Samsung Galaxy S II Plus review: Golden oldie

7. Still image and video camera quality

Great 8MP camera

The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus comes with the same 8MP camera as the Galaxy S II and is able to capture photos at a maximum resolution of 3264 x 2448 pixels. It has an LED flash to assist it in low lighting conditions.

The interface is virtually the same as on the Galaxy S III. On the right there's the still camera / camcorder switch, a virtual shutter key and the gallery shortcut (which is a thumbnail of the last photo taken).

On the left, you get several controls and the good news is that you can pick any four shortcuts to put there - its let you easily have all frequently used features just a tap away.

The fifth shortcut always points to Settings. You can also move the icons around to your liking.

The camera interface

The Galxy S II Plus has an extensive set of features: touch focus, smile shot, continuous shot, panorama mode and can snap photos during video recording (but at only 720p resolution, basically a frame from the video). What's missing is HDR.

The actual images are among the nicer we've seen from 8MP snappers. The noise reduction isn't too aggressive and the fine detail is mostly intact. Colors are very accurate (with just a hint of oversaturation) and the dynamic range is good.

Samsung Galaxy S II Plus camera samples

Photo quality comparison

The Samsung Galaxy S II Plus has plenty of 8MP shooters to compete with in our Photo compare tool. The tools page gives you info on what to look out for.

Samsung Galaxy S II Plus in our Photo compare tool

1080p video recording is one of the best around

The camcorder interface of the Galaxy S II Plus is almost the same as the still camera's - you get the same customizable panel on the left with five shortcuts.

Camcorder interface

The image quality is very pleasant, with no noise or compression artifacts. There are some jaggies on diagonal lines and oversharpening halos (which you can see most clearly in our ISO chart below), the color reproduction is top notch, and the videos are smooth and better than most other 1080p-capable midrangers we've seen.

1080p videos are shot @ 30fps and are stored in MP4 files with 17Mbps overall bitrate and mono sound at 128Kbps / 48kHz. Because the camera uses the center of the sensor for 1080p recording, there is a slight zoom applied that may take some getting used to. There's also no zoom capability available in 1080p mode.