Thoughts on SGS2?

[cbf]

• Hardware?
  dual-core, 1.2 GHz. it is more than enough for most power users.
• Build quality?
  slim, light-weight. all thumbs up for me.
• Screen?
  awesome quality, watching videos on HD is fantastic, super bright and smooth picture.
• Battery life? (I turn off WIFI, data & BT during the day).
  when i had mine straight from the package, it was doing easily one day of medium to heavy usage; wifi, games, facebook, banking etc.
• TouchQiz 4.0?
  i guess it did the job, but wasn't a big fan. nothing good old GoLauncher couldn't fix though.
• Crapware?
  this'll depend on your carrier, mine was with vodafone (unlocked using optus sim) and it had a lot. but easily removed with root access. or just flash a custom rom/stock rom without carrier branding.
• Kies - Do I have to use this or can I just go through the setup wizard and email myself a zipped vcard?
  never used kies much besides downloading drivers. with root access, you can easily flash away anything just like the SGS.
  

i've had my SGS2 for a little over 2 months and i'm loving it. flashed it a few times with custom roms (checkrom, darkyrom, spike etc) but now i'm just running a stock ICS with root. took out all the bloatware, tweaked a few things here and there and i'm getting good battery life and awesome speeds with all apps. it's a powerful smartphone and if you're keen on flashing, it'll do you wonders.

[hulkamaphone]

I've used a SGS2 for about 3 months and it's a solid device. I decided to keep my current Nexus S off contract mainly because I am waiting for the SGS3. I have to say that I was pretty impressed with the lightness, feel and size of the S2. I'm not a big fan of touchwiz so I'll probably be rooting the S3 and loading a custom rom on it... not hard to do nowadays.

[petergraham]

I had the original galaxy s .. and I've had the sgs2 for almost a year now and its a great phone. I did have to send it away once because the charging mechanism stopped working .. but they fixed it and had it back to me within 4 days so I can't complain.

Eagerly waiting to see the true specs on the sgs3 before I decide on it or the htc one x. I'll likely be going the sgs3 in the end though.