Samsung’s Galaxy S II invades the US in August | Hacker News Reader

Samsung’s Galaxy S II invades the US in August

venturebeat.com

14 pointsrichardofyork14 comments

Doesn't sound definitive to me. I'm sure they want to be in the US, but until they announce a launch date or at least a carrier, I won't get my hopes up just yet.

There will be four variants of the GSII in the US, one for each of the big carriers. "Attain" (AT&T), "Within" (Sprint), "Function" (Verizon), and "Hercules" (T-Mobile). This article (http://www.infosyncworld.com/reviews/cell-phones/samsung-gal...) has a bit more info.

Does anyone know why it hits the US market later than Europe and Japan? Maybe the software patent issues?

If it's anything like the first Galaxy S, they'll have to come up with 4 different variants for the US carriers. That's got to create some extra development time.

My wife had the first Galaxy S (the Verizon version). We had to replace it after six months because it routinely would not accept incoming phone calls despite showing full reception, was extremely crash prone, and had awful call quality. We worked with Verizon to address the call quality/missed call issue, but it never helped.

A few weeks ago, my wife dropped it, and shattered the screen. The phone is still usable, but we took this as an excuse to get her an iPhone 4.

It is amazing how little anything matters when a phone doesn't function as a phone.

The carriers are a bunch of bitches and they won't let a manufacturer simply sell a phone without jumping through a thousand hoops.

Rigorous network testing is a good thing, but they won't stop until the phone has a silly name (Spring Within!) a silly new plastic skin and a load of crapware on the phone.

This is why I've imported all my phones for the past 7+ years...

Nokia 6820

Sony Ericsson M600i (white)

Nokia N95 8gb

Nokia N900

Galaxy S2

It's a tad more expensive than a locked-in contract plan but you get your phone many months before the US Market (if they get it at all) and none of the Marketing / Carrier BS.

Having a smartphone years ago was almost like owning a really nice car, everyone used to ask me about the 6820/M600i especially. Now the only advantage is getting something a few months earlier, so the markets are at least improving in that most great phones are making it to the US markets. The US mobile market was complete garbage years ago compared to what it is now...

Do you still get 3G? AT&T and T-Mobile both use different 3G frequencies than the rest of the world. You can easily just plug in a SIM to a foreign phone but you may not get 3G.

That used to be an issue with phones 5 years ago (like the M600i, which I bought purely because it looked cool), but these days with most phones being Quad-band 2G / Tri-band 3G (or better) it's pretty easy to get a phone that will work on most freq. here in the US. Howardforums is full of people that do this all the time.

Obviously you're stuck if Verizon is your choice of network... I mostly just hop around on T-Mobile / AT&T depending on who has the towers that support the phone I want. I think the Galaxy S2 may be the last phone I import early though, like I said the only real disadvantage to the US markets these days is launch lag time... We're getting all the best hardware now. Sometimes it's even good to wait, because there's always bugs that are worked out with any first release.

That's not my experience with T-Mobile. It uses the pretty non-standard 1700Mhz. I bought a HTC Wildfire a while ago and only got 2G. AT&T may be a different experience.

Based on the behavior of my carrier, it has just been to clear out the inventory of the earlier model in the United States before launching the new model.

For the first time ever I got to own a product I really wanted before you people in the US did.

Cool!

As a person residing in the US, I've been wanting any of a number of your European high efficiency diesel engine equipped automobiles for YEARS.

Can't you just order one from BMW/VW/Mercedes/etc? I know at least one owner of a recent 3-series diesel BMW in California.

In fact the same should be possible with this phone. You can just buy it yourself and plug in a SIM, that's just not common in the US. The 3G frequencies are sometimes not the same though.

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