Samsung Galaxy S Advance Hits Pre-Order

With Samsung's Galaxy S III no longer expected at MWC 2012 later this month, we'll have to make do with the Samsung Galaxy S Advance, officially announced on Monday and already up for pre-order. An variant of the original Galaxy S, the Galaxy S Advance I9070 is scheduled to drop roughly at the same time as the Barcelona mobile show, according to UK retailer Clove, with pre-orders priced at £295 ($467)plus tax.

That means a 4-inch Super AMOLED display running at WVGA resolution, along with a 1GHz dual-core processor paired with 768MB of RAM. There's also 8GB of internal storage plus a microSD card slot. The 5-megapixel camera is paired with a 1.3-megapixel front-facer, and there's the usual bevy of sensors and wireless: GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth and an FM radio. OS is Android 2.3 Gingerbread with Samsung's own TouchWiz mods.

In case that all sounds reasonably familiar, you're not going mad. Samsung revealed another iteration of the Galaxy S back in March 2011, the Galaxy S Plus, similar in many ways to this "Advance" model. The "Plus", however, had a 1.4GHz single-core processor and only 512MB of RAM, though the battery is 150 mAh bigger.

If the Galaxy S Advance takes your fancy, shipments are expected in the week commencing February 27 2012. Of course, SlashGear will be at Mobile World Congress that week, bringing back all the juicy details as to what other phones Samsung and its rivals have to impress us with.