14 DAY TRIAL // The illusive Samsung Ativ S has just been released in the UK, but the Windows Phone device has yet to make its debut in other countries.
Back in September when the phone was officially announced, Samsung stated the Ativ S would arrive on the market in Q4 2012.
Unfortunately, Samsung Ativ S is still on “Coming Soon” in most countries, so it will take some time until the smartphone goes on sale.
The same goes for the Canadian version of Ativ S, which is expected to arrive at Rogers, Bell, TELUS and SaskTel.
For the time being, the only confirmed info on the smartphone’s availability is that it will hit shelves “this November.”
It looks like Rogers is the first to put a price tag on the Samsung Ativ S. The carrier will sell the smartphone for as low as $150//€115 with a three-year FLEXtab agreement on select plans.
With FLEXtab customers can upgrade to the latest device without having to wait until the end of their term. No word on availability or no-term price yet, but we expect more details will emerge closer to launch.
Samsung Ativ S is one of the few Windows Phone 8 devices that could actually compete with Nokia’s Lumia 920 smartphone.
The Ativ S boasts a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display that supports HD (720 x 1280 pixels) resolution and features Corning Gorilla Glass 2 coating.
Hardware-wise, the smartphone is packed with a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.5 GHz, an Adreno 225 GPU and 1GB of RAM.
Unlike the Lumia 920, which lacks microSD card slot, Samsung Ativ S embeds 16GB of internal memory and microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB). It also sports an enhanced 8-megapixel rear camera with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording.