Subzero test shows that the Galaxy S II and cheapo Nokias are your best bet when chasing The Thing

The Finns are known for many other things but Nokia, and one of them is the freezing temps that greet you when you step foot in the country. With the new smartphone trends, the folks in Finland not only need gloves that are made to operate capacitive touchscreens, but also handsets that keep on ticking long after your car fuel filter froze despite all the additives you put in the tank.

Therefore they subjected a number of phones to subzero temperatures, and the results are pretty interesting. While we would expect entry level Nokias with their fairly small displays, and the build quality of the Finns to survive the lowest temperatures, it was pretty revealing to see the Samsung Galaxy S II being a close second, along with the Samsung Galaxy Xcover, which is a rugged phone by design.

The Galaxy S II needed the temperature to drop to -22 Farhenheit (-30 Celsius) to give up the ghost completely, while the iPhone 4S, for example, started going temperamental at 23 Farhenheit (-5 Celsius) and stopped working at 14 Farhenheit (-10 Celsius).

The issue is, of course, mostly with the phones' batteries rather than any other component, since the internal resistance increases immensely in low temps, so at some point the phone just reads the battery as empty and shuts down. The AMOLED display technology also proved superior to LCD in the freezing aspect, thanks to the simple facts that it uses organic diodes to emit light, while the liquid crystals tended to react slower and increase ghosting.

via MacWorld