Stop the presses! Verizon has finally made a formal announcement for the Samsung smartphone you’ve been waiting for! The “environmentally friendly” Samsung Illusion will be available from the carrier starting on November 23rd. Please refrain from throwing wads of cash until then.
In all seriousness, the Illusion looks like a decent low-end phone, especially considering it’s $79.99 on a new contract. As far as the specs go it looks to be on par with the original Galaxy S family of phones, plus an upgrade to Android 2.3. A 1 GHz Hummingbird processor paired to 512MB of RAM means that it’ll be admirably fast, especially considering the rather lackluster 480 x 320 resolution on the 3.5-inch LCD screen. Interestingly, an official spec list shows a “curved design” – could the final phone look something like, well, the Verizon phone that everyone’s really waiting on?
Samsung is highlighting the “Platinum”environmental rating the phone received, thanks to its battery cover made from 70% post consumer material. Users are probably more interested in the included Swype keyboard and free 2GB microSD card. Despite the bargain price point, the Illusion offers full WiFi hotspot functionality for up to 8 devices. You can get one starting on November 23rd (that’s tomorrow) online. It’ll start popping up in retail stores in January.
See? I didn’t mention the Galaxy Nexus once.
Those specs would have been impressive a year and a half ago. C’mon, Verizon, get some quad core phones out!