I'll be comparing the international version of Samsung Galaxy S II, also known as SGH-i9100, against all the countless 480x800 Chinese barphones that are twice as cheap. Why so old? Well, this phone just feels the most balanced to me. Maybe my hand is too small, I dunno.
There are several kinds of reasons, different in nature, why the SGS2 is better. Yes, it is going to be a one-way beating scene. No, wait, sometimes I will be beating both sides, because that is something rarely done in all those pre-paid reviews.
Component Technologies
These have the more and less subtle differences.
build
SGS2: built disfiguringly and annoyingly slim out-of-the-box, which you will want to fix by buying spare 2000 mAh batteries for around $25 each. Sprayed contacts on its framing will wear out in several years, depending on the environment conditions.Chinaphone: Chinese quality build! Buy online for a hit or miss venture — you know, like a Russian roulette, only with more hits in the barrel. Granted, it will not really last for decades, either. Not that you needed that, anyway. You needed a flash for your camera, though; make sure your phone of choice really has one.
screen
SGS2: SuperAMOLED Plus screen. Undistorted visibility angle approaches 180° with slight changes of colour.Pros:
The darker the pixel, the less energy it consumes; ergo, a black pixel consumes zero energy.
This technology survives -20℃ without losing functionality.
Cons:
The darker shades of gray turn out somewhat coloured on AMOLED.
Susceptible to polarisation. Seriously, the Super AMOLED Plus can be faded completely with a polarisation filter. Well, it is more of a "wut?" than of a real con.
Chinaphone: TN screen, the cheapest, with horrible viewing angles, that even make the image different for each of your two eyes, for chrissake; not worth considering.
IPS screen, dirt cheap these days, with very decent viewing angles.
Pros:
The colours are usually photography-quality.
A bit brighter than the SGS2 in normal use.
Cons:
Starts losing colours a lot earlier than the SuperAMOLED Plus as you increase the viewing angle.
The brighter the backlight, the more energy it consumes.
Glitches and even turns off at low temperatures; most start bugging out at a meager -5℃.
May feature high frequency flickering that you catch with a corner of an eye — or directly.
TL;DR: SuperAMOLED Plus beats IPS hands down, unless you are overly colour-irritable.
CPU, GPS
SGS2: Samsung's own Exynos 4 CPU. Somewhat prone to overheating when overclocking. No GLONASS.Chinaphone: MTK6577 CPU most commonly. Usually its GPS module cannot do the cold launch while you are moving. Like on a train, where you won't be able to tell where you are until the train stops. Oh, and no GLONASS.
sensors
SGS2: as far as the great piece of testing software Elixir 2 is concerned, the only two sensors it has and the phone has not are for pressure and humidity.Chinaphone: only two or three sensors will work, and a couple of those upside down.
Durability, Maintenance
Whenever you drop or in another way abuse your phone, it understandably gets injured in different ways. You can either prevent this to some extent by using a special casing, or deal with it by tolerating, enduring, and replacing the parts FUBAR.For the least case-protectable part, the glass in the front, the SGS2 reigns over the Chinaphones by rule of its Gorilla Glass. I have not actually tested exactly how this is more durable than your usual piece of display glass, but at least it seems to be actually thicker in SGS2, while preserving the capacitive sensitivity.
If you want to prevent damage to the other parts of your phone, the more popular the phone was, the more options for the casing. Let us just say that the SGS2 really hit the market, it shows.
But you will not find an appropriate shock-proof case for your Chinese phone of choice. Take into account the positioning of the physical buttons, the microphone(s), the camera, etc. It would be easier to make one yourself than to find one for a Chinese phone that you would believe to fit.
(Funny aside: I had bought the Ballistic case for my SGS2, but it turned out to be for another submodel, not the i9100. So I had to knife another hole in it for the secondary mic, and there is a hole in the corner that does not seem to lead to anything at all.)
If you were too hapless and mutilated your phone's corner when it just jumped out of your pocket on its own, you will want to buy a replacement bit. If you will not, just ignore this passage, but you simply won't be able to fix your Chinese phone. SGS2 is still supplied with repair parts at e-shops.
Software Support
You can run into two kinds of problems with "Android software meets phone" scenarios: either it will try recognising your phone for its binary-only libraries, or Google Play Store will consider your phone, country, language, and face unworthy of the noblesse of a certain piece of software you wanted to install. Both situations will imply a direct correlation between how popular your phone is and how probable it is for you to install this certain something.Mostly it is all the Japanese software that does it, because Japanese programmers prefer to whitelist their app compatibility just in case, while others rely (in vain) on sanity of the people who rank their apps 1/5 just because it will not run on their third-rate phones. I have never faced this sort of problem with any other apps — except the country inconsistency, but you know it can be sorted out on your side with a bit of effort.
A bit of effort. The exact amount of it grows in a very real, conceivable, annoying manner when you are getting yourself a Chinandroid. Suffice it to say that when I went to the (then) Google Market with my new SGS2, I felt a real excitement that could be phrased like this: "Goodness, All These Apps Actually Install And Run!"
Community
As is the case with any piece of complex software running Linux, Java, and stuff, you will often find yourself wondering whether this particular weirdness of functionality can be avoided somehow. This includes FCs, slowdowns, and badly designed UIs.All these adware and bloatware-ridden, bulky, iffy interfaces and solutions that brands tend to produce are a common thing. Samsung is no better than the Chinese makers in this. Say, there is a hole in the SGS2's security that allows a completely random site to call somewhere from your phone. A Chinese phone may have Touchpal as the system keyboard, and you never learn that more comprehensive options exist. Fun times.
You are not the only one to find trouble like that, so on xda-developers.com forums you will find plenty of ready-made solutions people in the community contribute. The most efficient and promising are the rooting instructions and the customised ROMs that you can flash to replace your Android completely without ever turning back. Well, you can turn back, in fact, and flash a brand ROM, but there is no real need. And rooting is almost a requirement, anyway.
For an SGS2, there are enough different ROMs for you to die the death of Buridan's ass. Surely enough, it is supported by one of the most prominent modifications, CyanogenMod. Simplistic and snappy, designed the Google-intended way, it is always on the bleeding edge of the ever-evolving Android OS in its nightly builds. The security holes get patched, the development is transparent, and you can even affect it.
As for a Chinaphone, there normally is a small bunch of enthusiasts that mod its firmware. Wait, that came out wrong. There is a small bunch of enthusiasts that buy this precise phone, that you have chosen out of thousands of almost-identical clones on eBay, or AliExpress, or whatever. Because of said clone army, the community will be bad, even if it were a really good phone, running on a Snapdragon or even Exynos. Moreover, on Windows, you would necessarily have major trouble finding an interface driver for your Chinese phone, because all the devices have unique vendor IDs.
Bottom Line
I want a Chinese phonedesigned exactly like a popular phone, down to its internal casing build
featuring a Gorilla Glass and two microphones
with a processor that isn't MTK or RC
with all the motion and position sensors that would work like in i9100
CyanogenMod-supported.
Come on, Chinese geniuses, you can do it!
