After iPhone comes… Stratosphere. Samsung are hogging some of iPhone 4S glory by launching a new 4″ model – just one day before the Apple rival goes on sale.
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The 4G smartphone, which goes on sale in the US on Verizon October 13 (according to Droid Life), has some similar specs although its iPhone rival is faster with a dual core A5 chip, also used on iPad 2.
Stratosphere, described by one journalist as a “mid tier phone” has some quirky features all the same, including full slider QWERTY keyboard, an AMOLED screen (480 x 800 resolution), single-core 1-GHz processor, dual cameras, 512MB of RAM, 4GB inbuilt storage and 4GB extra memory from microSD card.
Samsung’s new phone is also 4G LTE enabled handset meaning faster downloads and web streaming.
However, Apple’s arch rival did delay this weeks proposed launch of Ice Cream Sandwich or Android 4.0 OS as well as Nexus Prime phone it created with Google, out of respect for Steve Jobs, who died last week.
“We believe this is not the right time to announce a new product as the world expresses tribute to Steve Jobs’s passing” the duo said in a statement.
The launch could thus be Verizon attemping to have a new Android rival at the ready.
The iPhone 4S, although seen as a tweaked version of original 4 model, has nonetheless enjoyed boom demand, and is the biggest pre-order Apple device ever in the States, partly due to shock death of its creator, last week.
Demand is going well here in Oz also, with Telstra saying demand was “extraordinary”.
Read Should Apple Suspend The iPhone 4S Launch In Respect Of Jobs?
And Samsung and Verizon are clearly looking to replicate iPhone 4S stratospheric pre-sales heights with a fresh alternative to the cult device.
Read Jobs Effect: iPhone 4S Orders Soar
