Galaxy S2 firmware upgrade / screenshots / battery life

I wanted to take screenshots with the Galaxy S2...... previously (with Nexus One that was with a USB cable and starting ddms.bat (im in windows 7). This time around plugged in s2 via usb and it defaults to 'Kies' connection. To get around that you need to enable the usb debugging option BEFORE connecting cable, anyway it still wont work as you wont have a compatible USB driver. So you first need to install Kies (as a minimum to get the USB drivers, or you may want to actually try it)
Kies download site

at this point I thought Id try it and it seems to work ok.
It mentioned a firmware upgrade




, so hell why not.........all went well until the final step (of copying update to phone) when it failed due to an uninstalled driver!
phone with green android fella saying 'Dont disconnect client' but it had failed!!!! genuinely thought wtf Ive just bricked my new phone .....
disconnected cable but screen remained.
Kies then indicates you can do an emergency firmware recovery, although to my mind this seemed a little excessive and i didnt want to loose everything.
So i removed the battery and just restarted the phone, thankfully it just started up .......PHEW

(at this point the failed driver now pops up to tell me its installed ok FFS!)

undeterred (and on the basis it seemed to have failed for an obvious reason) I tried again, eh voila worked this time.......

Improvements ? no idea , the only things Ive seen so far are

a) improved battery life ! crikey I was already impressed before but now it seems even better, easily a full day with 'use'
b) battery stats now seem to report correctly for each process , before they didnt seem to record half the stuff that id used.


Anyway that was me side tracked from my intial reason for downloading Kies!
As it turns out on my web travels (for other info) I found some S2 tips and tricks, the best one .........

Galaxy S2 can take screen shots on the standard firmware without root.
Just hold 'home' and quickly press camera button, eh voila job done. Even sticks the photos in their own gallery, SUPERB well done Samsung.

The general quality, lack of bugs etc shows that Samsung has certainly moved on from the i7500 days, by no means perfect but a LOT better.

Loving the phone so far, albeit that its already superceeded by an NFC version soon to be released , THANKS SAMSUNG!

Enjoy some links below

Forums
http://forum.androidcentral.com/samsung-galaxy-s-ii/
http://androidforums.com/samsung-galaxy-s2/
http://forum.xda-developers.com/forumdisplay.php?f=1055

one click root
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1056334

Firmware download links
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1075278

specs
http://www.phonearena.com/phones/Samsung-Galaxy-S-II_id5106/fullspecs

FAQ
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=1065995

custom fonts
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=894397
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=745345

swype tips
http://www.swypeinc.com/tips-tricks.html

UPDATE : It seems that if you are on Orange UK handset then DO NOT UPDATE for now!