How to safely disconnect the Samsung Galaxy S2 a USB connection

When you've connected your Samsung Galaxy S2 to a PC or laptop by USB and done all the stuff with either KIES or dragged and dropped all the stuff you need to do you'll want to safely remove your phone from your computer. Usually to do this sort of thing you need to click something on your laptop however with the Galaxy S2 things are easier.

Instead of "safely" disconnecting you need to look at your phone and you will see a screen like the one on the left. If you click "Home" on the phone at this screen it will disconnect you from the PC connection. If you wish to leave the phone to charge you can leave the phone physically connected but outside of the "USB connection mode".

How to set up a tethered connection with a Samsung Galaxy S2

 Recently I did a guide on setting up a portable Wi-Fi Hotspot using the Samsung Galaxy S2. As well as using wireless technology to share the phones internet you can also use a wired connection via USB cable in a process that is known as "tethering". To start the "tethering" process you need to connect the phone to a laptop (or computer) via USB cable and make sure that the phone is still in "phone mode" (you may need to press "Home" to ensure you're not stuck in data mode).

After linking your phone and laptop you need to open the settings screen so press "Menu" on the hand set and then settings to open a screen similar to the one on the right hand side and then select the top option of "Wireless and network" which will
open up the wireless settings for the phone. In here you will need to scroll to the option entitled "Tethering and portable hotspot" (see the image on the left for guidance if you need it) and click on it.

With the USB cable connected you will notice that the USB tethering option is available to be selected (if the cable isn't connected this option will be grayed out completely). At this screen (one on the right) you need to put a tick in the "USB tethering" check box. After doing this you effectively done with
 the phones settings however you will notice a a new icon on the
 notification bar (a small blue square with a USB icon inside it)
and a small message saying "Tethering or hotspot active" (see left).

Although you're done with your phone at this point you will notice that your laptop, or computer will start to become much more active as it installs a number of drivers to allow you to actually use this function. These can take several minutes to fully install then you should notice a new icon in the taskbar as well as a connection to a "Network"

 If you click on the image to the right you will notice that the connection to the internet is via "Network", this is the tethering working (see the top arrow) whilst in icon tray you will notice a "network" type symbol.


As with setting up a Wi-Fi hotspot tethering does have it's draw backs. Firstly you are limited to the speed of the phones internet (unless you are using it to effectively join a Wi-Fi connection, where the phone acts as Wi-Fi card, where you are still limited to the Wi-Fi speed) and secondly you will use your data connection if you are using a form of mobile internet for the connection. Tethering, if done often could see you amassing a large phone bill if you're not careful due to the data usage so just be careful.

As with using the phone as a Wi-Fi hotspot, I wouldn't advise doing it too often unless you're on a truly unlimited internet package or can really keep an eye on your usage.

How do I put music onto my Samsung Galaxy S2? (Via USB cable)

So you've got yourself a brand new Samsung Galaxy S2 android smartphone and you want to make the most of the 16GB internal memory by using it to store some of your MP3's and even use it as an MP3 player to replace your iPod. But how exactly do we put our music from our computer to our Samsung Galaxy SII?

Firstly we are going to look at the USB method of file transferring and to start with you will need to connect your phone to your laptop or PC via a USB-to-USB mini cable. If you've done this correctly you phone will look like the image to the right.
When you've connected your phone and your computer you will need to locate your phone in your computer. When you have located it (it will often show up as "GT-I9100") double click it to explore then find the "Samsung" folder which should have a folder called music in (if not you can create one).

Whilst in this folder you can feel free to copy and paste all your music from your computer to your folder as you can see in the image to the right which contains the vast majority of my music collection (yeah I like Apologetix).

I hope this answers the question of "How do I put my music on to my Samsung Galaxy S2?" Of course you can open up the same Music folder and delete things from the phone in the same way.

For those wondering on the full directory of the music folder, it's:
Computer\GT-I9100\Phone\Samsung\Music