Samsung Galaxy S Advance gets priced and dated in the UK

Do you need something more powerful than the original Samsung Galaxy S, but you’re not ready for the big screen of the Galaxy S II? Then you’re part of an extremely specific market that Samsung nonetheless hopes to target with the Galaxy S Advance, an upgrade on the original that delivers a faster processor and more contemporary styling. After a few delays, the phone has popped up on UK retailer Clove with an expected ship date of March 26th. The price is £354.00 with taxes for an unlocked phone, making it about $550 USD.

That’s a lot to ask for a phone that’s using a lot of older tech. The biggest improvement over the Galaxy S (now almost two years old) is a dual-core 1.0Ghz processor, while the 4-inch screen, 1GB of RAM, and 5 megapixel camera stay the same. The phone uses Samsung’s standard Gingerbread-TouchWiz combination, which should run fine on 768MB of RAM. The 800×480 Super AMOLED screen gets something of a refresh, since it’s got a Galaxy Nexus-style concave curved glass panel. The connection is HSPA, not HSPA+.

We haven’t heard of the Galaxy S Advance making the jump to the Americas yet, though it’s certainly not impossible: it’s already made the rounds at the FCC. To be honest, a mild refresh of the Galaxy S isn’t really necessary with the US’ love affair with subsidized phones: the reduced price that the Advance would get wouldn’t be significantly lower than the Galaxy S II or other similarly-equipped high end phones. Even so, we’ll be waiting to see if it graces our fair shores.

[via Unwired View]