon hours of research.

soraxd · Apr 22, 2011

rwc3b said:
I'll bite.

This will be my first Android, coming from an iPhone. I'm probably going to get a bunch of, "use the search function" but is there a comprehensive resource on rooting and roms and such for newbies? Like a wiki or something?

I see there are threads with thousands of posts and that makes it pretty damn daunting to try and sift through the useful info. Plus, I'm married so my wife won't allow me to sit at the computer and do hours upon hours of research.

well, i wont post this in the actual FAQ, because the root for the Galaxy SII isnt available yet (expect it a day or two after the phone gets released), but this is the root method for the galaxy s 1. the method will be the exact same, however the file will be different. this is the guide i wrote back when the galaxy s1 came out, i tried to make it as simple as possible, so take a look

http://samsunggalaxysforums.com/showthread.php/365-Detailed-guide-on-rooting-the-Galaxy-S

nikzDHD · Apr 22, 2011

My biggest question which DAC will this phone have, no conclusive answers. Posts on twitter state it may be a Yamaha dac and not a Wolfson, now that review units are popping up.any way of finding out without tearing the phone down, if only ifixit can get hold of one!

touness69 · Apr 22, 2011

Great idea mate !

So first you can go on and make the already answered question to begin like
- Will I need a lagfix ? answer : no because it will use an ext4 file system (the one that is already used for those lagfixes)
- something about bootloader and what supercurio has still confirmed
- why it is getting less fps than Tegra 2 in some benchmarks ? answer because samsung has capped the the fps count to 60 for battery saving and because it is useless to go further
etc etc

DesktopMan · Apr 22, 2011

The model number is actually i9100. i9000 is the Galaxy S.

I can't wait for some detailed tests on media playback. Maybe we should make a table with containers, codecs and codec settings and fill in as people do the testing? Audio formats are also interesting. Hoping for DTS but doubt it.

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

touness69 said:
Great idea mate !

So first you can go on and make the already answered question to begin like
- Will I need a lagfix ? answer : no because it will use an ext4 file system (the one that is already used for those lagfixes)
- something about bootloader and what supercurio has still confirmed
- why it is getting less fps than Tegra 2 in some benchmarks ? answer because samsung has capped the the fps count to 60 for battery saving and because it is useless to go further
etc etc

60 FPS Cap is because of Vsync right?

And I think SLCD never was confirmed on Galaxy S2, though Tegra with Super Amoled Plus was confirmed(in Hong Kong, link http://xdaforums.com/showpost.php?p=12935842&postcount=13).

I would add those questions:

Is it possible to run Tegra-powered games(from Nvidia Tegra zone) on Exynos Galaxy S 2?
No, but most have an non-Tegra alternative.

Is the bootloader locked?
No it isn't.

Is there a rotation animation in browser?
No, only pre-production devices got them

Is dual-core going to decrease battery life?
No, semi-conducters gets smallers, therefore battery life improves. It also improves the repartition of tasks on the two cores(SMP) so they will do the same task in less time.

And that big screen, is that not going to decrease battery life?
Samsung uses a new technology for his screens, called Super Amoled Plus. It is better than Super Amoled.

Which video-codecs does it support natively?
MPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV, DivX, Xvid, VC-1

Which music-codecs does it supports natively?
MP3, OGG, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WMA, WAV, MID, AC3, IMY, FLAC, XMF

Is this the best phone ever?
Yes it is.

apwhitelaw · Apr 23, 2011

Another GPS test by the same guy, this time he does it indoors, and it still works pretty well. My backflip never gets a GPS signal unless I'm outdoors with nothing to get in the way.

DesktopMan · Apr 23, 2011

EleCtrOx666 said:
60 FPS Cap is because of Vsync right?
Which video-codecs does it support natively?
MPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV, DivX, Xvid, VC-1

Which music-codecs does it supports natively?
MP3, OGG, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WMA, WAV, MID, AC3, IMY, FLAC, XMF

Samsung's list says nothing about containers or bitrates/encoding features, so that's the testing part

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

Yeah you're right but I said "Codecs" explicitely in the question. Though audio containers are listed(OGG is one). Video containers doesn't seem to be listed though(I don't see MKV :/). "bitrates/encoding features" are not listed.

soraxd · Apr 23, 2011

EleCtrOx666 said:
Which video-codecs does it support natively?
MPEG4, H.264, H.263, WMV, DivX, Xvid, VC-1

Which music-codecs does it supports natively?
MP3, OGG, AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, WMA, WAV, MID, AC3, IMY, FLAC, XMF

is this information correct?

ive only found
MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC

can you share where you got the rest of this information?

DesktopMan · Apr 23, 2011

EleCtrOx666 said:
Yeah you're right but I said "Codecs" explicitely in the question. Though containers are listed(OGG is one). Video containers doesn't seem to be listed though(I don't see MKV :/). "bitrates/encoding features" are not listed.

Yeh. Though by ogg they likely mean vorbis, as in the audio codec. (Since no other containers are listed.) Note, the faq should at least list containers separately. Right now mp4 is listed as a codec.

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

soraxd said:
is this information correct?

ive only found
MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC

can you share where you got the rest of this information?

From the official site simply

http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys2/html/specification.html

touness69 · Apr 23, 2011

for the media part you should complete those codecs with some formats in order to understand that it reads also .mkv files like a charm, like that :

Video

HD Video Player & Recorder 1080p @ 30fps
codec: DivX, XviD, MPEG4, H.263, H.264, WMV, VC-1
format: 3gp(mp4), AVI(divx), MKV, FLV, H.263Sorenson

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

soraxd said:
is this information correct?

ive only found
MP4/DivX/XviD/WMV/H.264/H.263
- MP3/WAV/eAAC+/AC3/FLAC

can you share where you got the rest of this information?

And could you please edit the reason for cap @ 60 Fps ? It's because of Vsync not battery life.
And also, like I already said, SLCD version is not going to exist, only Super Amoled + With either Tegra or Exynos.

El Salvador · Apr 23, 2011

EleCtrOx666 said:
Is there a rotation animation in browser?
No, only pre-production devices got them

Are you sure about this? The videos I saw with browser rotation animation were looking buttersmooth and I don't see a reason why Samsung shouldn't use this in their production models.

touness69 · Apr 23, 2011

EleCtrOx666 said:
And could you please edit the reason for cap @ 60 Fps ? It's because of Vsync not battery life.

Well that's still not confirmed, the original GS were capped at 56fps supposedy for V-sync too but the refresh rate of the screen is exactly the same as GSII 60Hz
And even if it is for V-sync, the question is still why they chose V-sync unlike Lg with it's O2X ? then you go back to that "battery life" efficiency

EleCtrOx666 said:
And also, like I already said, SLCD version is not going to exist, only Super Amoled + With either Tegra or Exynos.

oh ok
And what do you do to the "* May not be applicable in some regions" near the "Super AMOLED Plus" specification on the Official GSII website eh ?

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

El Salvador said:
Are you sure about this? The videos I saw with browser rotation animation were looking buttersmooth and I don't see a reason why Samsung shouldn't use this in their production models.

I see a reason : patents. It's really hot news last time, Apple sueing Samsung.

And I have seen no Galaxy S2 retail version w/ browser rotation.

Though I really hope it will come :/.

EleCtrOx666 · Apr 23, 2011

touness69 said:
Well that's still not confirmed, the original GS were capped at 56fps supposedy for V-sync too but the refresh rate of the screen is exactly the same as GSII 60Hz
And even if it is for V-sync, the question is still why they chose V-sync unlike Lg with it's O2X ? then you go back too that "battery life" efficiency

Vsync is not only for battery life, it can help but it also prevent tearing. So it's not limited to "battery life", instead "Vsync" is a way better explanation.

And what do you do to the "* May not be applicable in some regions" near the "Super AMOLED Plus" specification on the Official GSII website eh ?

It was never confirmed to be SLCD, though it is confirmed that Tegra in Korea will have Super Amoled Plus(well see message on page 1).

So, you can't confirm one model will be SLCD, AMOLED, Super Amoled, IPS LCD, .... or none of those and simply Super Amoled Plus.

But most probably Super Amoled Plus, since it's confirmed for Korea w/ Tegra.

//Sorry for double post

soraxd · Apr 23, 2011

wow, comments are coming in fast, great! ill try to keep up

how should i list codecs and formats? should i list them as they appear on samsungs site
http://www.samsung.com/global/microsite/galaxys2/html/specification.html

or should i list them as they appear on android's developer site
http://developer.android.com/guide/appendix/media-formats.html

the thing is, the developer site isnt complete, because the galaxy s has added formats not found in basic android

[FAQ] GT-i9100 Galaxy S II FAQ thread

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