US Cellular Grabs Galaxy S II

Samsung's Galaxy S III may be just around the corner, but not everybody has the existing Galaxy S II yet: regional carrier US Cellular has just announced that the Super AMOLED Plus smartphone will be hitting its airwaves imminently. Priced at $229.99 after a $100 mail-in rebate, the US Cellular GSII will have a 4.5-inch WVGA touchscreen, 1.2GHz Samsung Exynos C210 dual-core processor and an 8-megapixel camera with autofocus and an LED flash.

There's also Android 2.3 Gingerbread and 16GB of onboard storage, along with a microSD card slot. No LTE, unlike say AT&T's variant, but 3G along with WiFi and Bluetooth. It'll come preloaded with Swype, too, together with Samsung's own TouchWiz interface modifications.

While it may be showing its age, the Galaxy S II is still a decent performer and one of our favorite handsets of recent months. The Super AMOLED Plus display is colorful and bright, with excellent viewing angles; only its WVGA resolution shows it up in comparison with qHD and 720p HD panels on other devices.

Camera quality is also solid, and the 1080p Full HD video capture is admirable. Perhaps best of all is the overclocking potential, with the aftermarket ROM community already cooking up plenty of hacks for the handset. No exact word on launch dates, but we're guessing US Cellular won't want to dawdle.