14 DAY TRIAL // It looks like Samsung has troubles in launching its first Windows Phone 8 device, the Ativ S. Although the smartphone was initially slated for an early November release, most carriers and retailers announced their customers the Ativ S has been delayed.
The reason Samsung decided to postpone the early November launch of the Ativ S is still unknown, but we noticed some retailers are still claiming the device will be available at some point this month.
For example, UK-based retailer Clove states on the phone’s page, the first stock is delayed until the week commencing December 10.
However, another retailer in the UK, handtec says the smartphone will arrive in stock in the week commencing November 12.
Both retailers are taking pre-orders for Samsung Ativ S, so customers can pre-purchase their devices for around £440/€550/$700 outright. Still, we expect the smartphone to be available for free on 2-year contracts.
Nokia Lumia 920 and HTC 8X are already available for purchase in UK, though the former is exclusive to EE, which means it will only work on T-Mobile and Orange networks.
Samsung Ativ S seems to be the only Windows Phone 8 handset that can be put against Nokia Lumia 920. The smartphone comes with a stunning 4.8-inch Super AMOLED capacitive touchscreen display that supports 720 x 1280 pixels resolution, and features Corning Gorilla Glass 2 coating.
Hardware-wise, the Ativ S comes equipped with a dual-core Qualcomm MSM8960 Snapdragon processor clocked at 1.5GHz, accompanied by an Adreno 225 graphics processing unit and 1GB of RAM.
Apparently, there’ll be two versions of Ativ S with different amounts of storage: 16GB and 32GB. In addition, the smartphone will come packed with microSD card slot for memory expansion (up to 32GB).
The 8-megapixel rear photo snapper with autofocus, LED flash and full HD (1080p) video recording will be included as well. Stay tuned for more updates on Samsung Ativ S availability.